I kissed the tip of her finger and nestled my chin against her shoulder. Then, before anything else had the chance to keep me awake, I fell soundly asleep to the hush of her breathing.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DAVID
My first day as assistant manager was a lot like any other day. Except my name tag read a different title, and when I walked into work, Howard told me I could roll my sleeves up if I’d like.
“You’re sure?” I asked, startled by the abrupt change in tune, even as I was already shoving my long sleeves up toward my elbows.
“Soldier, it’s nearly eighty degrees out there today, and it’s only going to get hotter. Wear a T-shirt tomorrow.”
He didn’t even bat an eye at the tattoos blanketing my arms—random works of both decent and amateurish art I’d acquired before and during prison—and I couldn’t tell if he never truly gave a crap about them or if he’d just gotten used to the idea. Either way, I was grateful to finally cool off, even as his wife came walking into the store, surprised to find me showing off my ink.
“Has Howard seen this yet?” Mayor Fischer asked, scowling until her face looked like a pug’s.
“Yeah, he just gave me the okay,” I said, hauling a box of canned peas onto my shoulder and heading in the direction of aisle four.
Connie followed. “Well, you do know that if anyone finds your … artwork offensive, you will have to cover up again. You understand this, yes? As assistant manager, you have a certain image to uphold, and if you cannot or refuse—”
“Mayor,” I interjected lightly, turning to face her, “I understand.”
Her lips pursed until they resembled a prune as she studied me with wary eyes. Then, she nodded once. “Glad to hear it.” With that, she turned on her heel and walked away like a woman on a mission—as always.
And then the morning dragged by, even as I kept busy sweeping the floor and stocking the shelves and helping Mrs. Montgomery read the labels on four different boxes of salted crackers. All I could think about was getting down to the library on my lunch break and searching through the newspaper articles on file, hoping I could find any clue about my mother’s history. Wild scenarios filled my head as the time passed, everything from bank robbery to arson to money laundering to grand theft auto, even if none of them made sense.
But then again, not much did.
Because how had I not known? How had I not had any kind of inkling that she might have a police record?
Suddenly, everything—my life, my history, my family—felt like a lie before I even knew what the lie might be, and as soon as the clock chimed lunchtime, I told Howard that I might be a little longer than usual and I’d work later if need be to make up for it.
“Whatever you need to do,” he said with a friendly smile before I ran out the door and headed down the street to the library to find my girlfriend and whatever secrets lurked in my family’s past.
***
Ray loomed over my shoulder as I searched through archives and the internet on one of the library’s computers. She held a cup of coffee in hand and took a sip before offering it to me.
“Thanks,” I muttered, keeping my eyes on the screen as I gulped it down, then winced at how sweet she liked it to be. There had to be an entire bag of sugar in that mug. “Jesus, your teeth are gonna rot out of your head.”
She giggled, taking the cup back and clutching it right to her chest, protecting it as a mother would her child. “That’s what my mom always says.”
“Yeah, well, she’s not wrong.” I sucked at my teeth. “I feel like my whole mouth was just sandblasted.”
“Oh, stop. It’s not that bad.”
“Sure … if you don’t mind chewing your coffee.” I shot a teasing glance over my shoulder.
Ray only laughed before taking a hearty sip and humming with dramatic satisfaction.
Shaking my head, I returned my attention to the computer screen and scrolled through the articles for anything related to a woman named Diane Mason. Anything mentioning drugs. Anything that might point me in the right direction. And even though a lot came up in the search, none of it had anything to do with my mother, and my time was running out before I had to get back to the store.
“Like finding a needle in a haystack,” I grumbled as Ray took a seat on my lap. I wrapped my arm around her and sighed, pressing my cheek to her shoulder. “I should’ve come by later when I had more time.”
She frowned sympathetically. “I didn’t think it would be so—wait, what’s that?”
“What’s what?”
Ray pointed at the screen. “Right there.”
“Man dies in accident. Woman arrested on the scene,” I muttered, reading the headline, then scrolled down further to see a picture of—you guessed it—my mother. “Well, holy shit, this has to be it.”
“Your mom is gorgeous,” Ray said, gawking at the picture of a much younger version of Diane Mason, one I used to know. The one I’d called Mommy, the one I’d once thought walked on water. “God, you look so much like her.”
“Fantastic,” I grumbled bitterly, frowning as I read.
A twenty-four-year-old man was killed in a car accident yesterday at the corner of Lake and Shaw. Police say David Stratton was driving the car when it lost control and struck a tree. Also in the car was his girlfriend, Diane Mason （24）， who survived the accident but sustained minor injuries. Controlled substances were found in the vehicle following the crash, and Mason was arrested at the scene. Hours later, she was released from police custody after no drugs were found in her system. Legal action will not be pursued.
“Wow,” Ray uttered quietly once we were both finished reading. “Her boyfriend was killed. That’s so sad.”
“Yeah …”
I tried to resist feeling any kind of empathy toward my mother, but it was hard as I looked at the grainy picture of the totaled car after the wreck that had taken the life of her significant other. She had suffered a major loss, and I hadn’t known about it until now. Was that what had sent her down a path of destruction? Could grief have been the culprit?
I sucked in a breath of heavy air, allowing that familiar ache to gnaw away at my heart again, until their ages and the date on the article sank in.
“I was six,” I said, thinking out loud. “This was right before Christmas. My grandparents told me she had just gone on one of her little trips, which I eventually assumed meant rehab. But …” I wiped a hand over my mouth and shook my head. “She’d been in an accident, arrested, and then …”
“Maybe she went to rehab after that,” Ray offered, shrugging.
“Yeah, probably. But she was in a freakin’ fatal car crash.” I scoffed incredulously. “How the hell did they not say anything to me? I mean, why—”
“You were a little kid, Soldier. Maybe … maybe they didn’t want you to be afraid. You said they always protected you from the stuff she was up to, so obviously, they wanted to protect you from this too.”
I knew she was right. God, logic told me that she was. Hadn’t I been saying it all along? But this newfound knowledge, the reality that my mother had been in a fatal accident when I was six years old, made the thought of simple protection seem so far-fetched and absurd and … fuck, it was so cruel.