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Back Heaven, My Home Save as PDF
Chapters (40)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Marion County
  7. Part One
  8. 1.
  9. 2.
  10. 3.
  11. 4.
  12. Part Two
  13. 5.
  14. 6.
  15. 7.
  16. 8.
  17. 9.
  18. Part Three
  19. 10.
  20. 11.
  21. 12.
  22. 13.
  23. 14.
  24. 15.
  25. 16.
  26. Part Four
  27. 17.
  28. 18.
  29. 19.
  30. 20.
  31. 21.
  32. 22.
  33. 23.
  34. 24.
  35. Camilla
  36. Acknowledgments
  37. Discover More
  38. About the Author
  39. Also by Attica Locke
  40. Praise for Attica Locke’s

The hotel was her family legacy. And Bill’s too, if she could get him to turn his life around. “He was a good kid,” she said. “I didn’t see the signs; what can I say? One day he’s friends with everybody, then he gets into a fight with a black boy at school, and suddenly I hear the n-word a lot more, suddenly he starts socializing more with boys who don’t like the blacks. Then the little things—egging houses in the black part of town, kid stuff, you know. Then refusing to let Mary cook his food. I saw all of it happening; I just didn’t know it would lead where it did. It’s like I looked up one day and my sweet son had tattoos on his arms and a mean streak a mile long. And then he stopped coming home altogether, started hanging with some real bad guys, some down the highway in Marshall, some right here in Jefferson.”

Darren told her, “Gil Thomason might be one of those bad guys.”

“Wannabe, at least,” the sheriff said.

Rosemary spit out her assessment: “White trash.”

“Your son seems to think Gil might have hurt Levi in some way.”

She looked down at her hands, two fists in her lap. She unclenched them and then smoothed a few wrinkles in her dress. “I wouldn’t doubt it.”

Something shifted in that moment.

Quinn felt it too. He caught Darren’s eye.

Things were looking bad for the kid.

Marnie and Gil Thomason had sworn he was with his grandmother while refusing to let the sheriff and his men search their trailer. And here was Rosemary saying she hadn’t seen her grandson in weeks. “I know that must sound terribly cold to you,” Rosemary said. “But the truth is, I never got to know Levi. Marnie rarely allows us to spend time together. I don’t even know how well he remembers his father. He was just a pup when Bill got himself in trouble. The hope has always been that once Bill got out, the two of them could become father and son for real, and I could be a real grandmother. But maybe the State of Texas has got its way of punishing Bill for what he’s done, and God’s got other ideas.” Darren saw her eyes water, but the tears, he felt, were for the loss of the dream she couldn’t fulfill for her son rather than for the nine-year-old who was still missing. Wherever Levi King was, he was on his own.

7.

7.