Janie got to thinking how Connie Tullock with her fake accent acted like she was superior to her; remembered her mother on her knees cleaning Roy Tullock’s shoes. Janie thought about the pain she carried about who she was and where she belonged in this world, thought about the Tullocks keeping her money and she found herself nodding as anger bubbled in her stomach. “Let’s do it.”

“Good,” Nikki said. “Okay, there’s something we need to do.”

Emboldened with their bond and their mission, the girls decided to record the milestone. Disregarding Nikki’s ban, they went to the mall and directly to the photo booth near the main entrance. Laughing, they all jammed inside, shut the curtain, deposited the money, then did a series of poses. The booth’s mechanism hummed and ejected photo strips. They collected one for each of them.

Admiring the photos, Nikki grinned. “This is going to be historic.”

Nearly three weeks later, just after midnight, The Skull Sisters met on the corner near Nikki’s house where she was smoking. Seeing them, Nikki blew a stream of smoke and held up the vodka bottle with orange juice she’d prepared for the night.

The girls drank as they walked to the edge of town with Janie confirming that the Tullocks had left the previous day for Regina. She said she knew how to work their alarm system and could switch it off when they got there. When she’d sat for them a couple of nights before she’d unlocked a basement window in a storage room that no one seemed to use.

Hearts beating faster with every step they covered the distance across town in no time before they came to the Tullocks’ property.

They stood on a small rise overlooking the sprawling yard, the house standing before them, deserted in the darkness, glorious for all it represented. Their rage and private pain burning, they each took last gulps with Nikki finishing the bottle and tossing it.

“Let’s go,” she said.

They moved toward the house, taking the next steps that would irrevocably change their lives and release them from Eternity.

Four

Orange County, California
Present day

Where’s Carson Clark?

Emma Grant checked the time—ten minutes late. Students were often late for appointments with the school counselor but as she clicked through his file again, concern seeped into her thoughts.

Carson’s grades were slipping, jeopardizing his plan to go into the military as a way to pursue a medical degree. His parents had recently separated; his mother had been in and out of hospital fighting cancer. Fortunately, relatives lived nearby. But Carson had told Emma he was “a bit sad about my folks…sometimes it’s like, what’s the point?”

She had tried to set him up with a psychologist, just to talk. But Carson smiled that broad smile of his and said: “No thanks, I’m good.”