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peeling aluminum exterior, the small wooden porch that slumped on one side.
    Tyler had done his best to fix the porch, but then his mother had come home drunk and rammed her ancient Caddy into the edge and the post had buckled again. Six months of weather and the exposed wood had splintered and started to waste away.
    Tyler ignored the sick feeling in his gut and mounted the steps. When he reached for the door handle, the past rushed at him and he stalled the way he always had growing up. Hesitant to go in. Wary of what he might find on the other side. Or what he might not find. Namely an empty space, the fridge cleared out, the furniture gone—all telltale signs that his mother had taken off just like his dad.
    Because as different as Ellen Sawyer McCall claimed to be from the worthless man she’d married, Tyler feared deep down inside she was cut from the same cloth. Birds of a feather and all that.
    The knob turned, the door creaked and swung inward. True to form, she was still there, sprawled on the sofa like always, a bottle of Jack on the table next to a half-empty cup of the expensive gourmet roast coffee she always bought.
    Even if there wasn’t enough leftover cash to put food on the table or pay the electric.
    â€œMa?”
    She didn’t stir. Instead, the heavy snores of a woman who’d had way too much to drink filled the room.
    Tyler closed the door behind him and moved over to the small couch. Sliding his arms under the woman, he lifted her. The scent of whiskey and cheap menthol cigarettes filled his head and made his nostrils burn.
    â€œHey.” His mother’s eyelids fluttered open. “What are you doing here?” She’d begged him to come home numerous times on the phone, and yet it was as if he’d just walked in off the street.
    â€œI’m here to help with Cooper.”
    â€œTakes after my side, ya know. So smart, that boy. And handsome. And such a gentleman.” While Tyler was the exact opposite, which Ellen never failed to rub in his face. “He’s a Sawyer through and through, that boy.”
    â€œYou need to hit the sheets.”
    â€œBut I’m not ready yet.” She twisted, reaching for the cup on the coffee table, but Tyler had already moved her out of reach. “One more drink. A nightcap.”
    â€œYou’ve already had one too many.” He expected her to argue. She always argued, giving him the lecture that she was the mother and she could do what she wanted. But then her eyes closed and he knew she had, indeed, had one too many, and the snores started again.
    He fed her into bed the way he had so many times in the past, tucking the covers around her and making sure she had a trash can nearby just in case she was past the point of passing out and the spiked gourmet roast decided to come back up the way it had gone in.
    â€œDid you find it?” her slurred voice asked him a split second before he closed the bedroom door.
    â€œNot yet, but he’ll turn up.”
    â€œâ€™Cause I can’t sleep without it,” she murmured and he knew then that she wasn’t talking about Cooper. “I can’t sleep without my face mask. These damn shades aren’t worth a penny. They’re cheap. I told your daddy to buy the nice ones like I had back at home, but he said these would do just as well. Why, the man wouldn’t know quality if it jumped up and bit him…” She rambled on a few more seconds about his dad’s failure to keep her in the lifestyle she’d been accustomed to. She’d been a Sawyer. Accustomed to the finer things in life. And she’d sacrificed it all for a man. For love. And she’d never regretted it, not one single day. Or so she repeatedly told anyone who would listen.
    But when the Jack started talking, the optimism that Waylon McCall would come running back and do right by his family faded, and the uncertainty leaked out. The bitterness.
    â€œâ€¦ ruined