Chapter 1
KYA
Ten years later
“You know, by my late-twenties, I assumed I’d have my shit together,” I mutter, squinting at the trailer I once prayed to escape. “Not be jumping back into this toxic waste dump of a mess.”
Instead, I’m standing ankle-deep in patchy gravel, dressed in funeral black, staring at the ghosts of my childhood. The March air cuts through my thick designer coat—the one and only designer thing I owned. I’d bought it to prove I’d made it out.
Fat lot of good it’s doing me now.
The place hasn’t changed. The trailer still leans to the left like it’s nursing a perpetual hangover, and still smells like stale smoke and regret, even from out here.
The wind whistles through the busted screen door, and I swear I can hear Mom’s voice, scratchy from too many cigarettes and not enough apologies.
Well, look who finally came home.
The irony isn’t lost on me. All those years I spent running from this place, building a life that was the exact opposite of everything it represented.
Clean lines, neutral colors, a carefully curated existence where everything had its place and nothing reminded me of where I came from.
And here I am, right back where I started.
Only now it’s mine whether I want it or not.
My mother—Patricia “Patty” Sullivan, serial heartbreaker and occasional karaoke queen—died in a car crash last Tuesday. I got the call from some bored state trooper who couldn’t even pronounce my name right, stumbling over the syllables like they were broken glass in his mouth.
“Kee-ah Sullivan?”
“Ky-ah,” I’d corrected.
“Kikah?”
“Ky-ah.”
“Right, well, I’m sorry to inform you, Ms. Sullivan, your mother has died.”
Sadly, it wasn’t grief or shock that hit me—it was a hollow recognition that I’d been preparing for this call for years.
Mom had been slowly killing herself with alcohol and bad choices since before I could remember.
Part of me was surprised it had taken this long.
Hearing the news felt a little like hearing the final bell of a fight that had been over long before the referee counted to ten.
The rest of his words became a blur after that until he’d told me something that had brought reality crashing back into focus.
“She had just cashed a check,” he’d added casually, like it was an afterthought. “From the state lottery. A million.”
I’d laughed. Like, full-body, are-you-kidding-me hysterical laughter that probably made the poor guy think grief had cracked me completely. Of course she won the lottery. Of course she died before spending a cent. And of course she left it all to me.
Even dead, Mom was still capable of turning my life upside down. At least this time it was in a way that might help.
I sigh and drag my suitcase up the steps, the wheels thunking hard against the warped wood.
The sound echoes across the trailer park like gunshots, and I half expect Mrs. Kowalski from next door to poke her head out and start asking questions I’m not ready to answer.
But the park is quiet, most people already settled in for the evening with their TV dinners and beer and their denial that this is where dreams come to die.
I don’t plan on staying long. Just long enough to deal with the estate, sell what I can’t stomach keeping, and figure out what the hell to do with a million dollars that feels more like blood money than a blessing.
I fish the key from my bag and unlock the door.
The second I crack it open, the smell hits me.
Rot. Mildew. Garbage.
I gag, slapping a hand over my mouth as I push the door open wider with my foot. The air inside is thick, humid, and foul, like trash left out in the sun to fester. The scent wraps around me like a clawed hand, yanking me straight back to every awful night I spent in this place.
The carpet is stained. The dishes are still in the sink. There’s a half-eaten container of Chinese food on the coffee table, furred over in green mold. And the worst part? It’s not even surprising.
I stumble back onto the porch, gulping down the fresh air. My eyes sting. My stomach churns.
“Thanks, Mom.” I mutter, praying I won’t vomit.
When the nausea passes, I lock up the trailer, toss my bag back in my car and do the only rational thing.
I go in search of a drink.
Our small town has two bars—the country club on the far side of town, and Devil’s. The country club is member invite only, which leaves me with the only dive bar in fifty miles.
I pull into the parking lot, shaking my head as I park. It seems some things don’t change.
The sign still flickers with the word “Bar” in letters that have seen better decades. There’s still a dent in the left wall from where Tommy Hendrix crashed his motorcycle into it senior year.
I sit in the car for a moment, hands gripping the steering wheel, trying to work up the courage to walk through those doors.
This is where Mom spent most of her evenings for the past thirty years, perched on a barstool, holding court with whoever would listen to her stories about the good old days when she was homecoming queen and the world was full of possibilities.
It’s also where I spent some of the longest nights of my childhood, waiting in the car for Mom to stagger out and drive us drunkenly home.
It’s where I learned to swallow my pride and my shame in equal measure, to smile politely while helping my stumbling, slurring mother to the car as half the town watched, and the other half judged from afar.
But it’s the only place that feels right tonight. The only place where I can properly grieve someone who broke my heart long before she was gone.
I push open the door, and it sticks the way it always has, scraping against the frame with a sound like fingernails on a chalkboard.
The smell hits me immediately—beer and grease from whatever passes for food in the kitchen, mixed with industrial-strength cleaner and the faint sweetness of spilled whiskey.
It’s like stepping into a time capsule, every detail exactly as I remember.
The same jukebox in the corner plays some mournful country song about lost love and second chances.
The same dartboard hangs slightly crooked on the far wall, just far enough from the pool table that no one would be injured.
The same collection of neon beer signs casting everything in shades of red and blue, like the whole place is perpetually bathed in the glow of a police siren.
I don’t expect to see Devil—the man, the myth, the leather-wrapped institution himself—behind the bar. He’s older now, grayer, the lines around his eyes deeper and more pronounced. But he’s still built like a man who bench-presses monster trucks for fun.
When he looks up and sees me, a million emotions flickering across his face. Surprise, maybe, or recognition? But his expression settles quickly into that neutral mask I remember, the one that never gave away what he was thinking.
“Well, well,” he drawls, setting down the glass he was polishing. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
“Hey, Devil,” I say, sliding onto the barstool I used to sneak onto when my mom wasn’t looking. The vinyl is cracked in the same places, held together with duct tape that’s gone gray with age. “Hit me with something strong.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Rough day?” he asks, reaching for a bottle of whiskey. The good stuff, not the rotgut he used to pour for my mother.
Guess he knows a designer coat when he sees one.
“Rough week. Rough year. Rough fucking decade, if I’m being honest.”
He pours without comment, sliding the glass across the bar with practiced ease. When the whiskey hits my throat, I close my eyes and let it burn.
“I heard about your mom,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry, kid.”
The word kid hits me harder than it should. That’s what he used to call me back then, when I was ten and thirteen, and seventeen, coming to collect my mother from whatever mess she’d gotten herself into.
I nod, not trusting my voice.
The silence stretches, while around us, the bar continues its eternal rhythm—the murmur of conversation, the crack of pool balls, the distant hum of the air conditioning that’s been on its last legs since the Clinton administration.
“You remember that night,” I say finally, “when I was sixteen? It was pouring rain, and you called to say Mom was ready to come home.”
Devil’s hands never stop moving, polishing glasses with the kind of muscle memory that comes from thirty years behind the same bar. But I see the slight pause, the way his shoulders tense just a fraction.
“Which night? There were a lot of them.”
“The night she’d been here since noon, and when I got here, she was passed out in the back booth. You were sitting with her, just… watching over her. Making sure nobody bothered her while she slept it off.”
His eyes meet mine briefly before returning to his work. “I remember.”
“You helped me get her to the car. She was dead weight, but you acted like it was nothing. Like it was just another Tuesday night.” I take another sip, smaller this time, letting the whiskey warm me from the inside out.
“You could have just let her walk herself home. Could have looked the other way. But you didn’t. ”
“Wouldn’t have been right.”
“No,” I agree. “But not everyone cared about what was right.”
Devil sets down the glass he’s been polishing and really looks at me for the first time since I walked in. His eyes are the same piercing blue I remember, the kind that seem to see straight through whatever mask you’re wearing to the truth underneath.
“Your mom was good people, Kya,” he says slowly. “She was fighting demons bigger than herself, but underneath all that pain, she was good people. And you?” His voice gets even gentler, almost fond. “You were just a kid trying to take care of someone who should have been taking care of you.”