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Chapter 8

"Hey," Max calls. We all turn our attention to him. "It stopped raining." 

Buddy and I  look out the window. 

"Why don't we go outside? We can go climb the tree."  A smile spreads across my face. Matt and Buddy rush outside.

I fill my bowl back up with what is left of the chili, put foil on top of the lid, then stick it in the fridge. I can have the leftovers later when I get hungry again. 

Momma and Leah get to their feet and proceed to the bedroom. Letting more of that awful smell seep into the other rooms of that house. It begins to spread from the bedroom down the hall and into the living room. Even after the door to Momma and Matt's bedroom is closed it is still seeping under the crack finally driving me out of the house.

The outside air fills my lungs as I break out into a run to the tree in the front yard. We make a bet to see who can climb the highest. Buddy climbs to the top. I climb to a couple of limbs below him but Max does not go very high. He nested on a limb about six feet off the ground. A few hours later everyone walks out of the house.

Buddy's parents call him. They tell him to say goodbye to us. He does before jumping into the backseat of his parent's car. As they pull out of the driveway, I turn to look at Max. He looks thoroughly satisfied. We have never had another kid at the house before. It was actually kind of nice to hang out with somebody else for a change.

When I laid down to go to sleep that night, I had a smile on my face. That night gave me the best sleep I had in a month. Everything was quiet. No one was fighting. No yelling. No breaking of the fixtures. Just silence. 

Everything was great for about a week. After that night, Momma and Matt seemed to loosen up. It made me happy. Any opportunity to have the house quiet was a good opportunity. When the house was peaceful, it was a nice place to be.

We would all hang out in the living room. Maybe watch a movie, have fun cooking. Basically, we were just having fun hanging out as a family. When things were good, life was great. There wasn't straight fighting in the house. There were honeymoon phases in between.

There were times when things were nice and you thought that the bad was finally over then bam! They come home fighting and acting like they hate each other. Acting like they want to shoot each other for some reason. Like the other deserves to be shot.

During the honeymoon phases, we could go visit Daddy and have a fairly quiet weekend. Then we would go meet Momma and go home again. Matt would be pissed and Momma would make snappy remarks at him.