Silent Pledge
The crunch of tires on gravel echoed across the unpaved parking lot as Dr. Mercy Richmond drove into the apartment complex where Odira Bagby lived with her great-granddaughter, Crystal Hollis. A bare lightbulb glowed over the small concrete front stoop at the door nearest the alley so she'd know which apartment was Odira's.
Mercy pulled as close to the steps as she could and reached over to turn up the heat in her car. The curtain at the window beside Odira's front door was open, revealing a front room with an old threadbare sofa and a straight-backed chair crammed into a ten-by-ten-foot space, along with an old TV resting on a nightstand. An off-white lace doily topped the TV. Mercy had never been here before, but she knew the sixty-six-year-old woman supported herself and seven-year-old Crystal on social security. She couldn't get a place at Sunrise Villa, the retirement apartments, because the new management didn't want children.
Before Mercy could shift the gear into Park, the front door opened and out lumbered Odira, all two hundred seventy pounds of her, with wraithlike Crystal beside her, bundled all the way to her nose in a thick quilt.
As Mercy stepped ... read full excerpt from: Silent Pledge ebook
