us on our bed and handing Missy the second apple. “Ain’t anyone separating us.”
2
Present Day
“Lorna,” my manager, Anna, said as I clocked into work. “Customer threw up in room 211. Clean it up.”
Pulling my unruly red hair back into a ponytail, I wrinkled my nose and squinted my green eyes. Gross. I secured my apron over my top and jeans. The only dress code for working at the Motel 7 was comfortable shoes.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes, I heard you. It’s gross. What time did 211 check out?”
“Ten this morning. Hurry, time’s a ticking.”
“Shit, it’s three o’clock,” I said, looking at my watch. “Couldn’t someone else have cleaned up the puke?”
Her lips curled upward in a sinister grin. “Saved it for you, sis.”
I wasn’t Anna Maples’s sister. I never was. Just because my mother made the mistake of living with her father, sentencing me and my siblings to his wrath for about six months before we convinced my mother to leave him, didn’t make us family.
Yet sometimes life had a way of playing cruel jokes. Even though Anna wasn’t my family, she was my manager at this Motel 7.
Cleaning up after other people was a shitty job but a job nonetheless. It provided a steady paycheck, a roof over my head—locks on my doors and control of my own electricity—a car to drive, and food in my belly. I wasn’t living the highlife in south Chicago, but I was living.
Though my brother promised when we were younger that we three siblings would never be separated, life intervened. Missy’s story was one for another day. As for Mason, he did three tours in Iraq—Special Forces. Apparently, along with being an overprotective brother, he was some kind of genius when it came to languages. Now he’s back in the US, almost completed his degree, and working for a rich dude who he met in basic training.
I was proud of all he’d done. And though I wasn’t the college type, we’d never lost contact. Even when he was half a world away, we sent letters. He also sent money. I have it saved away for that rainy day.
I wasn’t exactly sure what that saying meant. After all, there have been many a heavy downpour in my twenty-five years. Nevertheless, despite my brother’s help, I refused to depend upon a man, even him. Instead of believing in Cinderella’s fairy tale, I learned from my mother.
The last time I laid eyes on her, she was climbing into the cab of a large semi-truck with her new soul mate. That was seven years ago, two weeks before my high school graduation. I never knew the man who helped create me, none of us Pierces did. My sister was gone, and my brother was at war. When I walked across that stage and received the diploma, there was no one in the audience clapping, no party, or even a card.
That’s why I’m working at a shitty motel on the Southside of Chicago instead of going to college. Well, that and the fact that I didn’t have Uncle Sam’s help or the assistance of some rich dude who, for some reason, was all about creating an inner ring of tough-as-shit guys he trusted, and providing them with the skills, including education, to achieve world domination.
Okay, that’s my assessment based solely on what little Mason has told me.
“Hurry up, Pierce,” Anna said from the desk in the employee locker room. “That puke won’t clean itself.”
Gritting my teeth, I closed my locker and checked the supplies on my cart. Pushing it through the steamy laundry area, I made my way to room 211. The one elevator reeked of old fast food. The bag in the corner was no doubt the culprit. Donning a pair of gloves, I lifted it.
I let out a shriek as a mouse dashed out the closing doors. “Shit,” I muttered, throwing the bag into the trash bin attached to my cart.
Shaking off the chills left by the sensation of millions of scurrying mice, I stepped from the elevator on the second floor. The concrete corridor lined by a four-foot railing looked down upon the scenic parking lot. Today, there was a rusted-out AMC Pacer to view.
This Motel 7 was the type of motel where most people checked in by the hour. The customers didn’t care that the carpets were threadbare. Or that the rubber backing on the drapes to keep the rooms dark was cracked or that the material was saturated with cigarette smoke.