Chapter 42 #2
“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 of bed 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.
“I had my fears when he finally came out. Not because I didn’t love him. I did. But in this world?” She pauses. “In the world we lived in… being a gay kid and selling drugs—God, I didn’t know how to protect him. I didn’t know how to fix it.”
Her cigarette is nearly gone. She stubs it out with trembling fingers, then reaches for another, but her hand shakes too much. She curses softly under her breath and rests her elbow on the table, rubbing her temple.
“Lucas was fourteen when I met John,” she says finally, voice hollow. “He was the janitor at his school. We hit it off quickly, and three months later, I let him move in.”
Her voice trails off, and I already know where this is going. I feel it in my bones.
“Lucas was against it. Hated the idea. We fought a lot. Screamed at each other. I hadn’t lived with anyone since Hunter…
I just—” she exhales, shaky and wet, “I was tired of being alone, and after lots of arguments that he didn’t win, John finally moved in with his son, who was a high school senior. ”
She lifts her eyes to me. Red-rimmed. Empty.
“That’s when I really started failing my son.”
The silence that falls between us is unbearable. It roars in my ears louder than her words.
I look at her, this woman who gave birth to the boy I now care about more than anything in the world, and I don’t know what to think of her.
“I never knew John’s son, Tim, bullied Lucas at school,” she says, voice brittle. “Never knew he called him a druggie… a faggot. Spread rumors that Lucas was sleeping with men for money.”
Her words hang heavy in the air like smoke, toxic and slow to fade. I feel my hand curl into a fist, my knuckles going white from how tight I’m holding back.
“Lucas never told me any of it,” she whispers. “Not one thing. I guess… I guess he stopped believing I’d listen. We started growing distant after John and Tim moved in, and I… I was too wrapped up in John’s affection to see what was happening to my own son.”
A tear rolls down her cheek, but it doesn’t move me. Not yet. Not enough.
“Keep talking, Kathryn,” I say, voice low and hard—gravel pressed through gritted teeth.
It’s the first thing I’ve said since she started unraveling this nightmare. And when I speak, she flinches like I’d struck her. She must see it now, the fury in my eyes, the restraint in my jaw. She swallows, dabs her cheek with the back of her hand, and takes a slow drag from her cigarette.
“On his fifteenth birthday…” she begins again, voice hoarse, “I gave him a camera. An expensive one. He’d always wanted it—told me he wanted to use it to vlog and do YouTube videos.”
A flicker of something passes over her face. Something like regret and pride stitched together.
“He smiled at me that day,” she murmurs. Really smiled. First time in a long time. He was so happy. He carried that camera everywhere. Took pictures, recorded himself, his routines, his life. It made him feel seen, like he could finally be someone else. Someone who mattered.”
She stops.
Swallows hard.
Her hand moves to her chest like her heart aches from pulling the next memory out.
“A month later,” she continues, quieter now, “he came to me… said he had something to tell me. Said it was urgent. His eyes… God, his eyes were begging me.”
She blinks fast, tries to steady herself, but her voice trembles.
“I told him I was busy. I was getting dressed for Tim’s graduation. I asked if it could wait.”
I close my eyes, jaw clenching tighter.
“And the moment I saw the hurt flash across his face—I knew I’d messed up,” she says, voice cracking. “I wanted to apologize, to stop and listen, but John was already ushering me out the door. Said we were late.”
She finally looks at me.
And what I see in her face rips the breath straight out of my lungs.
“That was the day,” she says, barely above a whisper, “that I lost my boy.”
She takes a shallow breath, a tear slipping down the other cheek.
“The day he lost his voice. His hearing. The day the unthinkable happened to him.”
My chest feels like it’s collapsing in on itself. I don’t speak. Can’t.
“I remember waking up to loud, frantic banging on the door,” she says, her voice barely stable, a raw tremble underneath every word. “It was just past midnight. We’d just come back from Tim’s graduation. I thought maybe it was John, or a drunk neighbor… but when I opened that door—”
She stops, her lips parting like the memory physically hurts to recall.
“It was my son.” Her voice breaks. “ he was bruised, severely, and was soaked in blood.”
My stomach tightens.
“His shirt was drenched. His hair was matted with it, his face swollen. There was blood dripping from his ear,” she says, like she can’t believe it even now.
“And his eyes… they were glazed. Distant. He was high out of his mind. His words were slurred. His voice was barely a whisper, hoarse and broken like something inside him had snapped.”
She looks away, biting the inside of her cheek.
“My first instinct should’ve been to call 911,” she says quietly. “But I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
Her eyes flick to mine, pleading, desperate for understanding she won’t find.
“I panicked. I carried him to Martha’s trailer. She’s the Doctor who used to live here. Fired from her hospital job years ago, no one knows why, but she treats folks around here when they can’t afford the ER. Doesn’t ask questions. Just patches you up and takes her little cash.”
She swallows hard.
“I didn’t take him there because it was cheap,” she says, and now her voice has a sharp, defensive edge.
“I did it because if I called 911, the cops would come. And if the cops came… they’d ask questions.
Questions that would bury Lucas and me, too.
I didn’t know what happened to him, but looking at my boy at that moment, I knew I couldn’t involve the police. ”
Her breath rattles as it leaves her chest, and she hugs her arms around herself like she’s trying to hold her shaking body together.
“Before he passed out, just as Martha was trying to clean him up, Lucas grabbed my wrist. His mouth was barely moving, but he whispered something. Just four words.”
She looks up at me, and for a second, I swear the light is gone from her eyes.
“‘The tree house window.’”
The silence that follows hangs heavy.