The Night of Many Endings by Melissa Payne EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author: Melissa Payne
- Language: English
- Formats: PDF / EPUB
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Genre: Friendship Fiction
- Price: Free
- File Size: 2 MB
- Publish Date: October 19, 2021
NORA
Nora Martinez stood in an empty parking lot on the edge of town, with its
sun-burned asphalt rippled and cracked, weeds clawing up from the earth like
zombified hands from a grave. She held a shopping bag of food in her hands,
her nerves an electric tangle that poked against her skin.
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The last she’d heard, her brother may have been couch-surfing with
friends in Denver sometime last year. She only knew this through his loose
collection of friends. The ones who’d partied with him in their twenties but
who were able to stop when it was time to grow up. It hadn’t taken long for
Mario to grow apart from them, occasionally showing up for help or a place
to sleep when he was more sober than not. And they took him in every time,
motivated by guilt over anything else.
Nora understood guilt and how it had long arms that circled and
squeezed and made it hard to breathe. But she also knew that guilt had a
purpose too. And it was a driving force that shaped her life, gave it dimension
and meaning. She had survived the accident, but in many ways, Mario had
not.
The late-afternoon sun was a buttery yellow. In its warmth, even the
shattered windows and broken bay doors of the old factory seemed less sad.
But then, like it does in early spring, the light retreated when the sun slipped
behind the trees, and the abandoned factory that rose before her became what
it was—a rusted blight against the easy green of the pine trees and the
angular peaks of the mountains.
She was here because of what Nonnie had said during a game of
checkers about the homeless man who’d set up camp out by the old factory.
Nora volunteered at the shelter once or twice a week, preparing food or
setting up cots and sometimes just hanging out. She’d become a fixture over
the years, and many of the regulars were comfortable with her. Nonnie was in
her midfifties, with a pronounced lisp due to her two missing front teeth that,
she’d once told Nora, had been punched out by a man, and why she’d rather
be homeless than live with him for another damn minute. She had said this
with a lift of her chin and a hardness in her eyes, and Nora had agreed. It had
been a very brave thing indeed to leave him.
She felt comfortable talking to someone like Nonnie about Mario; she
was one of the few people Nora had told about him who understood and
didn’t judge or tell her what she should or shouldn’t do.
Nonnie had jumped two of Nora’s checkers when she casually
mentioned the man she’d seen, said he’d had a really bad limp. Doesn’t your
brother have a bad limp?
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