“Ugh!” Dornan groans. “You’re killing me, princess. I gotta run. The boys are waiting for me. I’ll see you in a day or two.”
I nod, trying to appear sad, and I yelp as he slaps my ass again.
“Watch her,” he says, stabbing Jase’s chest with his finger. “I’m out.”
He leaves without looking back, and I relax immediately.
“Happy that he’s gone?” Jase asks darkly.
I had forgotten that he was there for a moment. Christ. I really need to keep my wits about me.
“I’m hungry,” I explain. “All the man wants to do is fuck, and I haven’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday.”
He gives me a look so withering, it takes all of my will not to break down and tell him who I really am. I didn’t anticipate having to be in the same room as him, let alone be babysat by him. Being judged like a common whore by him.
Jase strides over to the open window that separates the kitchen from the dining room. “Hey, Carol, you there?” he asks, in a voice more like a teddy bear’s than the asshole tone he’s been using with me.
Before I can think, a woman pops her head around the corner of the kitchen doorway, smiling.
“Hey, Jase,” she says, ruffling his hair. I swallow hard and look for an escape that doesn’t exist.
“Sammi here missed breakfast. Do you think we could grab some cereal or something from the pantry?”
Carol wipes her hands on a dishrag and smiles, looking straight at me. I freeze like a deer in headlights.
She is only forty but looks closer to fifty, a life of excess and violence written in each deep line that draws out from underneath her huge green eyes. Her dark blonde hair sits atop her head in a messy French bun, peppered with fine slivers of grey.
“Hello, Sammi,” Carol says, extending her hand. “You must be new here. I can fix you anything – eggs? Toast?”
“Cereal is fine,” I squeak as I shake my mother’s hand.
Ten
My mother sold me out for a bag of blow.
There.
I said it.
She was a terrible mother, a liar and a whore and a thief. Falling pregnant with me was an accident – she was barely seventeen and had just met my father.
Growing up, my father was like a mother to me as well. And my mother, when she was around, was like a distant older sister who lashed out at me when I did something wrong, and yelled at me whenever I cried. I learned from a very early age never to cry. I perfected my poker face at three years old, the same age I learned how to climb out of my own cot, how to pull up a chair and fix myself breakfast how to call 911 when my mother overdosed on heroin in the bath.
She was a horrid mother, but she was still my mother, and I loved her more than anything.
The day Dornan took me – the day I “died” – was like any other day. My father was still at work at the factory; my mother was tearing at her skin, out of cash and out of meth.
Then Uncle Dornan knocked at the door, flanked by Chad and Maxi. I was a streetwise kid. I’d grown up in the life, in the club. I could see the guns bulging at their waistbands, concealed under thin shirts and patched leather jackets.
My mother answered the door. I was in the kitchen, and heard voices. They were looking for my father, was he home?
When my mother told him that my father was still at work, Dornan burst in, apparently unsatisfied with her answer.
Then his eyes landed on me, and a shit-eating grin grew on his beard-stubbled face.
“You’d better come with us, Juliette,” he said, his voice like sharp gravel scraping against my bare skin.
I looked at my mother, alarmed. Something wasn’t right.
“Why?” my mother asked, picking at her arm like she did when she was hanging for a fix.
Dornan withdrew a knotted baggie of light brown powder from inside his jacket and held it in front of her. Heroin.
“Relax, darlin’,” he said, grinning. I felt my skin prickle as my heart thudded faster. “We’ll have you back here in a few hours.”
My mother looked uncertain. “Why do you need Julie?” she asked. She always called me Julie. Everyone else called me Julz.
Except Dornan. He liked to use my full name.
Dornan shook the baggie. “We just need her to help us find something, Carol. It’s a quick in-and-out job. Nothing untoward.”
My mother bit her lip and looked from Dornan, to me, to the baggie.
“I don’t feel well,” I said to my mother, backing away. “I don’t want to go.”
Dornan stepped closer to me, towering over my five-feet-tall frame. “It’s important, Juliette,” he said, his smile vanishing. “Jason’s waiting for you.”
He grabbed my elbow, steering me towards the front door.
“Mom,” I protested.
Dornan dropped the bag into her open palm and smiled victoriously. “You’re a good woman, Carol. I knew you’d help us.”
“Have her home for dinner,” my mother said, turning and fleeing to the kitchen with her drugs.
Dornan tugged me more forcefully. “Mom!” I yelled. She didn’t answer. She ignored my pleading as three men dragged me out of my house and ordered me into the backseat of their car, the engine still running.
“Where are we going?” I asked them, annoyed and upset.
Nobody answered. Dornan didn’t make eye contact with me, just glanced up and down our street before slamming my door shut. A moment later, he was in the driver’s seat, and activated the central locking. I was trapped.
I rested my head against my window and stared at my house for what would be the last time.
I watched my mother through the open curtains as Dornan reversed the car out of our driveway. She looked completely engrossed as she drew up cloudy liquid into a syringe.
She didn’t even look up from fixing her hit as her only daughter was driven to her death.
I sit in stunned silence, shoveling Cheerios into my mouth, thankful that as the grains melt on my tongue, they are washing away the taste of Dornan’s parting kiss.
I am faltering.
I don’t know if I can do this.
Not now that I have seen my own mother stare through me as if I were a complete stranger.
She thinks I’m dead. I am experiencing a type of mourning for her, one that I never expected to feel. She is a traitor, after all. I think she knew what Dornan was planning to do to my father, but she didn’t care. She didn’t leave, or warn my father or me. No, instead she ran to Dornan, begging for money for her meth habit, always begging for money, and even when I supposedly died at his hands, she still didn’t leave this godforsaken place.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Jase says quietly, swinging back on his chair so that only the rear two legs are touching the ground.
I drop my spoon into my milky bowl and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Am I going to get a running commentary the entire time your father is gone?” I ask, pushing my bowl away. “Because I’d rather not.”
He seems surprised at my sudden turn in mood, and, to be honest, so am I. I thought screwing Dornan and having him stare at me like a sick puppy was going to be the most difficult part of this whole thing.