My mother, Maria Abbott, died six years ago. It was a single-car crash, the cause of which was never quite determined. Mom was in the car alone, on a winding highway heading east, about ten miles outside of Tanner Springs. No one knows why she was out there, or where she was going.

Since the accident happened in the middle of the day with no other traffic around, the police suspected drugs or alcohol as the cause at first. But the medical examiner found no trace of anything in her system. Unfortunately, neither did the mechanics who were called in to check the car for any evidence of a malfunction. The only clue as to what might have happened were a couple of sets of skid marks on the highway in the thousand feet or so before her car plunged off the road and down the cliff. Both sets of marks were determined to come from her tires. The most the police could determine was that something seemed to have alarmed her and caused her to begin driving erratically.

About a week or so after her death, Gabriel happened to overhear my father on the phone in his home office. As Gabe stood outside the closed door, he heard Dad saying to someone that he thought the Iron Spiders were behind my mother’s death. That they had run her off the road on purpose, as payback to my dad.

The Iron Spiders are a rival MC to the Lords of Carnage. Their territory butts up against the Lords’ territory to the south. Apparently my dad suspected the Spiders had targeted my mom as payback for him striking a deal with the Lords, instead of helping them to get a foothold in Tanner Springs. Of course, nothing could be proved either way. Whatever had happened on that road was a secret Mom took with her to her grave, and the Iron Spiders sure as hell weren’t talking. But my father, whether or not he was correct, would have to live with the knowledge that his shady business dealings may have killed my mother for the rest of his life.

Hearing my father’s theory about Mom’s death changed Gabriel. Not long after, he started hanging around the Lords. He prospected for the club with a dedication and determination I’d never seen him display before — in part or in whole, I knew, out of a desire for revenge against the Iron Spiders.

My brother got patched into the Lords of Carnage about a year later, and became “Angel” instead of Gabriel. But the truth about my mother’s killer or killers, if she was in fact murdered, has never come to light.

For the thousandth time in six years, I force myself to stop thinking about my mother’s death — to stop wondering how different life might be today if she’d never been killed. What would have become of all of us, if Maria Abbott was still here to be my father’s wife, and Gabe’s and my mom.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, letting it out slowly to calm myself. Then I sit up, shake my head to clear it, and go back to my job search.

Half an hour of scanning employment websites later, I see nothing I can reasonably apply to. Tanner Springs isn’t a very big town, and a lot of the jobs being advertised are for specialized jobs like a physical therapist, or a nurse’s aide, or an electrician. No jobs for a college dropout single mom whose only actual skill is pouring drinks.

I’m starting to feel kind of depressed and hopeless, but just then the music of Noah’s childish laughter floats toward me from the living room, cutting into my black thoughts.

I smile to myself at the sound, but then the reality that I have a young child to support starts a cold pit of worry forming in my stomach. I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t find something to pay the bills, and quickly. The rent over this tattoo parlor is cheap, but cheap isn’t free.

My mind starts to swirl with ever more dire “what if” scenarios. What if I can’t find a job at all? What if I have to swallow my pride and move in with my dad? What if I never manage to get back on my feet, and I end up being the town loser, the pathetic shut-in that everyone clucks about in sympathy whenever I walk by?

Enough, I tell myself sternly, and stand up. The situation might be tough, but I’m not going to accomplish anything more by tying myself in knots. I run a distracted hand through my hair, and glance at myself in the small, cracked mirror above my dresser. Then I call to Noah to get ready to go to the park, determined to give him a few hours of uninterrupted attention — even as I wonder to myself what the hell to do next.