Page 59 of Theirs to Treasure

“You were just a baby yourself,” Sam said sadly.

“After Mom had the twins, Barry got in trouble with his bosses. They came to the house and beat him bad. That’s when I found out what Barry had been doing. I thought they were going to kill us all, including the babies.”

“Oh, God, Josie,” he breathed.

“I told my teachers, and the cops came and talked to Barry. Somehow, they got him to turn on his bosses. But the cops ended up taking him into custody for a few days, so Mom thought he was going to prison.” Josie stopped talking.

Sam didn’t say anything, he just waited. Finally, she took a deep breath. “On the second night, he was gone. Mom got really high. She started screaming at me, saying how I’d ruined everything, how I’d gotten Barry sent to jail.” Josie shuddered in Sam’s arms.

“She hit me with her fists, I hit her back, but she was still bigger than me, and she was high as a kite and so strong.” Josie gripped the front of his shirt and he stroked down her back, holding her as close as he could.

“Mom had this wild look in her eye when she shoved me down the stairs. She knew what she was doing. She wanted me dead. But she wasn’t my mom. Not really. It was my ‘junkie mom,’ you know?” She stared up at him, willing him to understand. Sam didn’t care who the hell it was, it was the woman who was supposed to love and protect her.

“What happened next, Baby?” He stroked that beautiful, unruly black hair, looking into her stark dry eyes.

“The neighbors called the cops. I said I fell. Two of my vertebrae were ruptured, no spinal cord damage, thank God.”

“Why did you say you fell?” he demanded, uncomprehending.

“They would have put Becca and Sarah in foster care and I would have lost them. They wouldn’t have kept us together. I was the one who took care of them. From the very first day, I’d been the one to hold them. I’d been the one to feed them. To diaper them. They were mine.”

“So, that’s where the surgical scars came from?”

“Yeah, I needed three surgeries then. Thank God they let Barry out. Between him and Mom, they kept it together enough to take care of Becca and Sarah while I was in the hospital.”

“What about you? Who took care of you?” At her confused expression, Sam realized that nobody had taken care of her. “How long were you in the hospital?”

“It was about four months. After the first surgery, they let me go home, but I got an infection that they caught on my first checkup. They assessed my home environment and decided that it wasn’t a good place for me to recover, so they kept me at the hospital after that. I was lucky that they did.”

Sam damned the woman who had done so much harm to her child and blessed the people who had cared for her.

“Is that where the PTSD came from?”

“Yeah. While I was in the hospital, I had a great counselor who got me through that.”

“How did you get to forgiveness?”

“This was the woman who gave me Becca and Sarah. Also, she wasn’t in her right mind. I always separated her into two women. There was Mom and Junkie Mom.”

“Didn’t Barry help with raising Becca and Sarah, or was he too high as well?”

“After I got out of the hospital, they cleaned up their act. I think that the whole thing with my fall and Barry’s beating and the cops really shook them both. That lasted for five years. Then they both fell off the wagon. The girls were seven, and I was nineteen. I contacted child protective services and petitioned for guardianship. By then, I had a full-time job working as a waitress. With food stamps and other government services, I could care for them, so I was granted guardianship.

“That’s the real pain.” Josie whispered.

“Because of all the sacrifice? Because you had to put your own life on hold?” he asked.

Josie laughed joyously. “No, having Becca and Sarah come live with me is the best thing I ever did. It was betraying Mom like I did that still tears me up inside.”

“Baby, she betrayed you!” He lifted her chin and wiped the tears from her face with the edge of his shirt.

Josie’s chin trembled, and a sob broke out. “When the girls were nine, she came to visit me at the restaurant where I worked. She begged me to send the girls back to her. She said that they were the only hope she had of getting and staying clean. She was clean, Sam, but I couldn’t trust her.”

Josie choked on another sob. Sam had to fight his own tears, knowing that Josie had been too young to be forced to make such harsh decisions. “She said she would fail and die if I didn’t give the girls back to her. I told her that I couldn’t, that their welfare came first, and if she really loved them, she would see that, but she kept begging me. The owner of the restaurant finally had to escort her out.”

Josie was sobbing. Even after she finally quieted, she didn’t continue.

“Finish it, love.”