Broken Like Glass by EJ McCay Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t listen too good.”
    I sniffle and drink the rest of my soda. “What would you know?”
    “Psalm 118:5: And in my anguish, I cried out unto the Lord and He rescued me by setting me free.”
    Something inside of me breaks. The dam of tears I thought I’d already spilled come pouring down my cheeks quicker than I can swipe them away. Uriah gathers me in his arms and I can’t do anything but cry on his shoulder.
    Oh, Papa, where have I been that I’ve been so deaf, I think to myself and the tears pour even harder, if that’s possible. I grab onto Uriah with all my might and he holds me even tighter. Maybe my pieces aren’t so jagged that he and Papa can’t fix them.

Chapter Eleven
    “I feel like I’ve done this before,” I say sitting in the chair across from Chrissy.
    “Maybe it wouldn’t feel that way if you’d actually talk about something,” she says with this look of concern.
    “Where’d you learn that face? College?”
    She rolls her eyes and scoffs at me. “Lillian James, if I didn’t have a Dr. sitting in the front of my name I’d take you over my knee and give you a wholloping.”
    “You better hope your daddy was kin to Hulk; otherwise, you’ll have a good ole fight on your hands.”
    Chrissy looks at me stone-faced and then busts out laughing. “That mouth of yours is going to land you in prison or a coffin one day.”
    “If I’ve got a choice I’ll choose the coffin.”
    She just looks at me again, the laughter in her face gone. The silence starts to feel heavy. Chrissy leans back in her chair. “Lilly, how about we change the way we’re doing things? How about you just talk about whatever you want and we’ll go from there?”
    I give her a hard look. “You know everything there is to know about me.” It’s not true, but I hope she buys it.
    Chrissy levels her eyes at me and I know her dollars aren’t buying what I got. “Start with after you left here. Where did you go? What did you do?”
    There isn’t enough air in this awful, earth colored room to fill up my lungs, but I try anyway. “I went to college when I left just like all of you.”
    “Where? No one knew where. Not even your dad.”
    “No one needed to know.”
    “Did you go because your momma had just died?”
    My jagged pieces grow like Magic Rocks at the mention of my momma. I start to open my mouth and spew something so nasty Papa might blush, but Chrissy cuts me off.
    “Don’t you start. You’re here and I’m here, and what you say won’t go anywhere, Lilly. I’m a good listener. Great even. I had a 3.8 GPA in school and I knocked my doctorate out quicker than anyone in my class. This is my calling. It’s what God gave me. So, keep your nastiness to yourself.”
    Chrissy puts water in my gas tank and all my hatefulness sputters. Tears pool in my eyes. I feel Papa poke my heart with a sharp finger. “I’m sorry, Chrissy.” I can’t look at her, but the apology is real.
    “It’s okay, Lilly.”
    “No, it’s not. I got a viper for a tongue sometimes.”
    “At least you know it,” she says and the laugh that escapes her is light and free. “Now, tell me something. Something with importance. Tell me secrets worth keeping.”
    I lift my head and stare at her forehead. Meeting her eyes is more than I can handle right now. “I left Foaming Springs because I had to and I didn’t want anyone I knew to be where I was going.”
    Chrissy sits quiet, doing her therapist thing.
    “Everybody knows my biological parents was druggies. They’d come back to town from time to time, but they’d never stay. Momma and daddy and I were okay while I was little, but as I got older it got harder. They didn’t understand me and I didn’t understand them. Anyone on the outside saw a little family, but on the inside, we were a war.”
    Chrissy is using her pen. I can hear it scratch across the paper fast and furious. For a second, I rev my viper and get ready then I remember Papa’s sharp poke and put it in