Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Picking up the closest thing I could to a cover-up, I wrapped the blanket from the couch around me and wrinkled my nose at the smell.
The cloying scent of my stepfather’s aftershave nearly bowled me over.
What was wrong with this blanket?
Stomping angrily into the laundry room, I threw the blanket into the hamper and snatched some clothes out of the dryer.
I didn’t have many clothes because I’d been desperate to move out of the pool house in a hurry when Mable had asked us to vacate her property.
I hadn’t argued and had honestly left most of my wardrobe behind because I wouldn’t be needing fancy clothes anymore. I didn’t have to impress my mother with my dress, and she couldn’t control me by bribing me anymore.
So I’d left mostly everything behind.
I had four pairs of jeans, eight T-shirts, and enough sweatshirts to get me through until I had a hefty bank account to help pay for such frivolities. I had one large winter jacket that I’d gotten from Shade for Christmas last year, enough bras and underwear from Walmart to last me a year, and that was it.
Once I was dressed, I started a new load of laundry, then got boots on my feet before gathering my lunch I’d made the night before and stomping out of my house.
I was a few minutes early, which worked out well because my sometimes ride wasn’t there.
So I started walking, thinking about the shit Stacy had just pulled.
What was he even doing there at seven in the morning? He could’ve come any time, and he waited until I was getting ready for the day?
I forced myself to get my anger under control. Anger was a useless emotion. Nothing ever came of the act, and inevitably, it would only make my day worse than it needed to be
Other than the snow on the ground, it was a mostly pleasant day.
I made it to my job in less than thirty-five minutes, putting me there just shy of fifteen minutes early.
That earliness paid off, because Charleigh was practically bouncing on her toes as she waited for me right inside the door.
“Whoa, do I have a lot of information for you.” Charleigh breezed up to me.
I smiled in excitement. “Tell me everything?”
“So after a couple of hours of internet sleuthing, I compiled a dossier for you.” She beamed as she handed it to me.
It was printed out photos, and a complete biography on Bernice Lynn Arquette.
I moved past the photo fairly quickly, having already seen a similar one in Creed’s house.
Bernice “Bernie” Lynn Arquette. Single. Works at a manufacturing plant for heavy equipment. One brother—Justin Arquette. Deceased. Mother, Bessie Ross. Drug addict.
“How did you find out her mother was a drug addict?” I questioned.
“She has multiple arrest records,” she answered. “Briefly in an article I found online written by Bernice herself, it touches on a few of her and her brother’s struggles in life. How her mom was a drug addict that only cared about herself. How her brother raised her, kept her healthy and fed.”
“What’s the article for?” I wondered.
She pulled a paper from mid-way through the stack and said, “Bernie’s brother was arrested for killing two police officers. Bernie was in the car at the time, but awoke with no knowledge of the accident. The brother was convicted, and later Bernice says her memory returned and her mother was the one responsible for everything. The police thought she was just trying to cover up for her brother, though, and didn’t pursue it any further.”
I quickly scanned the article that Bernice had penned in a desperate plea to get any help at all for her brother.
It was heartbreaking to see everything she’d gone through at such a young age, only to have her one and only person in life taken away from her.
“That post right there is something she made just recently.” Charleigh shifted papers again. “This was a heartfelt post to the powers that be about how her brother, who died during a prison break, never should have felt so desperate to have attempted it. He should’ve been given a fair trial when they appealed, instead of having everything denied and swept under the rug.”
I read that, too, feeling Bernice’s fury and devastation in the words she’d shared.
This will not be the last you hear of me.
I have spent half my life trying to prove my brother’s innocence, and not a single person in the world has taken the time to read deeper than what was right on the surface, handed to them to read.
My brother was not a murderer. Well, not until you made him one.
He went into that corrupt prison system at twenty and a half, having no clue what awaited him.
He didn’t know that upon his arrival, someone would stab him in the chest. That someone being a prison guard who thought he had the right because my brother was a ‘cop killer.’