Chapter 1 - The Stranger in Our Living Room
“Get away from my mother.”
I didn’t even remember dropping my backpack.
One second I was walking through the front door after school.
The next, I was staring at the biggest man I had ever seen, standing over my mother like he owned our house.
Mom was backed against the kitchen counter.
Her face had gone white.
The stranger had one hand pressed against the wall beside her head.
“You should have told me before I came here,” he said.
Mom’s voice shook.
“I didn’t know how.”
That was enough for me.
“Back away from her.”
The man turned slowly.
He was probably in his mid-forties. Shaved head. Thick beard. Broad shoulders. A scar ran beside his left eyebrow.
His eyes landed on me.
“You’re Marcus.”
My stomach dropped.
I had never seen him before.
“How do you know my name?”
“Marcus,” Mom whispered. “Please don’t.”
I moved between them.
At seventeen, I wasn’t small.
But standing in front of that man made me feel twelve years old again.
I didn’t care.
After Dad died, protecting Mom had become something I did without thinking.
I cooked when she couldn’t.
I worked evenings at Dawson’s Market when bills piled up.
I gave up football camp because we had only one car.
Nobody was going to hurt her after everything we had survived.
“Leave,” I said.
The stranger looked past me.
“Elaine, you didn’t tell him?”
Mom shut her eyes.
“Not yet.”
“Tell me what?”
Neither of them answered.
The stranger moved.
I shoved him.
My hands hit his chest, and it felt like pushing against a concrete wall.
“Don’t touch her.”
His expression changed.
Not to anger.
To something that almost looked like sadness.
“Son, you don’t understand.”
“Don’t call me son.”
“Marcus—”
“I said don’t.”
Then he reached toward me.
Instinct took over.
Dad’s old baseball bat was still beside the coat closet.
Mom had asked me to throw it away a dozen times after the funeral.
I never could.
It was one of the few things left that still smelled faintly like the garage where Dad used to teach me how to swing.
I grabbed it.
Mom screamed.
“Marcus!”
I raised it.
“Get out of my house.”
The stranger froze immediately.
“Put the bat down.”
“Take one more step.”
“Marcus, stop!” Mom cried.
I looked at her.
She wasn’t looking at him anymore.
She was staring at me like I was the person she feared.
That hurt more than I expected.
“Why are you scared of me?”
“I’m not.”
“Then tell him to leave.”
Her lips parted.
Nothing came out.
The stranger sighed.
“Elaine, this was a mistake.”
“Shut up,” I snapped.
“Marcus!”
Mom stepped forward.
Then she did something I would never forget.
She moved in front of him.
Not in front of me.
In front of him.
She spread her arms slightly, blocking my path.
I stared at her.
“Mom?”
“Put the bat down.”
“Move.”
“No.”
My throat tightened.
“He was cornering you.”
“He wasn’t hurting me.”
“I saw him!”
“You saw ten seconds of something you don’t understand.”
“Then explain it!”
Her eyes filled with tears.
The stranger spoke behind her.
“Tell him, Elaine.”
She spun around.
“Not now, David!”
David.
So she knew him.
Well enough to use his first name.
“How long have you known him?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
“Marcus, lower your voice.”
I almost laughed.
“You’re worried about my voice?”
I lowered the bat a few inches.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Then who is he?”
Mom looked at David.
David looked at the floor.
My heart started pounding harder.
“Who is he?”
“Marcus,” Mom whispered.
“WHO IS HE?”
“Enough!”
Her scream silenced the room.
She pointed toward the stairs.
“Go to your room.”
“I’m seventeen, Mom.”
“Then act seventeen instead of waving a bat around.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“I don’t need you to protect me!”
The words landed like a punch.
I slowly lowered the bat.
Mom’s expression changed immediately.
“Marcus, I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.”
“No.”
“You did.”
For two years she had told me we were a team.
For two years I had believed I was helping hold our family together.
Now she was standing between me and a stranger as if I were destroying it.
“You trust him?”
“It isn’t about trust.”
“You’re standing in front of him.”
“Because I know he won’t hurt me.”
“And you think I will?”
She didn’t answer quickly enough.
That silence destroyed something inside me.
“You choose him over me?”
Her face crumpled.
“No.”
“Then move.”
“I can’t.”
Three words.
That was all.
I let the bat fall onto the carpet.
David stepped forward.
“Marcus, you deserve an explanation.”
Mom held up her hand.
“David, stop.”
“No. He does.”
“I said stop.”
I looked from one of them to the other.
“What are you hiding?”
Mom suddenly pointed toward the front door.
“You need to leave.”
I thought I had heard her wrong.
“What?”
“You’re angry. You’re not listening.”
“This is my house.”
Her eyes flashed.
“This is my home!”
The sentence echoed through the room.
Then she said the words that shattered me.
“If you can’t respect me under my roof, get out of my home.”
David looked stunned.
“Elaine.”
“Stay out of it.”
I stared at her.
She was crying.
But she didn’t take it back.
Slowly, I picked up my backpack.
“Okay.”
“Marcus—”
“No.”
My voice shook.
“You made yourself clear.”
I headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
I stopped with my hand on the knob.
“You stopped caring about that when you chose him.”
“That isn’t fair.”
I turned.
“Neither was burying Dad at fifteen.”
She went still.
“Neither was working until midnight because the electric company sent a shutoff notice.”
“Marcus, please.”
“Neither was believing you every time you said it was you and me against the world.”
I opened the door.
“Apparently I was the only one who meant it.”
I left.
I made it three houses before the tears came.
I hated myself for crying.
I hated Mom.
I hated David.
Mostly, I hated that some part of me still wanted her to run outside, grab me, and say she had made a mistake.
She didn’t.
I sat beneath a streetlight.
Forty-three dollars.
A nearly dead phone.
One friend across town.
That was everything I owned.
I was about to call Jordan when my phone buzzed.
UNKNOWN NUMBER.
Marcus, don’t go back into that house tonight.
I stared at the message.
Another arrived.
Your mother isn’t protecting David from you.
She is protecting YOU from what happens if David leaves.
My hands turned cold.
Then a photograph appeared.
I nearly dropped the phone.
Dad.
My father.
The man I had watched disappear into a closed coffin two years earlier.
He was standing outside a motel beside David.
Alive.
The timestamp on the photograph was six months old.
I zoomed in until the image blurred.
Same crooked nose.
Same gray jacket.
Same silver wedding ring.
“No.”
I whispered it out loud.
“No. No, no…”
My phone buzzed again.
One final message appeared.
Ask your mother what really happened the night your father “died.”
And underneath it was something worse.
A street address.
Our street address.
May you like
Followed by four words.
I’m watching the house.
