Six Months Read Online Free PDF Page A

time’s up and there’s no clean slate with my loans due to death. I’m not insured like the bank. Her debt rolled over to the next in line and that’s you.”
    “Fifty? I can’t pay you that much money. I don’t even have enough to buy a car.”
    He obscured his mouth with his hat and glanced around the trailer with a contemplative look in his eyes. Oh please, let this guy have a heart.
    “Tell you what. I’ll give you a week to figure it out, then I’ll come back for a visit and see what’s what. You got something you can liquidate? You better do it.”
    “Why did she borrow that much?”
    “I don’t ask what people do with my money. I don’t care. I baby-step them into my services to see how good they are about paying back the interest. You seem like a smart girl; you don’t know what she would have needed that much money for?”
    God. I did. To help put me through school. Grandma had helped pay for college, but I’d assumed she had money stuffed in a savings account or it was coming from her paychecks. Rose had saved up for her VW by working summer and evening jobs, and I shared a car with Grandma. The trailer had been paid off for eons, so I couldn’t think of another explanation.
    I never thought it was possible to hate someone for loving me so much.
    He scratched his beard, staring at a short stack of paperbacks on the counter. “You got a boyfriend? To help you out, I mean.”
    “I think you need to go.”
    “I’m a reasonable man,” he said in a smooth voice, rising to his feet. “You’ll see that in no time. Charmed to meet you, April Frost.” He opened the door and peered over his shoulder. “Stay dry.”
    ***
     
    Early the next morning, I had a banana for breakfast and decided to walk to the local drugstore to shop around before my afternoon shift began. Since morning sales were slow, we usually gave those hours to the part-time girls. That meant I could sleep in, but today my thoughts were in a scramble and I needed to take a walk and clear my head.
    I slipped on a pair of black biker boots to keep my feet dry. Perish the thought I was making a fashion statement when I put on a pair of leggings and an oversized black shirt. In the summertime, I loved wearing Capri pants and fashionable sandals. But with the cold weather fast approaching, I began to dip into the bottom drawers and pull out some of my casual-crazy wear for gloomy weather.
    An indie group played on my earbuds and I walked into Walgreens, humming along and tracking in a few streaks of mud behind me.
    “Can I help you?” I heard a voice say over my music.
    A middle-aged woman with a prominent mole on the side of her nose and heavy glasses stared at me impatiently. The small tag on her blue shirt displayed the name Patsy.
    “Where’s your perfume?” As if I didn’t already know.
    She pushed her glasses up her nose and stole a glimpse of my boots. “This way.”
    Sometimes they put the perfume samplers on display, but this was not one of those days. The boxes were sealed in plastic and locked behind the glass case. It was ludicrous to think someone would come into a store and steal a bunch of perfume when they had expensive makeup at their fingertips. So I wandered the store and scoured the clearance aisle for makeup, sifting through green eyeliner and whore-red lipstick. I’d learned to make things stretch; it’s something my grandma had taught me. It’s why I’d adopted the smoky liner look—that stuff went a long way and didn’t require eye shadow. Rose had also showed me a neat little trick of using a Q-tip to get all the lipstick from beneath the barrel. We had become quite resourceful in learning how to save money when it came to expensive makeup.
    I lied whenever someone asked how I was doing. People don’t want to hear the truth. Lexi had given me a slight salary increase, but it wasn’t enough to get me where I needed to be. One of Austin’s brothers was helping her manage the business and analyzing