Chapter 6
SIX
LUCAS
The train ride feels longer than it should, every mile stretching like an elastic band ready to snap. I grip the edge of the seat, trying to steady my nerves, but my hands won’t stop trembling. The phone in my hand vibrates again, and another message appears on the screen.
Mom: Lucas please, I need you.
It’s getting bad this time.
Please come home.
I squeeze my eyes shut, jaw tightening. I shouldn’t be on this train. I shouldn’t have answered her call last night, listening to her sobs crackle through the connection, begging for help like she always does. I’ve ignored the texts for weeks—months, even. But last night?
Last night, she was hysterical.
I hate her. Or at least, I want to. It’s easier to hold on to the anger. To remember how she fell apart when I needed her most. How she drowned herself in bottles and bad choices while I sat in my room, learning how to navigate a world with trauma and without sound. How she let me become invisible.
But it’s still her. And I loved her once.
Even now, as the train slows near the stop to the trailer park, my stomach twists; it’s been years since I last saw her. The last thread between us snapped the day I lost everything and realized she would rather numb herself with men, smoking, and drinking than fight for me.
The station is small, barely more than a concrete platform with faded signs.
I step off the train, pulling my jacket tighter against the chill, and start walking.
I can still remember the route to the trailer park like the back of my hand.
As I approach the trailer park, it appears smaller than I remember, yet it also looks the same: faded and tired, as if life had bled out of it years ago.
The whole place feels abandoned, except for the occasional flicker of movement behind torn curtains, and an old radio crackles with faint music.
Her trailer sits near the back, the same. White, though the color has long since yellowed with age. The wind chimes I made when I was twelve, back when I could hear their soft clinking, still hang by the door, rusted and tangled.
I stop at the edge of the driveway, heart hammering. Every instinct screams at me to turn around. Walk away. Ignore the guilt pressing down on my chest. But I don’t, I climb the three creaky steps and knock.
Nothing.
I wait, shifting on my feet, then knock again, harder this time. Footsteps thud inside. The door swings open, but it’s not my mother standing there. It’s a man, tall and lanky with scruffy beard and bloodshot eyes. His shirt is stained, and there’s a half-finished beer dangling from his hand.
“What do you want?” he grunts, eyeing me like I’m an inconvenience.
I blink, throat tightening. Who the hell is this?
“I’m… here to see Sarah.” I sign the words instinctively, forgetting myself until his expression twists in confusion. I sigh, then take out my phone, type in the message, and point it at his face. He reads it and then looks at me.
“Ah, you must be her son,” he grunts. Then he steps aside, muttering something under his breath, and gestures for me to enter. I hesitate. Every alarm in my body goes off at once, but I force myself to step inside.
The trailer smells like cigarette smoke and cheap perfume. It’s cluttered, with clothes and empty bottles scattered across the worn-out couch. The tiny kitchen sink overflows with dirty dishes.
“Lucas?”
Her voice comes from the hallway, thin and tired.
And then she appears.
My mother.
She looks older, so much older than thirty-eight, Frailer. Her blonde hair, once so perfectly always styled in bangs, hangs limp around her face. There are deep lines etched into her skin, and her clothes hang off her frame like they don’t quite fit.
“Baby,” the words escape her like a silent prayer, hand flying to her mouth like she can’t believe I’m real. “Oh my God, you came.”
I step back, instinctively creating space. Baby. She used to call me that when I was little, when the world was calmer and safer before everything fell apart.
I don’t sign anything. I just stare.
Her eyes well with tears as she rushes forward, arms outstretched like she’s going to hug me. I flinch, and she freezes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, dropping her arms. “I just… I didn’t think you’d come. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“What do you want?” I mouth the words slowly, and she seems to understand.
Her gaze flickers toward the man, who’s already slouched onto the couch, flipping through channels like this is perfectly normal.
“That’s Eddie,” she says, voice brittle. “My… boyfriend.”
The word hits like a slap.
Boyfriend.
Like the last one. And the one before him. Every single one is a deadbeat, a reminder of how little she learned after everything.
I step back toward the door, shaking my head.
“No! Wait!” she pleads, grabbing my arm. Her grip is weak, bony fingers barely closing around my sleeve. “It’s not like that. He’s not like the others.”
I yank my arm free, breathing ragged.
“Why am I here?”
I don’t bother speaking. Not like my voice will let me anyway. I sign the words, sharp and clipped, her eyes flicker to my hands, and I expect the usual confusion, the blank stare she always gives to me whenever I sign to her. But this time…
She understands.
I freeze, throat tightening.
“You’re surprised,” she says quietly, managing a sad smile. “I’ve been… practicing for about two years, YouTube videos helped too. I thought maybe if you ever came back…” Her voice trails off, and she shakes her head. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter now.”
It does. It matters more than I can explain, but the knot in my chest tightens before I can think about it.
“Why am I here?” I sign again, slower this time. “What did you do?”
She flinches, shoulders folding in like she’s waiting for a blow.
“It’s about the loan shark,” she murmurs, eyes flicking to the floor. “They’ve been coming around more often, Lucas. I didn’t know who else to call.”
I blink at her, confusion hardening into anger. My hands rise, cutting the air with sharp signs, deliberate and slow, as if she’s stupid.
“I’ve been paying it off. Every month. Sending the money like we agreed. What are you talking about?”
Her lips part, then press into a tight line.
“I paid for some months… and didn’t for others.”
My breath stutters. I sign faster now, fury dragging my movements jagged.
“There’s only five thousand left. Five. I was going to send it this week. That’s all that was left.”
Her eyes glisten. “It’s more than that now.”
My stomach turns cold. “How much?”
She hesitates, silence choking the room.
“How much, Mom?”
Her voice breaks. “Seventy.”
The word rips the air out of my lungs. I stagger back, like she’s just hit me across the face.
“Seventy… thousand?”
“I’m sorry,” she chokes, reaching out with trembling fingers. “I tried, Lucas, I really did. But I couldn’t keep up. I thought…” her words falter, her throat closing, “I thought if I invested some of it, I could double it. Pay it off faster.”
“Liar.”
Her face crumples. “Lucas—”
“It wasn’t investing. It was gambling. And drinking.”
She doesn’t deny it. Her silence is louder than any confession.
I drag a shaking hand through my curls, the room tilting.
My savings. My rent. Every damn extra shift.
Every sleepless night. Every ache in my body from scraping money together for her— for this woman.
This hollow, broken shell who once kissed my forehead goodnight, who swore the world would never hurt me.
She lied.
She’s always lied.
My hands rise again, slower now, deadly precise.
“How much have you actually paid?”
Her eyes dart away.
“How much?”
Her shoulders fold in. “Twenty thousand.”
The air leaves me in a rush. My arms drop uselessly at my sides. Twenty. Out of nearly seventy-two thousand, I’ve bled into her hands these last two years.
The betrayal claws up my throat, bitter, choking, unrelenting.
When I was seventeen, my mother got herself into trouble with gambling. She owed the gambling house twenty thousand dollars. That should’ve been enough of a disaster on its own, but instead of asking for help or admitting defeat, she made it worse.
She went to a loan shark.
And not just for the twenty thousand she needed to cover her debt—but for forty.
She had to pay eighty back to the loan shark, and she swore she’d pay it back, swore it was under control.
But all she did was pay off what she owed the gambling house, then took the extra twenty and went straight back to gambling.
She never paid back the money.
I was furious. Beyond furious.
When I turned eighteen, I couldn’t take it anymore. I left the town and cut ties with her. Or at least, I thought I did.
But walking away didn’t free me. Months after I left, the loan sharks found me. They cornered me, threatened to kill me and her if the debt wasn’t paid. I hadn’t even been the one to borrow it, but suddenly it was my problem.
The head of the loan shark, Oliver, showed what he called mercy. Instead of demanding weekly payments, he agreed to let me pay three thousand a month. And from then on, that’s what I did. Month after month, without fail, I sent the money.
Three thousand. Every single month.
I thought she was paying it off. I thought I was keeping us both alive. And now she’s telling me she hasn’t been paying it? What the hell has she been doing all this time?
“So out of almost seventy-two thousand I’ve sent, you only paid back twenty?” My signs are jagged, almost violent, as though each one might cut me open.
“Lucas, please.” She reaches for me, desperate. “They said they’d come for you. If I don’t pay, they’ll find you. I didn’t mean for it to get this bad. I swear I didn’t.”
I rip away from her touch like it burns. My heart hammers, fury strangling me.
“You let them put a target on my back—again?”
Tears streak her face, shame carving deep lines into her expression.