The Good Son by Carolyn Mills (free e reader txt) 📗

be in a serious relationship. I think she must have been more worried than she let on about how he would turn out. She was always saying how she thanked her lucky stars that he hadn’t kept up ties with Darius, who, after serving his sentence for drug trafficking, had wasted no time landing himself back in jail for something else.

Mom heard all the gossip about Darius and the rest of his family from her friend Lorraine, who lived just down the street from them. Darius’s older sister, Michelle, we had learned, was also in and out of trouble with the law, and her two young kids had both been put into foster care.

“Drugs,” Lorraine said, shaking her head. “If Michelle wasn’t already living at home, her parents maybe could have taken the kids, but they have their hands full enough as it is.”

The fact that Richard had an expensive condo and a pretty girlfriend in Toronto made him rank pretty high in Mom’s books. As far as she was concerned, he was a world removed from the likes of Darius and that must mean she’d done something right.

After our dinner, I made a pot of tea to go with the store-bought cookies I’d put on a plate for dessert. We took our tea and cookies to the living room and sat across from each other, my mom on the new couch and me on the matching plaid armchair.

“It’s nice,” my mom said, running her hand over the plaid pattern on the couch. “I like the colours.”

The material was a mix of blues and greys, with a thin line of green shot through some of the squares. “It was on sale,” I said.

“It’s perfect,” she said. “Fits the space nicely. Oh! Is the dog —”

I turned around to see Champ peeing on a pair of my work boots at the front door. I jumped up. “No, Champ! Don’t — ugh.” He wagged his tail, staring at me as I rushed over. “Sorry,” I muttered to my mom. “He’s still being trained.”

Mom merely raised her eyebrows, but that tiny flicker of judgement stung the same as if she’d slapped me.

CHAPTER SIX

•

I HATED MY NEW FURNITURE. The material scratched against my skin and the foam inside the cushions was so firm I may as well have been trying to plop onto a sheet of plywood every time I sat down. I covered the couch with an old throw my mom had given me, which helped with the scratchiness, but did nothing for the overall hardness. The only one who seemed to like the furniture was Champ. I often found him curled up on the chair or the couch with his chin propped on the armrest. He would fall asleep like that, with his little head tipped upward. I didn’t stop him from jumping onto the furniture; no one else was using it, so I didn’t see why he shouldn’t at least enjoy it.

I no longer barricaded him in the kitchen when I was at work since he was soon big enough to jump over the piece of wood I’d been using to block the entrance. He had full access to the house while I was gone and even though I put newspapers out for him in every room, he still peed wherever he felt like it. I got used to checking for puddles when I got home, but I still stepped in one every so often. Mostly he peed under the kitchen table, so that was considerate. My plan was to put in a doggy door, but if I didn’t install one soon, it would be too late to train Champ to use it so he could pee outside. His one saving grace in the toileting department was that he waited for me to take him outside before doing a number two. Although, if I’d been stepping in dog shit every day, I might have been a little quicker with the whole doggy door thing.

“Why don’t you put him in the spare bedroom while you’re at work?” Mom suggested. “You’re not using it for anything else. Then at least he won’t be making messes all over the house.”

“I don’t want to lock him in a little room. Besides, he likes sleeping on the couch. And maybe looking out the window.”

My spare bedroom was completely empty. I didn’t have any furniture for it, and I didn’t really see the need. If I’d had extra stuff lying around, or junk I didn’t know what to do with, I guess I would have put it in there, but I didn’t hang on to things for no reason. My whole house was a bit spartan that way.

Did I ever imagine the rooms in my house filling up with stuff? With other people’s things? Not then. Even when things got serious with Amir, and we were planning a future together, I had no plans for that spare bedroom. Although it became clear soon enough that he did.

It’s only been over the last few months that I’ve imagined anyone in that room, when Jason and I first started talking about moving in together. I have, a few times now, pictured what it would look like as Parker’s bedroom — his books scattered on the floor, his stuffed animals lined up on the bed. But back then, when Mom suggested I keep Champ locked up in that room, I’d never given any thought to it one day becoming a child’s bedroom.

IT WAS A SUNNY MARCH day after most of the snow in the backyard had melted and when spring felt tantalizingly close that I decided it was finally time to install Champ’s doggy door. I didn’t know the first thing about how to do it, but I figured it couldn’t be all that hard. I knew I had to cut out part of my back door, insert the frame of the doggy door into the opening, then screw the frame into place. All in all, it seemed