MoboNovels
Emily Miller’s life goal was simple: get the hell out of Havenwood. And step one? Buying a new house.
For someone who’d grown up in that dead-end town, taking her parents to pick out a place in Fairview – even a basic one – felt like the ultimate dream. Nothing fancy, just a decent 1200 square foot place. Three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom – no moldy walls, no leaky ceiling, and definitely no cockroaches or mice.
That’s all she wanted.
To make that dream a reality, Emily had worked her ass off, hustling every job she could find, completely writing off the idea of dating. Relationships meant investing time, energy, and a crapload of money. And if you got unlucky and hooked up with a total loser? You’d end up broke and heartbroken. No thanks.
Now, at twenty-four, the Millers had finally saved up the forty grand for a down payment. Emily was buzzing with excitement, ready to tour open houses, when her parents, John and Diane, got caught in a bank robbery downtown.
It all happened so fast. They’d just withdrawn the forty thousand in cash, stuffed it into a duffel bag, when some masked dude with a sawed-off shotgun burst in. Bank robberies weren’t exactly common in a town like Havenwood. Everyone inside froze, totally freaked, not daring to resist. They all just crouched on the floor, handing over their wallets and purses to the robber.
Except for John and Diane Miller.
They clung to that duffel bag with everything they had, shielding it with their bodies. Even with the barrel of that shotgun pressed against their heads, they wouldn’t let go. To everyone else, they looked like total morons. Was money really worth dying for? To John and Diane, it absolutely was.
That forty grand was their family’s entire nest egg, every single penny they had. Losing it would be like losing everything.
So, the robber shot John first. Then, as Diane lunged at him in a panic, he shot her too.
In the end, the couple couldn’t protect a damn thing.
The robber grabbed the blood-soaked duffel bag, hopped on his motorcycle, and sped off. The whole thing was over in ten minutes, tops.
At that very moment, Emily was checking out the model homes they had on display, gushing to the saleswoman about the granite countertops. She was also half-annoyed that her parents were at the bank and hadn’t come with her to see this new house.
The saleswoman gave her one of those polite, practiced smiles. “You can always bring your folks next time!” But there wouldn’t be a next time.
The police were surprisingly efficient. They ID’d the robber the very next day. But when they found him, they found only fragmented remains. Turns out, the guy had blown the stolen money on his kid’s medical bills, then promptly jumped off the roof of the hospital.
The Millers’ hard-earned forty grand was gone. Every last cent. Emily had to beg her relatives to loan her the money just to pay for her parents’ funerals.
Kneeling at their graves, Emily couldn’t even bring herself to cry. Instead, she sincerely hoped her parents would come back as vengeful spirits and drag her down to hell with them.
Just wipe the whole family out.
After the funerals, Emily holed up in her parents’ bedroom for days.
She hadn’t slept much since she’d heard the news. But even now, she felt wide awake. The mice in the ceiling kept skittering around, as if they were taunting her or offering her some kind of messed-up company.
On the nightstand, there was a stack of clothes her mom had folded the day before everything happened. Under the bed, there were her dad’s old, beat-up work boots he’d worn for years.
Only a rickety old closet separated her bed from her parents’. Growing up, she’d hated how she never had any privacy, not even the freedom to stay up late without getting nagged. She’d always dreamed of having a bedroom that was all her own.
Now, the room really was all hers.
Huh. With her parents gone, the place actually felt kinda spacious. Emily smirked, managing a laugh that sounded more like a sob.
She held out her hand, tracing the calluses on her palm.
Her hands bore calluses: some from scrubbing toilets, others from hauling boxes, and still more from clearing tables and washing dishes. What kind of twenty-something gal has hands like this?
Emily was a hard worker, sure, but hard work didn’t necessarily guarantee you a high-paying job in Havenwood. In school, Emily was always the star student. She was the first one in class, the first to turn in homework, a straight-A student who took meticulous notes, stayed up all night studying, aced all her tests, and was on student council, even receiving tons of certificates of merit. But eventually, she didn’t even finish high school. After junior high, she went to vocational school for three years before hurrying off to the factory where she’d later start her long working life.
Back then, she was too young to realize how much that choice would screw up her life.
Years later, whenever she saw high school or college kids walking down the street, looking so full of energy, so free and bright, she belatedly realized what she’d missed out on.
But life didn’t have a rewind button.
Some people can work hard and become millionaires. Others just work hard to wash a few more dishes.
How many years would it take her to save up another down payment? And even if she did, her parents wouldn’t be around to see it. Her parents were gone. She didn’t have a family anymore. Thump.
Thump. Thump.
Someone was knocking at the door.
It was late, and pitch-black outside.
Emily shot to her feet, suddenly hoping the knocker was just another robber, one who would discover her family was broke, get pissed, and blow her brains out right there. That way, she could finally experience the same horror her parents had. Dying sounded pretty good right about now.
Death would be a release.
She yanked open the door to find a thin, wiry teenager standing there.
His eyes were red-rimmed, his body tense, tears streaming down his face. “Sis, why didn’t you tell me what happened?”
He stared at her, his gaze filled with sorrow, tenderness, and reproach. Emily suddenly remembered that she did, in fact, have someone left: her foster brother, Ethan Carter.