“I cried so much,” she whispers, “because he came into this world… just to suffer with me.”
Something shifts in my chest. I don’t even know what to call it. A strange, uncomfortable ache—like grief for a past I never lived, for a boy I didn’t know back then but would die to protect now.
“I tried to be good for him,” she says, brushing the back of her hand against her cheek. “Even when postpartum was chewing me up from the inside, even when I couldn’t get out ofbed some mornings, I still got up. I worked part-time at a diner. Long-ass drive from here, shit pay, rude customers, but I did it. For him.”
She pauses, swallows, and I can tell the next part tastes bitter in her throat.
“When he turned three… that’s when I met Hunter. That’s when everything started to change.”
I shift in the chair, the air growing thicker around us.
“I used to sleep with men for money,” she says flatly. “Hunter was one of them. Then he became something more. He introduced me to other ways to make cash. Fast money. Dirty money. Drugs.”
Her hand goes to her hair, fingers pushing through the strands like she’s trying to stay grounded.
“I didn’t want to… but I couldn’t resist. Lucas was growing fast; he needed to go to school. I had to pay bills. I was drowning. Selling drugs became a way out.”
She laughs, short and humorless.
“And most times… I took Lucas with me, I’d put the stuff in his school backpack,” she says, eyes flicking to mine, desperate for understanding. “People or the police don’t look twice at a child’s bag. Especially not when the kid’s crying or clinging to his mom.”
My stomach twists.
She closes her eyes briefly, then opens them again, her voice cracking as she continues.
“I broke up with Hunter after four years of being together. We were toxic as hell, but I stayed that long. When it ended, I didn’t stop. I kept selling. It paid for food. It bought clothes. Lucas got anything he wanted.”
I almost scoff at that.
“And when he turned twelve,” she says, letting out a long, brittle breath, “he started selling them on his own.”
I don’t even realize my jaw is clenched until I feel the ache in my teeth.
She doesn’t look at me when she continues.
“What I was grateful for… was that he never touched the stuff. Never drank, never smoked, even though he watched me do it every goddamn day.” Her voice cracks slightly. “He never judged me. Not once. Just kept helping.”
I close my eyes, and all I can see is a twelve-year-old Lucas—small, wide-eyed, walking dark streets with a stranger’s poison in his backpack, exchanging it for rolled-up bills in alleyways or corners. No childhood. No safety. No softness. Just survival.
He wasn’t fearless.
He just wasn’t allowed to be a kid. Like me.
“He was good at it,” she says quietly. “Not scared of anyone. Always efficient. He thought it was the right thing to do—for me, maybe for himself. He was just trying to survive.”
Her voice turns distant, almost fond, like she’s remembering a different version of him.
“And at that same age of twelve… he came out as gay.”
My gaze snaps to her, but she’s already staring into nothing, eyes glassy.
“I knew he was gay even before he told me,” she murmurs. “He’d try on my dresses a lot… sit on the bed and just watch me do my makeup. One time, he asked for a makeup box set on his eleventh birthday.” A small smile ghosts her lips, and for a second, her face softens with memory. “He was so happy when I gave it to him. Said he wanted to look pretty too.”
I feel something splinter inside me.
“He told me he had a crush on a boy at school. Then cried the whole day when the kid asked a girl to the dance instead.”
She wipes under her eye with a trembling hand. There’s no vanity in it. No attempt to pretend she’s composed—just a woman sitting in her mistakes, letting them rot out loud.
