Living Out Loud
by Melanie Hemry
Todd White stepped into the mobile home where he lived with his girlfriend, Jackie, and their daughter, Destiny.
Empty. That’s how the house felt.
Not temporarily, as if they had just run out to the store for ice cream. This was different.
A feeling of despair washed over him.
Todd picked up a note left for him by his daughter. Each word felt like a knockout punch. She and her mom had moved in with Jackie’s mother and stepfather, the note read.
“Mommy’s not coming back.”
The crooked letters of the child’s scrawl stripped him of his bravado.
Dropping onto the sofa, he leaned back and closed his eyes, not wanting to see the holes he’d punched in the walls.
In nine years, he’d had about 30 jobs. He had been fired or quit each of them. In all that time, he’d never brought home a paycheck. He’d snorted it. Smoked it.
Todd White was a grown man. But his life had been in a downward spiral since he was 11 years old, and his parents had called him and his siblings to the kitchen table to announce they were getting a divorce.
“Your mom doesn’t love me anymore,” his dad explained as he walked out of the house carrying a suitcase.
Todd had tried running after him, but was stopped by his mother before he could get out the door. Overcome with anger and hatred, he’d destroyed his room, breaking vinyl records and chipping the plaster off the walls.
Todd’s mother’s boss was a 32nd-degree Mason.
BVOV : 13
