Sweet Paradise by Gene Desrochers (most read books in the world of all time .txt) 📕

with brick facing and slatted shutters that hadn’t been painted since prohibition. “I’m gonna have a beer before heading up. You want one?”

“Guess I’m buying,” he said.

We bantered about insignificant stuff as I swilled down the last drop of Guinness from my pint.

With a belch of satisfaction, I clanked the glass on the wooden table and bookended it with my hands. My eyelids were going to need toothpicks to keep them from falling shut like garage doors, but I had two last acts of business to conduct with Mr. Bacon and my buzzed demeanor would help.

“About the retainer,” I said.

At this he waved his hand for me to shut up. Pulling a bulky Velcro wallet featuring a beige surfer riding a white wave on the flap, he counted out twenty hundreds.

“What else?” he asked. “Are you going to tell me not to drive?”

“When can we rummage through your mama’s things?” I asked.

“Soon, maybe even tomorrow if I can get those home bodies out. Just be ready when I call.”

I shared my cell info. As I rounded up the hill toward the guesthouse, I turned back.

“Two more things,” I said.

He lingered next to his car, peering at me through his own heavy garage doors. “I’m not Samoan.”

“Did I say you were Samoan?”

“Yes.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “What’s the second thing?”

“You shouldn’t drive.”

I didn’t wait to see if he followed my advice.

Chapter 6

Junior’s father was in no mood for games. Herbie popped some Dexedrine, an amphetamine prescribed for ADHD, but in his case used for alertness. He’d started the drug because of the focus and self-esteem boost, years of constant use evolving into dependence.

Herbie’s hand raked across Junior’s face, raising an angry red knot on his cheek and sending him to the floor. He had come out of the bathroom after taking a shower to find his father sitting on the edge of his bed. Junior knew it was coming. He knew what the situation demanded. He’d gone outside the chain of command. Aired laundry.

Junior’s face ached, but this was nothing. He had pride, but in this room, pride got you hurt. His father had never said “I love you.” Well, more precisely, he’d never said it in a loving way.

“I show you love. I raise you. This is how you repay that kindness? Bringing this country stranger into my house. How dare you?”

The boarding school language. The highbrow berating. The street-level beating. All of it happened so fast.

“And now my dumb ass brother is going to involve other people. He agreed to pay this, this fool detective, didn’t he?”

Junior nodded from his position on the floor. Something dripped out of his nose. Junior watched it splatter on the hardwood. Not blood. Clear.

“You are going to repay me for both the cost of the ticket, and ... ”

Junior’s temper slipped silently from his grasp and shattered like a glass ornament. Still staring at the wetness on the floor, through clenched teeth he said, “I’m not going away. I’m here to find grandma.”

His father bent down, his hot breath pasting his son’s ear with each word. “You will do as I say, boy. You will go complete your schooling. You will make this family proud, or you will get nothing.”

I don’t want nothing from the likes of you, Junior thought. Although he felt rebellious, he dared not stick his hand into the shark’s mouth again. He kept his mouth shut. He let thoughts run free, but voiced nothing. Not now. Not in the dragon’s lair. He would wait for the right time, then he’d make his father proud by taking the initiative. Finally, he’d see Junior for the leader he would someday be.

The small act of rebellion had taken every bit of courage Junior could muster. Confronting Herbie terrified him. He really wasn’t ready for this. He was a man, but not that man, not yet. Wasn’t sure he ever would be. Today, he felt like a gambler who had edged his one-thousand dollar chip toward double-zero, then pulled it back right before the roulette dealer waved his hand over the table. He didn’t know what had happened to his mother. Herbie gave the same evasive answers every time he brought up Gertrude. In August, right before leaving for college, Herbie’s anger over the questions had intensified to fury.

“You ask me again, boy. I dare you to ask again! Your so-called mother, Gertrude, abandoned us. Forget about her, or I’ll beat your skull till you cannot remember that cursed name. Do you hear? Gertrude put her heart in a cage and threw away the key when she abandoned us.”

Junior had then scurried off to Georgia Tech, but he kept searching for his mother. Whenever he wasn’t doing school work, archery, or biking, he ran through databases, social media, had even tried background check companies. His father had threatened to cut off his credit card if he saw another related charge, so Junior had filled out one of the dozens of credit cards offered at the student union. He was eighteen. He was a man, even if he didn’t feel like one right now.

He thought if only he could find his mother, answers about himself and his discontent with life would come. Little did he know, finding her would lead to darker paths and no real release from the painful realities of being human. It didn’t really matter who your mother was.

“Now, you will go to sleep, then you are heading back to Georgia on Sunday. I’m pleased to see you and so is Aunt Hill. I’ll let you stay a few days, but we are not wasting your tuition over this mission to find your grandmother. First it was your mother, now it’s your grandmother. Leave it alone. They’re both hopeless causes. You understand me, boy?”

“Yessir.” Junior snatched a change of clothes out of his dresser and shut himself inside the bathroom. Thirty seconds later, he heard his father leave the bedroom. Using the clothes, he constructed a pillow