Vengeance Road Read Online Free

with the optimism that had blossomed when the Second World War ended. Now, with its blistering paint, missing shingles and sagging front porch, it looked more like a tomb for hope.
    It sat among the boarded-up houses near a vacant lot where several old men leaned against an eviscerated Pinto and passed around a bottle wrapped in a paper bag.
    Memories of his sister rushed at him before he turnedhis attention back to the story and the house, eyeing it intensely as he drove by. His hopes lifted when he saw a woman in the backyard.
    This time he parked out of sight down the block and approached the house from a different street, coming to the back first, where he saw a woman in her fifties, tending a flower garden near the rickety back porch.
    â€œCatherine Field?”
    She turned to him, the toll of a hard life evident in the lines that had woven despair on her face. Her red-rimmed eyes stared helplessly at him.
    â€œYou are Catherine Field, Bernice Hogan’s foster mom?”
    â€œWho are you?”
    â€œSorry,” Gannon fished for his photo ID. “Jack Gannon, a reporter for the Buffalo Sentinel .”
    As if cued, breezes curled pages of the News and the Sentinel that were on a small table between two chairs. Also on the table: a glass and a bottle of whiskey that was half-empty.
    â€œI’ve been trying to reach you,” he said.
    â€œI was burying my daughter.”
    â€œI’m sorry. My condolences. There was no notice of the arrangements.”
    â€œWe wanted to keep it private. My brother had a plot, a small cemetery on a hill overlooking an apple orchard.”
    â€œWhere is it?”
    â€œI don’t want to say.”
    â€œI understand. May I talk to you about Bernice?”
    â€œYou can try, I’m not in good shape.”
    She invited him to sit on the porch. Gannon declined a drink. Catherine poured one for herself, looked at her small garden and spoke softly. She told him that Bernice’s mother was a child, fourteen years old, when she gave her up for adoption.
    But Bernice was never adopted. Instead, she was bounced through the system. Catherine and her husband, Raife, a carpenter, became Bernice’s foster parents when Bernice was eleven. By then Bernice was aware that she’d been given up for adoption.
    â€œI loved her and always felt like her mom, but she chose to call me Catherine, never Mom. I think it was her way of emotionally protecting herself because she’d had so many ‘moms.’ No one could ever really be her mother.”
    Not long after they got Bernice, Raife started gambling, and drinking. He became violent and abused Bernice and Catherine before she left him.
    â€œI’ll spend my life regretting that I didn’t do more to protect her.”
    Catherine considered her glass then sipped from it.
    â€œShe was such a bright girl. Always reading. I was so pleased when she left home to get her own apartment and start college. So proud. She was on her way. She volunteered at a hospice in Niagara Falls. I just knew she was going to make it. Then the bad thing happened.”
    â€œHer friends told me about the party.”
    â€œThey think someone slipped something in her drink. She never overcame it. She turned to drugs to deal with it. She wouldn’t talk to me or anyone, but I heard that when she ran up drug debts, she turned to the street.”
    Tears rolled down Catherine’s face.
    â€œWhen was the last time you saw, or talked, to her?”
    Catherine wiped her tears and sipped from her glass.
    â€œShe called me about a month ago and said she was going to try to get clean, try to get off the street. Some friends were trying to help her.”
    â€œDid she say who those friends were?”
    Catherine shook her head.
    â€œYou can’t print anything I’ve just told you.”
    â€œBut I’m researching your daughter’s death for a news story. I have to.”
    â€œNo. You can’t print