The Cold Nowhere Read Online Free PDF

Cities. You know, selling T-shirts and keychains and posters and shit like that for bands. I crash with her when I’m down there.’
    ‘T-shirts?’ Stride said dubiously. He doubted the merchandise was limited to clothes. Whatever a concertgoer wanted, someone was there to supply it. ‘Nothing under the table?’
    ‘Hey, what do you care? It’s Minneapolis, not Duluth. Anyway, I had a decent job for a while. I answered phones for a construction company until I got laid off. Since then, I take what I can get.’ Dory threw her cigarette on the ground, where it smoldered. She shivered and zipped her coat.
    ‘You want to go inside?’ Stride asked.
    ‘No, clinics freak me out.’
    He gestured at a bench in the dormant garden beside the medical complex. They sat next to each other, and Dory stared at the gray sky. The wind was cold, mussing Stride’s hair. He couldn’t see much of Michaela in Dory’s face, unlike Cat, who echoed her mother like a mirror. The ten years since Michaela’s death had been hard on Dory, but she’d had a bad life long before her sister died. She’d been a chronic addict and runaway during her teen years, and Michaela had tried and failed to get Dory to reform herself.
    Dory snuck a glance and saw him watching her. ‘You’re thinking about my sister,’ she said.
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Michaela liked you,’ she said.
    ‘I liked her, too.’
    ‘She talked about you a lot. Those pirate eyes of yours. She liked your eyes.’
    He said nothing.
    ‘I still miss her. She never bailed on me, no matter how stupid I was. It’s not her fault I was a fuck-up. I didn’t want her help. I didn’t care about anything back then.’
    ‘How about now?’ Stride asked. ‘Has anything changed?’
    ‘I have ups and downs. Mostly downs lately.’
    ‘What about Cat?’
    ‘Hey, I’d do anything for that girl. Anything. I don’t want her to have the kind of life I’ve had.’
    He thought she was sincere, not just mouthing the words. Whatever her other failings in life, Dory loved her niece, but love wasn’t necessarily enough to change anything. The two of them already shared the wrong kind of parallel lives. They’d both lost parents at a young age, and they’d both headed down bad roads as they got older.
    ‘Do you know she’s been hooking?’ he asked.
    Dory’s face was stricken, but she nodded. ‘Yeah, I begged her not to do it. When I had money, I gave it to her. Not much, but it was something. Whenever she was with me, I made sure she stayed off the street, but I’m out of town a lot. And Cat, sometimes she just leaves and I don’t know where she is.’
    ‘What about the couple that took her in? Her guardians?’
    ‘Cat won’t say anything, but it’s not good there. I get it. It was the same for me bouncing in and out of foster homes as a teenager. I wish I could have taken her in myself back then, but you know what I was like. She was better off without me. I guess she still is.’
    ‘Did you try to get help for her?’
    ‘Sure, I did. I took her to see Brooke at the shelter downtown. Brooke’s a friend. I told Cat that if I wasn’t around, and she didn’t want to go home, she should go there. You know how it is, though. There are abusers everywhere who take advantage of these girls. And Cat, she’s so beautiful. That makes it worse. She’s a magnet with that face of hers.’
    ‘She won’t stay beautiful for long,’ Stride said. ‘Not if she stays in this life.’
    ‘You think I don’t know that? I had a sweet face, too. I know what I did to myself, you don’t need to remind me.’
    ‘How long has Cat been heading downhill?’ Stride asked.
    Dory shrugged. ‘Two years, I suppose. Since she was fourteen. That’s when she started running away. She’d show up at my door, or I’d come back to the city and find her sleeping in my bed at the Seaway.’
    ‘Did she say why?’
    ‘No, but I figured the shit with Michaela and Marty was finally backing up on her. You