Night Shift Read Online Free PDF Page A

was.
    “I just figured you’d fix it up and sell it.” Kiki laughed.
    “To whom? You noticed a booming housing market around Midnight?”
    “Well, no.” Kiki said, still smiling. “You really do like living here?”
    “I really do.” Fiji smiled back, just a little, showing her teeth. “So you left Marty, huh? What did he do to break the camel’s back?”
    “He stole some of my jewelry and pawned it. Then he tried to tell me I’d lost it.”
    “Why’d he need the money so bad?”
    “He’s developed a gambling addiction,” Kiki said stiffly. “He isn’t getting any help, and he’s lost almost all his money, so to save myself and my own things, I had to get out. I put some stuff in Mom’s attic, and then I lit out.”
    “So you came here.” Fiji smelled a large rat, much bigger than the little creature Mr. Snuggly had stowed in her shoe.
    “Yeah, I came here.”
    “Mom wouldn’t let you stay?”
    “She made it clear that if Marty came by her house, I couldn’t expect any help from her.”
    “What about Dad? He used to be pretty much ready to defend his darling.” Fiji had always been sure she wasn’t included in that defense.
    “I don’t know how much you talk to Mom. . . .”
    “Hardly at all. What?” Fiji was suddenly alert. There was a serious note in Kiki’s voice, a note that said, “Sit up and listen close.”
    “Dad has the onset of Alzheimer’s,” Kiki said.
    Fiji could only stare at her sister. “Mom didn’t think she needed to tell me? And you didn’t call to tell me?” she said, without any inflection.
    Kiki pursed her lips. “I’m telling you now. This is pretty new. I stop by their house maybe twice a week, and I didn’t notice anything wrong for a long time. He was absentminded about things—but he didn’t do any one thing that scared me. It was just like, ‘Where’d I put my car keys? Where’d I leave my phone?’ Stuff like that.” She looked around the shop as if she were appreciating Fiji’s arrangements, but Fiji knew better. “Then one day he called me from the hardware store. He couldn’t remember how to get home.”
    “But he could remember how to call you?” Fiji groped to understand.
    “He liked my picture by my phone number, so he hit that one.” Kiki shook her head. “Could have been much worse.”
    “That must have been really scary. For him. For you.”
    Kiki nodded. “No shit.”
    “So you decided to come here upon the breakup of your marriage, instead of Mom’s?”
    “Yes,” Kiki said firmly. “You know she’s always hated Marty, and I couldn’t stand to listen to her gloat. Plus, helping her with Dad is really stressful. I need to unwind, not get more tense.”
    Since Fiji had no intention of going home to help her mother take care of her dad, she hardly had the moral high ground, she realized. “I can understand that,” Fiji said. And she did. But Fiji also knew there was more that Waikiki Cavanaugh Ransom had to tell her, and she supposed sooner or later she would have to hear it. She could hardly tell Kiki to turn around and drive back to Houston, though for a moment that seemed like a delightful possibility. But the bond of family prevailed, somewhat to the new Fiji’s disappointment.
    “Well, then, the guest bedroom is just back here,” Fiji said. “I’m sure you remember.” When the family had visited her mother’s aunt, of course Kiki had come, too. “There’s not that much house to remember.”
    Fiji walked down the little hall. The bathroom was on her left, her own bedroom was on her right, and the guest room was after the bathroom on the left, across from the kitchen. It was a small room, but now it was a real guest bedroom since she’d bought a shed for the backyard.
    Bobo had helped her put it up. Well, Bobo had put it up, with assistance from her and Diederik and a few hours of skilled labor provided by Teacher Reed. The happy memory turned sour in a second, now that she knew she would always be a buddy,