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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Gregg Olsen
Read between
February 7 - February 7, 2024
touch with their grandmother, Lara,
Lara gladly invited her to her home, now located in Bellingham at the northern end of
Kaley’s mother, Barb Hanson, offered to take her. She’d never thought much of Shelly anyway, having been awakened once in the middle of the night with questions about how much money she and her husband made.
Tori never received the message.
Then Shelly showed up unannounced. She was all sweet and concerned and told Nikki that she should come home.
Fear. They were afraid she would talk.
incident, Nikki called Lara with the idea that she could maybe leave Oak Harbor and get a job with her at the nursing facility in Bellingham.
“Sami’s here too.”
Sami and Nikki were together
Her hair, which their mother had always chopped off in the most cruel and unflattering ways, was long, slightly curly.
she escaped from our house when she was twenty-two.
Not long after she started working there, her administrators at the facility started getting anonymous complaints that Nikki was unkind to elderly patients or incompetent when it came to giving them the care they needed.
Dave Knotek started to show up in the parking lot of the facility.
He didn’t
“I’m lucky to still be here. My sister thinks the same thing.”
and somehow, she’d heard that Sami was up in Bellingham with Lara and Nikki.
Dave was sick of Shelly’s drama.
open day at Camp Firwood,
sick. She loved her dad, but
After a beat of silence, Sami finally told him why she’d left. A lot of what she said centered on Kathy.
same ones Lara had asked years earlier.
“I’ll come home, Dad. But there’s something I want. Mom screwed it up. I want her to fix it. I want her to get the paperwork done for college.”
Shelly balked, and ran through a litany of excuses.
A goddamn tent and trips to a food bank when he worked all kinds of hours making his body old before its time!
not only filled out the paperwork, she’d turned it in.
Turned in paperwork
Kaley,
She’d shaved off her eyebrows and applied the same white powder she’d used when Lara and her daughter Carol had visited.
Sami saw it as an admission.
Shelly took back her words. She reeled back every single thing she’d said.
cracking ammonia vials so he could stay awake to run the machinery
She had removed him as a signatory on the couple’s checking account. Dave never saw what happened to his paycheck.
the checks would bounce all over town.
$250 in fees for overdrawing her checking account. When the balance became too thin, she’d simply go to another branch and open a new account.
the last number until you get one that works,” her mother said. Sami
But Mom was Mom.
like watching TV or fishing in the river. Sometimes, however, it felt almost a little easier having him away.
And Shelly, who only slept when Tori was at school during the day, jumped on her daughter and pulled away the bedcovers.
Tori was in tears, embarrassed,
1999. Worst of all, he had lost his cats. Shelly told Tori that they
Ron
had told Dave about Kathy. “And she can help us at the same time.”
Dave wanted out.
number of gold necklaces coiled around his neck, including an ankh pendant.
“Just didn’t get out of there in time.”
Sami’s mind when she heard Ron
Ron was Sammys friend and she was women abat him
action with Kathy,
Sami was sure Ron could hold his own.
“lovey dovey.” Still,
“I saw
Tori
“What are those pills you keep giving him?” Tori asked more than one time. “Sleeping pills,” Shelly replied. “To calm him down.”
