Too Close to Home Read Online Free

up and walked to the window, flipped open the blinds to let the early morning sun in.
    “Oh God, make it go away,” Ellen said. “Jesus, Jim, shut those.”
    “Looks like another hot one,” I said, leaving the blinds open. “I was kind of hoping it might rain, then I’d have an excuse not to work today.”
    “Would it kill those people if their grass missed getting cut one week?” Ellen asked.
    “They pay for a weekly service, hon,” I said. “I’d rather work a Saturday than have to give them refunds.”
    Ellen had no comeback for that. We weren’t quite living hand-to-mouth, but neither were we willing to throw money away. And a lawn service, especially in this part of the country, was definitely a seasonal business. You made your living from spring to fall, unless you diversified by putting a blade on the front of your pickup and clearing driveways in the winter. I’d been hunting for a used blade. The winters around here could be fierce. Couple of years back, over in Oswego, they had snow up to the first-floor roofs.
    I’d only been running a lawn service for a couple of summers now, and I needed to find ways to make more money. It wasn’t exactly my dream job, and it certainly wasn’t what I wanted for myself when I was a young guy starting out, but it beat what I’d most recently left behind.
    Ellen took a breath, let out a long sigh, and threw back the covers. She reached, reflexively, as she did occasionally, for where her pack of smokes used to be on the bedside table, but she’d quit the habit years ago, and there was nothing there. “Breakfast is coming, Your Majesty,” she said. She reached down for the book on the floor and said, “I can’t believe this was a bestseller. Hard to believe a novel about wheat isn’t gripping. There’s a reason they set a lot of books in cities, you know. There are people there.
Characters
.”
    I took a couple of steps toward the bathroom, winced, put my hand on my lower back.
    “You okay?” Ellen asked.
    “Yeah, I’m fine. I did something to myself yesterday, I was holding the weed whacker and turned funny or something.”
    “You’re an old man in a young man’s game, Jim,” Ellen said, putting on her slippers and throwing on a housecoat.
    “Thanks for reminding me,” I said.
    “I don’t have to remind you. You’ve got your aching back for that.” She shuffled out of the bedroom as I went into the bathroom to shave.
    I took a look at myself in the mirror. I had some sunburn on my whiskered face. I’d been trying to remember to use sunscreen, wear a hat with a visor, but the day before, it got so hot I threw the hat in the truck at one point, and must have sweated the sunscreen clean off. I still didn’t look too bad for forty-two, and as tired as I felt, I was probably in better shape than two years ago, when I spent most of my day sitting in an air-conditioned Grand Marquis, driving around Promise Falls, opening doors for an asshole, being a glorified gofer without an ounce of self-respect. Since then, I’d lost thirty pounds, I was gaining back upper-body strength I’d lost over the last decade, and I’d never slept better in my entire life. Coming home every night dead tired had a lot to do with that. Getting up in the morning, though, that could be a challenge. Like today.
    By the time I came downstairs to the kitchen, the smell of bacon was wafting through the house and Ellen was pouring two cups of coffee. The Saturday edition of the
Promise Falls Standard
was on the kitchen table, rubber band already removed, so I could see the main headline.
    “Your old friend’s at it again,” Ellen said, cracking some eggs into a bowl.
    The headline read, “Mayor Rants at Single Moms’ Home.” And a drop headline, “Vows next time to ‘bring cookies, not toss them.’”
    “Oh Jesus,” I said. “The guy never stops.” I picked up the paper, read the first few paragraphs. Promise Falls’s mayor, Randall Finley, had burst in