Frost officially releases November 1. To read Chapter 1, click here.

Chapter 2

I return home late afternoon and Mom is in the living room, as usual. Sitting on the couch with the TV on, looking at her phone, tight white jeans, dripping in gold, full hair and makeup. Dressed to the nines, nowhere to go.

“How was it?” she asks without looking up.

“Fine. Got a quick champagne buzz but it’s gone now.”

She sighs. “Amy.”

I walk to the fridge and open it. I can no longer see her but our voices carry through the floor plan.

“It was fine, Mom.”

“Fine?”

“It was painful, Mom. You know how those things are.”

“I always rather liked them.”

I grab a tub of yogurt and close the fridge.

“I know,” I say.

“I saw the pictures on Facebook.”

I pause for a moment. “Already.”

“You looked tired.”

“Well, those broads’ll do it to you.” I have to basically yell so she can hear me in the living room.

“Amy, why don’t you come here and talk to me?”

I take my time finishing making the snack, then walk to the living room and look down on her. It’s the only part of the house that’s carpeted. The TV is comically large.

“I don’t understand,” she says, finally looking up from her phone, “why you insist on being miserable.”

Is it every day we do this? It seems like every day. Accusations, hypocrisy. The insistence on imparting knowledge by someone who has none. It’s fine, Amy, just breathe. Control the heart rate. Don’t get pulled into it.

She continues.

“It’s your own doing, you know. Your loneliness. I don’t see why you can’t just give them a chance.”

“I met Tonya when we were fourteen,” I say. “That doesn’t strike you as a chance?”

She reclines. “It’s your mentality, Amy. You know this.”

“We don’t have a lot in common. They’re townies.”

“Pardon?”

“Townies. They never left the town grew up in.”

Mom looks back at her phone and starts scrolling. “Please remind me, daughter, where you currently reside?”

The basement. The basement is where I reside. I live in the basement of my childhood home. The basement.

It’s true Rosalee Frost is an asshole, but I deserved that comment, so I keep quiet and take it on the chin. She’s always told it like it was, and I’m certainly not in a position to call that kettle black.

“You going out tonight?” I ask, brightening my tone.

“Perhaps.” She plays with her necklace. “This town is such a bore.”

“You’re telling me,” I say, being agreeable.

Mom always has some function—a charity dinner or a private party—but they are not the kind she wants. She wants pomp and opulence; she wants gold. What she gets is the mountain version of much nicer things. What she gets is polished copper. Had we lived in Los Angeles, she would have been happy, I think, or at least unhappy about different things. But the mountain folk are beneath her, and still she goes to the parties, and afterward she complains about them, and still she remains in this town.

This reminds me of the function I just left, which hints I could be turning into my mother, which is terrifying. I shake it off.

“You certainly should go out,” she says, lying back on the couch. “There are still good men at your age.”

I sigh silently, but she senses it.

“You need a ticket out of here, Amy.”

“I’m working, Mom.”

“As a waitress.”

I turn so fast I hear the air rush by my ears, and march toward the basement door, muttering under my breath. She doesn’t try to stop me.

Asshole.

Down to my dungeon, down to my lair. It’s windowless and damp but it’s my own space and there’s booze there. The booze is what got me into trouble in the first place—not totally, but it played a leading role—and it’s also the only thing that makes living in your mother’s basement as a thirty-one-year-old woman somewhat bearable. Your classic catch-22. At the bottom of the stairs, I flip the light switch and a single overhead bulb illuminates my room. My twin bed is pushed up against the back wall, lined with stacks of winter storage bins and unused lawn ornaments. There’s a dresser that holds half my clothes; the rest are decorating the place.

I plop down on the bed as the furnace kicks on. I listen to it buzz. Running, for some reason, but I know why. Seventy-two degrees, always. She always needs seventy-two. If it ain’t seventy-two, it just won’t do! I sing it in my head in the same old voice, the Sinatra impersonation. I made it up when I was fifteen, and the first time I sang it to her, she laughed and hugged me. The second time, she scowled.

The furnace buzzes and pops off again, maintaining the careful, year-round balance of seventy-two degrees. I reach behind the headboard without looking and feel the sleek glass bottle. Dewar’s White Label, you beautiful bastard. I unscrew the cap and take a long slug. That familiar smoky velvet across my taste buds. What a day. What a damned day.

I lie back and recall my encounter with Arnold Dooley.

---

Pre-order Frost here.