“Bash read it?” I gulped, feeling ickier by the moment. I wrapped my arms around my middle, hating the tinge of betrayal suddenly coating my skin.
“Yes, but it was to protect you. He feels like he failed you, that he somehow brought Atlas back into your life. He needed to feel prepared. He wants to fight all your demons. Fee, I’m so sorry. I can see how upset you are. Please, please understand it wasn’t to snoop. It was to make sure we had your back. That if your parents ever popped out of the woodwork, you wouldn’t have to face them alone.”
“I get it. I mean, I understand where you’re coming from, but it doesn’t make me feel much better about the situation. I would like to see the file, know what you all found, and what sort of life you’ve determined I have from it.”
“Fee, no, it’s not like that at all,” Charlie said, horrified.
“So you’re saying you don’t have a story in your mind of the life I had, based on what you read in there? That you haven’t made assumptions by stringing together bits of information Keys found, rather than asking me directly?” I saw the tears pooling in Charlie’s eyes, and that only made me angrier.
Always the conflict avoider, I did my best to shut down my emotions. Lock them up until I was alone, safe to release them. I sighed as I looked up into Charlie’s anxious face.
“I need some time to digest this. Can you please have someone bring me the file so I can read it tonight? Then we can talk over the weekend?” I asked.
“You want me to leave? What about the movie…?” she asked, her voice watery.
“I can’t really focus on a movie right now, Charlie,” I snapped before mentally shaking myself. Bracing, I spoke in a calmer voice.
“Please, can you ask someone to bring me the file? I just need some time alone with that.” She nodded solemnly before getting up and heading toward the bag she had dumped in the entryway.
Pulling out a manilla envelope, she passed it over to me. She stood there, unsure, as I felt the weight of the folder in my hand.
“I’ll call you, okay?” I said as she hovered over me nervously. At that moment, I needed her to leave. I needed time alone with the hurt festering inside of me.
“I love you, Fee. I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you,” she sputtered out before grabbing her jacket and leaving.
Knowing Bash would probably try to reach me once Charlie reported back, I turned my phone off and locked the door. Heading into my bedroom, I wandered around, unseeing, mechanically stripping out of my clothes before pulling on an old night shirt I had grabbed from my drawer.
It was worn and soft, providing some semblance of comfort at that moment, when I felt so unsure of everything. Pulling on some thick socks, I stood next to the bed, debating climbing in.
Part of me wanted to crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head, and forget about everything that was troubling me. I knew sleep wouldn’t find me, not with the whirl of concerns and questions spiraling through me. So I gave in to the terrible need to know what was written on those papers.
I slid down next to my bed until I was sitting on the floor beside the nightstand, knees pulled up to my chest, one arm wrapped around myself. The folder was pointed at my feet, taunting me.
Under the dim light from the table lamp, I pulled the documents out and took a deep breath. With a detachment that was starting to feel almost too real, I began the clinical process of reading about my parents and my childhood from someone else’s perspective.
Multiple arrests; Drugs, DWI, Prostitution, Theft—the list went on and on. Followed by CPS reports, broken bail bonds, evictions, and multiple complaints from neighbors, residents, basically anyone who came in contact with my family. Pages upon pages detailed what were just everyday memories from my childhood.
When I was young, I had my suspicions about what my mother did for work—particularly when they were low on drugs. But I had tried to ignore the things people said around town. Once I was older, though, there was no way to deny it. Not when my mother regularly kicked me out of the trailer because a “friend” was stopping by.
The men never stayed more than an hour. The number of times CPS was called was surprising. I knew about many, but not all, and since I was never taken out of my parents’ custody, I was not sure what good they did anyway.
My hospital visits were documented, too, but I had been trained well at that point. Dislocated shoulder, concussion, ruptured eardrum, as well as others were all in there. Seeing them easily written away as bicycle accidents and a fall down the stairs made my blood boil. The only thing we had on wheels was the trailer we lived in. If anyone had done even a cursory investigation, they would have realized it was all bullshit.
Subconsciously, I rubbed a hand over my ear, remembering the blow my mother landed during a fight over something I couldn’t even remember anymore. We had been in the kitchen, and she grabbed my head and slammed it into a cabinet. Thenext day was a blur, but the memory of the buzzing in my ears aggravating my already throbbing head stayed with me.
I vaguely remembered falling asleep during a class before I jumped up from the desk, startled by the bell. The quick motion combined with what I later learned was a concussion had caused me to pass out in the middle of the classroom. It was the only reason I wound up in the hospital at all.
There was nothing about Jackson in there other than the date he joined the Army, but there were updates on both my mother and father. Since I had left, my parents had only spiraled down further. They were arrested for selling and distributing drugs multiple times. They had debts with several banks, businesses, and credit cards.
There were recent mug shots for both, with my mother looking particularly rough. At her last prostitution arrest, she looked gaunt and ragged. Her eyes were vacant and sunken in, the only color on her face being the garish lipstick applied in thick layers. She looked different than I remembered. Nearly skeletal, my mother had withered away over the past decade.
The version of her in my head, frozen in time as seen from the eyes of a seventeen-year-old, was filled with almost inhuman strength. Her health was already on the decline back then, never weighing more than 100 lbs soaking wet. I could remember her once-youthful beauty being visibly diminished as I grew up, a tooth or clump of hair at a time.
What she lacked in physicality, she made up for in manic energy. She seemed so powerful back then, erratic, unpredictable, and strong. She was like a rattlesnake; you didn’t know when she was gonna strike, and she kept you on your toes either way. Staring at me from the photo in my hands, though, she was nothing more than bones, held together by pockmarked skin and box-dyed hair.
My father wasn’t looking much better. Whatever hair he had left migrated from his head and merged into patches on his chest and face. There was a yellow tint to him; cigarette and beer-stained teeth and nails. Even his skin looked sallow. There wasn’t a sponge strong enough in the world to clean him.
The dirt and grime was so embedded in his skin that it was permanently tattooed over his distorted frame. He looked oddly thin, yet bloated at the same time. His stomach bulge was visible from under the stained T-shirt he was wearing in his mug shot, his tattered flannel nearly brown with age.
