Chapter 3: Good MourningMorning in the presence of a heavy smoker is a thing not easily forgotten. The sounds made are as close to a death rattle you can get without the death component. Pete heard his sister emerge from her bedroom sounding like an eighty-three-year-old coal miner with bronchial pneumonia hacking her way through a fire in a tire factory. What followed was gurgling and spitting so disturbing, Pete thought she was going to projectile vomit, or worse, it would suddenly stop and he’d have to sprint down the long hallway to somehow revive her.
He scuffed downstairs, in the disposable slippers she had also supplied, into the kitchen.
“Don’t make me sorry I bought those. Lift your damn feet.”
Didi tossed frozen fruit into a Bullet blender on the counter. Her ever-present ciga
