Betting on Grace Read Online Free PDF Page A

up the stuffing that had once been
inside of it. Maybe the smell had gotten to it, too.
    Because of the mess, Grant didn’t notice what was missing in the living room right away, but he knew something was.
    Oh.
    Shit.
    It didn’t take him long to realize that the something
missing was the one thing his dad coveted probably more than his gun
collection, or even Grant’s mother, whom the man had been married to for going
on thirty-five years.
    How they’d lasted that long, Grant had no idea, but
that was a story for another day. Or perhaps a month-long session with a
shrink. Either way, Grant couldn’t let his thoughts stray; he was too busy
trying to … breathe.
    “Dad, where’s the TV?” he asked as he stepped into the
kitchen, having to sidestep the crap littering the torn linoleum floor that
probably hadn’t seen a mop in a decade. Looked like a tornado had hit and the
only casualty had been the dishes. They were everywhere.
    “Pawn shop,” Darrell said curtly, concentrating raptly
on the laptop in front of him.
    “What the hell are you talking about?” Grant asked,
his attention successfully focused on the old man sitting at the battered
kitchen table. The same table where Grant remembered eating lukewarm TV dinners
when he was a kid.
    Not only had the table seen better days but his father
had, too.
    Darrell’s once-dark hair was sprinkled with gray, his
usually clean-shaven cheeks were salt-and-pepper dark with at least three days’
worth of beard growth, and he had a cigarette dangling from his thin lips. If
Grant wasn’t mistaken, his father had lost more weight recently. Not that it
was that obvious because his gut hadn’t shrunk at all, which was probably
thanks to the beer he chugged like water.
    “You fuckin’ heard me,” Darrell spat. “I needed
money.”
    “You needed… Wait. Back up. What do you mean you
needed money? Why aren’t you at work?”
    “Laid off.”
    “You were laid off ?” Grant couldn’t quite
believe his ears. His father worked at an auto parts store in town and had for
the last eight or nine years.
    “Well, technically, they said I was fired.”
    Okay, so Grant never quite knew what to expect from
his parents. It wasn’t a secret that they barely got by, both financially and
otherwise. The two of them had what they considered an extremely passionate
relationship, one that had, yes, included plenty of abuse over the years — on
both their parts.
    But even considering all that, something was off here.
    W-a-a-ay off.
    “So you pawned the TV?”
    “All the TVs,” his father corrected.
    Grant dared to look around, trying to see what else
might be missing. It was hard to tell because the house was a fucking pigsty.
Not only was it cluttered with crap, the smell was unbearable.
    “Why didn’t you pawn the laptop?” Grant asked, fear of
the obvious becoming an oppressive, stifling stench that competed with the
rancid odor of cat urine. The culmination of it all nearly had him heading for
the door.
    “Why the hell would I do that? Then I couldn’t find a
way to get more money.”
    “So you’re lookin’ for a job?” Grant asked, hopeful
that his father hadn’t relapsed, but as he watched Darrell intently staring at
the screen in front of him, a long string of ash about to land on his bulging
belly, Grant already knew the answer.
    “Nope. But this last bet I placed is a sure thing,”
Darrell answered confidently, his hazel eyes darting up to Grant only briefly.
    God, that was not what he wanted to fucking hear.
“Where’s Mom?”
    “Left.”
    “Where’d she go?” Grant’s mother didn’t work, and for
as long as Grant could remember, Sandy Kingsley had spent her days camped out
on the sofa watching her soap operas … shit ... which she evidently couldn’t do
because there was no television.
    “Don’t know. Don’t care,” was the response he
received.
    Grant’s frustration was kicking in, and he feared that
he was going to lose the cool he worked so