Shelter Read Online Free PDF

home, all the way across the garden to the arbor. It mocked her. Look how well true love worked out for you . She pressed a hand over her still-flat belly, feeling achy and empty inside. The fetus wasn’t filling up the gaping, bloody hole Sam had left in his wake. Not even close.
                  “Can I get you something to drink, sweetheart?” her father’s face appeared above her own, reflected in the glass. Tom Harris had been a football star, back in those old Marietta days, and had become a successful insurance agent. Alma had his brown eyes, but had thankfully not inherited the big, square jaw and strong nose that, even in his khakis and sweater, with streaks of silver along the wings of his hair, still marked him as a high school jock. Sometimes, Alma wondered how the hell her parents had managed to give birth to a daughter like her; she hadn’t completely abandoned the adoption theory.
                  Beer was on the tip of her tongue, but she said, “I guess just some water,” instead, turning away from the doors.
                  The house hadn’t changed since she’d moved out three years ago: the same ivory, oatmeal carpet and champagne drapes, tasteful, traditional furniture. The dining room stretched before her, a study in beige and mahogany, the chandelier’s tear-drop crystals shimmering. Diane’s sister, Alma’s Aunt Liz, was in town from Knoxville, and she and Diane had laid out the table with the everyday china. The smells of herb roasted chicken and an orange-ginger rice that wafted from the kitchen made Alma queasy.
                  Tom went to the side table and filled a glass with perfectly formed ice cubes, pouring the most appropriate amount of water from a Brita filtration pitcher. When he put a cocktail napkin under the glass, her skin started to feel too tight, and by the time the water was in her hand, napkin and all, she was downright claustrophobic. At home, Sam’s clothes were still in the laundry hamper because she couldn’t bear to wash his scent from them, the coffee table needed dusting, the mail was cluttering up the counter beside the phone, where doubtless the message light was blinking. And by contrast, the stark, ever present perfection of her parents’ home was suffocating.
                  “How’ve you been feeling?” Tom asked as he poured himself a Scotch. He made a gesture toward her that she knew was meant to indicate her current state of pregnancy.
                  “Fine,” she lied with a poor attempt at a smile.
    **
    Marietta was an eclectic mix of old wealth, new couples starting out in transitional neighborhoods and seedy little pockets where the houses were rundown, and vandalism was less of an anomaly. It was a very typical suburban city in that respect. But thirty minutes south, the metropolis of Atlanta was a whole other breed of dangerous. Amongst the international headquarters of Coca-Cola, the new Aquarium, historic Fox Theater, High Museum of Art, and a hundred other cultural hot spots, crime and poverty festered in the shadows as in every other densely populated urban area.
                  And it didn’t matter the measures the police took, the drug trade was constant. Meth, H, Coke, X: you name it, there was someone pedaling it on a corner somewhere downtown.
                  Sean Taylor was not your average street corner dealer high on his own product. He’d played high school football, had been good friends with Sam, and then two years after graduation, he’d disappeared. No contact, no explanation. Until eighteen months ago when he’d been at Sam and Alma’s kitchen table one Sunday night for dinner.
                  Not a moment passed that Carlos didn’t kick himself in the ass for following his cousin out on the back deck for cigars that night. Sean had come to them with a proposition: a way to make a hell of a lot more money than