The Killing Kind Read Online Free PDF Page B

largest small town in Gaston County, has been branded the “All-American City” three times and received the U.S. Conference of Mayors Livability Award. Its slogan spells out the feeling you get, many claim, from walking around town: “Great Place. Great People. Great Promise.” The city’s website says that because of Gastonia’s “strategic location,” just minutes west of Charlotte and midway between Atlanta and North Carolina’s Research Triangle, Gastonia has become a bastion for attracting “both industry” and “new residents.”
    For Randi and Shellie, Gastonia had always been, and always would be, home.
     
    On November 2, at some point late into the afternoon of Randi’s birthday, Shellie’s phone rang. Looking down at the caller ID, she smiled.
    “Hey, Randi . . .”
    “Shellie, I need you to come and pick me up.”
    “I told you I would bring you some tacos—I’m on my way.”
    Shellie pulled up and parked her car in front of where Randi was living. She was excited to see her sister on her birthday.
    Because of that strict but formidable lifestyle they had lived as kids growing up with God-fearing grandparents, Shellie and Randi never got into much trouble throughout their youth and into junior high.
    “We were very obedient. My grandmother would not have tolerated anything else,” Shellie said.
    As Randi grew older, however, she fell into a group of kids at school that dabbled in those temptations just about every kid, at some point, faces. Shellie never went the way of drugs or alcohol; Randi, on the other hand, couldn’t resist.
    Still, Randi was one of those girls in junior high and high school who became a magnet, attracting others who wanted to be around her. She had that glow about her that drew people toward her. You wanted to know Randi. You wanted to be seen with her. You wanted to be her friend. She made you feel alive and loved and important. She made people laugh and allowed them to be comfortable with who they were.
    “Her dream,” Shellie recalled, “was to do hair and makeup, to go off to cosmetology school and learn the trade.”
    That vocation fit Randi so well.
    Randi and Shellie’s grandmother had a large spread of land with a lake, and Shellie recalled how her fondest memories of her sister included going down to the lake, just sitting, staring out at the water, and talking like young girls do.
    “We’d always go there swimming with our cousins and cook out right by the lake. We had a lot of family time. It was never many outsiders. It was always family.”
    Randi had an inherent goodness in her. Whenever she met people for the first time, she would not judge, as though anyone and everyone were not only equal, but loved by her in a special way.
    There was one woman Shellie met years later who shared a story about Randi. The woman was crying. The story had conveyed the type of person Randi was.
    “What’s wrong?” Shellie asked.
    “Aren’t you Randi’s sister?”
    “Yes, I am.”
    “If it hadn’t been for Randi, I don’t know where I’d be today.”
    The woman explained that when she arrived in Gastonia for the first time, she didn’t know anyone. She met Randi.
    “Randi gave me ten dollars and a place to stay,” the woman said.
    The woman now had a job, a new home, and was doing better than she could ever recall. All because Randi reached out and showed her love.
    “If it had not been for Randi,” the woman concluded, “I do not know where I’d be today.”
    “She accepted people for who they were,” Shellie said. “If they were down and had nothing, Randi wanted to help.”
     
    Shellie and Randi spent November 2, Randi’s birthday, together. It was one of those days Shellie remembered later with a gleam: two sisters enjoying each other’s company.
    They ate tacos. Talked. Drove around. Laughed.
    They didn’t get a chance to see their mother much; but on this day, Shellie drove over to her and Randi’s mother’s house and they all sat and