Read Empty Arms: A Novel for Free Online Page B

finding my secret stash hidden in a shoebox. I unscrew the cap. The sharp smell pierces my nose and rouses memories from my youth. I press the bottle to my lips. The hard taste makes me quiver and gag. Why did I ever drink this stuff? A warm feeling surges in my stomach and disseminates through my veins, reminding me. I take another sip and sift through the pile of records. The Beatles, The Doors, Led Zeppelin. At the bottom, I find Simon and Garfunkel’s
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
album and a world of memories that I spent years forgetting crashes into me like a breaker. I toss it aside and press the bottle to my lips again. I swallow hard and the tequila stings at my throat. I glance over my shoulder, and my eyes settle on the scrolling letters and flower petals on the album cover. I shouldn’t listen to it, nothing good will come of that. But now that I’ve seen it, I can’t think of anything else. I reach for it and slide the vinyl from its sleeve. A photograph falls out and flutters to my side. I pick it up and turn it over. There, in the palm of my hand, are the amber eyes that started it all.
James.
His black hair, burnt sienna skin, and dangerous smile are so familiar that I can practically smell the Paco Rabanne radiating from his skin.
    I press the bottle to my lips and close my eyes, willing the memories to stay away. But he’s all I can see, crouching in a thicket of wildflowers on the side of the road at Mr. Buckley’s farm as I came barreling down the road in Daddy’s Buick singing “All You Need Is Love” at the top of my lungs.
    “All you need is focus,” Mom snapped from the passenger seat, turning off the radio.
    “Oh please, there’s nothing out here but farmland and cornfields. How much damage could I possibly …”
    “Watch out for that boy!” Mom grabbed the steering wheel and jerked us across the double yellow.
    The sound of screeching tires caused his head to snap. A hammer was raised next to his face, which registered with surprise and then fear. He leaned into the fence as if that would’ve been any match for Daddy’s steel grill.
    “Catharine Evelyn White, pull over,” Mom hollered.
    My heart knocked in my chest as I steered the car to the shoulder. Mom stormed around the front of the car and tore open my door. “Out.”
    “Come on, nothing even happened.”
    “Now.”
    Reluctantly, I climbed out of the car and walked around the back of it. The boy, who’d already continued hammering at the fence, glanced over his shoulder.
    “You okay?” I called.
    “Fine.”
    “Sorry. I didn’t see you there.”
    He stood up and brushed the dirt off his knees. He was tall with broad shoulders, and his skin was as tan as leather. “No worries. You just caught me off guard.” He shielded his eyes from the sun, revealing labor-strong arms.
    “What are you doing out here anyway?”
    “Fixing my uncle’s fence. We’re trying to keep the foxes out. And the Buicks.”
    I bit my grin. “I didn’t know Mr. Buckley had any relatives.” The Buckleys never had any children, and Mrs. Buckley had died two summers earlier. No one knew exactly how she died. Mom said it was breast cancer, but there were rumors that he butchered her like one of his pigs. It was the summer before I started high school, the same summer Jim Morrison turned up dead in his bathtub, so our imaginations ran wild with conspiracy theories. There was never a funeral for Mrs. Buckley, which only made the rumors worse. As if the whole thing wasn’t creepy enough, Mom dragged me over to his house every week and made me help sweep his floors, scrub the hard water stains out of his toilet, and wash his overalls while she cooked him a week’s worth of dinners. From the windows, I could see him trudging around the farm, carrying buckets and rakes and talking to himself. “It’s the Christian thing to do,” she’d say whenever I complained about it. But I’d come home and tell Angela about the gaping space in his