This Heart of Mine by Brenda Novak Read Free Book Online

before Phoenix got home? The guy who’d delivered the groceries? Or did Lizzie call—and somehow pay—for a professional? Maybe she got a cut rate, like at the vet’s...
    Phoenix didn’t bother asking. She went back and unclogged the toilet. Then she washed the blood off her feet and found some Band-Aids to protect her blisters.
    “I’m hungry,” her mother announced as soon as she was done, so she warmed up some soup, hoping her mother would eat a healthy meal instead of the cheap pizza, soda, chips, cookies and candy she normally consumed. Only when Phoenix had finished cleaning out a small section of her mother’s kitchen—the one part not buried beneath all the things her mother hoarded—did she feel free to return to her own place, and by then it was after two in the afternoon.
    The day was getting away from her, and she still had several bracelet orders to fill. She also planned to make some progress on the overhaul of her trailer. She’d been living out of the kitchen, bathroom and one bedroom—all she’d managed to put right so far. That alone was a major improvement over what she’d known in prison, but she was determined to turn her humble abode into a home she could be proud of, for its cleanliness if nothing else. People in Whiskey Creek might not believe that she was innocent of Lori Mansfield’s murder, but at least she’d show them she wasn’t willing to live in filth, like her mother.
    She’d eventually have to clean the yard, too, if Lizzie would let her. It hadn’t been easy to talk her mother into allowing her to move the junk from the trailer into an old shed. Lizzie was terrified some of it would be thrown away, since the shed was full, too. And that was exactly what Phoenix had done. There wasn’t room for all the newspapers, plastic bags, paper sacks, balls of aluminum foil, empty soda bottles and other garbage her mother had collected. So when Lizzie wasn’t looking, Phoenix had made piles behind her trailer. Then she’d gone out early yesterday morning, on trash day, and dumped everything in the county’s container.
    Phoenix was still frightened her mother would find out. Lizzie couldn’t bear to part with a single scrap of anything for fear she’d need it later. But she wasn’t as mobile as she used to be. Phoenix hoped that would save her from discovery. She had enough battles to fight at the moment. She didn’t need a big argument with her mother.
    Once Phoenix removed her brown linen shorts and crisp blue cotton blouse—more damp than crisp after her walk home—she pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of old jeans she’d cut into shorts and belted because they were too big for her. The clothes had belonged to one of her brothers. She wasn’t sure which. She hadn’t seen Kip or Cary since she was ten. They’d both left town as soon as they could and never looked back. Kip hadn’t even been eighteen.
    Phoenix had thought they might return one day, for her sake, and maybe they would have, if she hadn’t gone to prison. Her mother had spoken to them during her trial and asked them to send money for her defense. They’d helped a little, but it hadn’t been nearly enough to do any good, and they’d only written her a couple of times since. She guessed they considered her a lost cause, like their mother.
    Finally beginning to relax after her anxious morning, she started the bracelets that had to be shipped on Monday. She planned to paint afterward. Although the gallon she’d discovered in the old shed at the back of the property wouldn’t go very far, there were another couple of gallons out there, and she found rehabbing the trailer to be a soothing exercise. She loved seeing the place transformed, figured she might as well do what she could with the paint while her mother had her favorite shows to entertain her and was less likely to need anything.
    But she couldn’t work as fast as usual. She was too absorbed in thinking about her son, kept stopping to look at the