Sudden Vacancies Read Online Free PDF

Bruce.
    “You can’t just assume that because something bothers you, it has the same effect on someone else. You especially can’t assume that someone’s going to go crazy over it.” Andrew shook his head.
    Carla D’Angelo had a past, as did everyone who worked at the hotel. The difference being, her past included a history of drugs and alcohol abuse. At the age of 17, she’d been arrested for cooking meth in her parent’s house.
    She’d been introduced to the drug at a friend’s house a mere month earlier, and easily become addicted to it. Her grades had begun to slip and she had even feigned an illness to get out of going to school. The police had been sent to the house on a routine truancy warrant. Suspicious of the fumes coming from the basement window, they had gained access to the house and discovered her in the process of cooking crystal meth. Her parents had been heart-broken, and when the magistrate had suggested a lengthy stay at a local youth rehabilitation center, they had readily signed the papers remanding her guardianship over to the state.
    A year later, clean and attempting to walk the straight and narrow, she finished her GED. For several years, she kept it together and obtained a boring job working in a retail outlet. Looking for more excitement led her to taking her first hit of ecstasy during a smoke break with a friend from work.
    The friend told her that ecstasy was a recreational drug, and you didn’t have to worry about becoming addicted to it. You could take or leave it with no consequences. However, the friend was dead wrong.
    Carla quickly got into the distribution end and ended up spending the next five years in jail for ecstasy possession. Upon her release, she was forced into a halfway house for six months where she was carefully observed. After being released, she came to the realization that something had to change. It wasn’t her environment that was causing her problems, it was her. She kept making bad choices.
    One day, while searching through the Help Wanted ads, she saw a television commercial advertising a new culinary institute. At odds with her time, and knowing that she needed something to focus her time on, she signed up for courses and was amazed that it could actually get somewhere and wasn’t just a swizz.
    It turned out that cooking was the one thing that was missing in her life. She began to have fun making foods and enjoyed trying out all sorts of new ideas in the kitchen. She graduated two years later at the top of her class.
    While her past drug record kept her from being hired by some of the higher end restaurants, Jeffrey Thorn, the previous owner of the Paradise, had been willing to give her a chance. She had been hired as an associate chef and quickly found many champions within the staff of the hotel.
    Three months ago, she had been promoted to the head chef position. The previous chef had decided to retire early and return to his native country of Britain. Carla had been excited at the challenge and finally felt like she was getting some well-deserved respect.
    Still, there was always the risk of relapsing back into using drugs. Just that morning she had told her reflection in the mirror, “I wish there was a way I could truly be free, but I also know that I will always have to control the urge to use drugs again. I’ll never be truly free of them,” she told herself. “I really hope I can continue to be strong and not let myself and everyone else down.”
    So, would she ever get back into drugs? There is always the risk that comes with hiring a former drug addict, no matter how long it’s been since someone has used them. This was the context of Bruce and Andrew’s current concern.
    “She really doesn’t look very happy of late,” said Andrew. “Frankly, I’m worried about her.”
    Bruce nodded, “Yeah, she seems more down of late. I wonder if the stress of being head chef is more than she can handle.”
    Andrew shrugged. Carla was known for