Read Online Pieces of My Heart by Jamie Canosa - Free Book Online Page A

right? Not in our home. In our home, the door existed for one reason and one reason only. To keep people out . I knew that. I’d known that my entire life. So, I have no idea what possessed me to open it. My only defense was that I was wrapped up in in the daze of roaming free around the apartment for the first time in days and all logic simply vanished with the unexpected interruption.
    Somewhere around the time I cracked the door wide enough for my head to peek out, it returned, sending me into a panicked frenzy. “Hello?”
    “Good afternoon. Is Marilyn Carlson home?” A man in a pale blue button down shirt and black slacks stood at the door holding a clipboard.
    “Not at the moment. Is there something I can help you with?” Please be here to tell me all about God’s love.
    “And you are?”
    There was a right and wrong answer here. I just had no idea which was which, so I went with what was easiest: the truth. “I’m her daughter.”
    “How old are you?” The man was tall and the way he squared his shoulders and stuck his chin out made it very clear he was looking down on me.
    Shut the door. Tell him you’re not allowed to talk to strangers. Lock him out and go hide. Any of these options would have been wise. Instead, I chose to do the stupidest thing possible. “I’m eighteen.”
    “Excellent. You can sign for these, then.”
    No. No, I cannot. “Um . . .” He thrust the clipboard at me and before I knew it there was a pen clutched in my hand. “I—”
    “There.” He pointed to a red marked X. “And there.”
    The moment the pen left the paper, he snatched it from my hands and tore off a copy, which he shoved back at me. I stared at my name scrawled across the signature line in disbelief.  What was wrong with me? I let some stranger come to my door and interrogate me? And then I signed something without even knowing what it is? I couldn’t possibly be that stupid. And yet . . .
    Across the top of the professional letterhead read ‘ Farnel and Associates’ .
    “Tell your mother that she has twenty day to dispute the debt or repay it. Otherwise, we will be forced to move forward with legal action.”
    “Legal action?” I blinked slowly at the page, letting my brain catch up, and then back up at the man.
    My question went unanswered, however, because he was already hustling down the stairs like the building was on fire.
    “Debt? What debt?” Muttering to myself, I shut the door and navigated my way across the living room by memory alone, eyes latched onto the paper in my hands.
    I scanned line after line of legal mumbo jumbo, looking for something useful until I came across the Amount Due section in the upper right hand corner. Useful? Not exactly. Terrifying? More like.
    “ Twenty-three-hundred-dollars! Who the heck do we owe that much money to?”
    Farnel and Associates was a collection agency, so that didn’t tell me much. The original creditor was listed as a bank. So what? A credit card? We didn’t have any credit cards . . . did we?
    Idiot . Of course we did. And of course I didn’t know anything about it. That’s the only way something like this could have happened. But twenty-three-hundred-dollars? What could she have possibly spent that much money on? How long had this been going on behind my back? And, worse, where the hell was I supposed to come up with that kind of money?
    I couldn’t show it to Mom. Not now. Not when our entire lives felt like they were dangling by a thread. This would surely snap it, plummeting us further over the edge than she’d already taken us.
    So, I did what I’d always done. I hid.
    Scurrying into my room like a kid about to be caught with her hand in the cookie jar, I scanned the limited space for an ideal hiding spot. Where was a good old false-bottom drawer when you needed one? Then I realized how dumb that was. No one even knew those papers existed. No one was going to be looking for them. And no one came into my room. Ever. I could leave them