Excerpt from Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

These past two months, his wife had asked very few questions.

She'd accepted his newfound interest in a relationship with his mother as a developmental fact of life, an inevitability she'd seen coming long before he had. She saw nothing nefarious in his announcing, out of nowhere, that he wanted to spend more time with her, look after her more if he could. Twice, she'd actually called it sweet. Tonight, her hair up in a thin ponytail, gold drop earrings swinging every time she laughed or nodded, she reveled in hearing Bell tell stories of Darren as a boy—how she put powdered red pepper on his hands while he slept to stop him from sucking his thumb (Teeth woulda been bucked from here to Dallas if it weren't for me); how she tied a string from her front door to Darren's first loose tooth to yank the little sucker clean. He didn't know why her stories were all teeth-related. But what did it matter? His mother hadn't raised him and didn't have the love or trust of the men who had, his uncles William and Clayton. It was, all of it, a fiction invented between the soup and the main course. Except one story she told about standing behind the chain-link fence outside the playground of his elementary school watching her son play red light, green light and how she'd cried later when Clayton got wind of it and told the principal to bar her from the grounds. "Is that true?" Darren asked. When his mother mumbled, "Yes," he felt a warmth spread in his throat. His tongue grew useless, and he couldn't think of a single thing to say. By dessert, Lisa was quite tipsy. Skin damp and eyes bright and glassy, she looked at him and asked, "Darren, why am I just now getting to know your mother?"

Bell let out a tiny, bark-like laugh. "What a good question, Darren. Why is your wife just now getting to know me?" she said, using a tone that Lisa was too drunk to realize was openly mocking the way her words came out, individually wrapped, consonants and vowels sharply defined, every sound neatly in its place, unlike the slushy speech that poured out of Bell's mouth. She gave her son a little smile as she waited for him to explain himself to his wife. And when she was met with nothing but raw silence, she reached for the wine bottle on the other side of the table and poured the last thimbleful before rolling her grenade onto the elegantly dressed table, saying, apropos of nothing, what a shame it was that the San Jacinto County Sheriff's Department had never found the little .38 that killed Ronnie Malvo—the reason Mack still wasn't cleared in that homicide—that the thing could be anywhere, but surely someone knew where it was. Why, it would only take a phone call to Mr. Frank Vaughn to solve the crime. She looked at Darren, making sure he understood she knew the name of the San Jacinto County district attorney, as she snapped her linen napkin across the lap of her Lee jeans. Darren gave her a shake of his head, a flaccid warning. He hadn't told anyone that his mother had found the suspected murder weapon on the Mathews property in Camilla, that she had it in her possession—that she had him by the balls.

"What?" Lisa said, pressing her finger against chocolate crumbs on her plate and licking them off. She had a tiny stain on her silk blouse—a drop of cherry juice from the Black Forest cake. She was glowing still, and Darren felt protective of her and the peace that had settled over their marriage. His mother would destroy it if he let her. It wasn't enough to threaten his career as a Texas Ranger; Bell Callis wanted his marriage hanging by a string too.

He hadn't slept that night.

But he'd gotten up the next morning and done it all over again.

Morning, Mama, you need anything? Just thinking about you.

For weeks and weeks, he hadn't stopped thinking about her—which was all she really wanted, he told himself. The threat could be contained. He suspected the .38 lay somewhere inside the four-hundred-and-seventy-five-square-foot trailer she called home, and of course it had occurred to him to storm in one day and simply snatch it from her. But his mother had the speed and temperament of a feral cat. Any sudden moves, and she would attack. She'd make him pay for robbing her of the new authority she held. He knew her too well. He told himself he had it all under control, a lie that put him to bed at night. Until it didn't.

Excerpted from Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke. Copyright © 2019 by Attica Locke. Excerpted by permission of Mulholland. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.