Chapter 89

Leighton

It’s freezing cold tonight, temps dropping low enough that it’s gotten chilly in the house. I just checked the thermostat and it reads fifty-nine. Which wouldn’t be so bad if I knew how to work the heat.

Central heat wasn’t something we had at my house. Everyone assumes moonshiners are rich, and to an extent they are, but most of them are greedy, too. And instead of doing things like giving your kids central heat, you go out and purchase a sixty-thousand-dollar truck for a teenage kid who doesn’t understand responsibility and gets put in jail a year after getting it. None of my family has a sensible bone in their body, and they suffer for it.

My grandpa yells to anyone who’ll listen that he makes moonshine because his social security isn’t enough for him to live on, when the fact of the matter is, the man’s never learned to budget a day in his life. He has no savings, and he wouldn’t know what to do with it, if he did. Same goes with my dad and brother.