Deep, cleansing breaths didn’t do a fucking thing for me.
“Ready, Liam?”
I glanced around the room, a little confused, but stood up and followed Erin into her office.
“I thought you said she was going to be here?”
“She will be,” Erin said. “I wanted to give you a little time to get settled before she comes. She’ll be here in about fifteen minutes.”
“Oh.”
“How are you feeling right now?”
“Nervous,” I admitted.
“That seems pretty reasonable, given the circumstances. When was the last time you talked to your mother?”
“I saw her at Ryan’s wedding,” I said. “She also came to the hospital after I was stabbed.”
“And you talked to her then?” Erin asked.
“Not…exactly. There was more yelling than talking.”
“Do you expect today will be like that, too?”
“I have no idea.”
“Tell me something you remember about your mom from when you were a child,” Erin suggested.
“She read to me a lot,” I said.
“Is that something you enjoyed?”
“I guess.” I shrugged.
“What else do you remember?”
I chuckled.
“Outing days,” I said. “Mom would pick all these weird places to go on the weekend when Dad had to travel on business.”
“Weird places?”
“Not exactly weird,” I said. I tried to think of the best way to describe it. “They just weren’t the usual places. We wouldn’t go to the movies or the park. We’d go to the pond near the college and feed the swans lettuce, or we’d go into the attic of one of the old buildings on campus and explore. They just…weren’t the usual mother-son activities, I guess.”
“Did you like doing those things?”
“Yeah,” I said. “No one else ever did that kind of shit.”
A timid knock came from the office door, and my eyes locked with Erin’s.
“Ready?” she asked softly.
My head shook no without hesitation, and Erin smiled with half her mouth.
“If you decide it’s too much,” she told me, “you tap on your knee with your index finger, and I’ll end the session. Okay?”
“Okay,” I replied with a hoarse voice. Having an instant way of tapping out made me feel a little better.
Erin stood and walked across the room in what had to be the slowest slow motion that ever existed outside my imagination. It took hours and, at the same time, was far too fast. Erin’s hand clasped the knob. The door opened, and there she was.
Neat pantsuit, hair up, makeup perfect—just as she always looked. Extraordinarily beautiful and looking as if she had barely aged a day in the past decade, Julianna Teague walked into the room.
Despite her polished appearance, she still looked like she would have knelt down in a sandbox to play without batting an eye. She would have, too. Or at least, she would have in the past.
Would she do that with my child?
“Hello, Liam,” she said. Her voice was so quiet I couldn’t really hear it though I knew what she had said.
“Mom,” I replied. I had to swallow and look away.
Erin directed her to the seat across from me.
“I know this is difficult for both of you,” Erin said. “I’m hoping you will both decide to just talk to each other without my interference, but I can also help prod you along a bit. I think it would be good if Julianne says a little bit about what’s on her mind. Is that okay with you, Liam? Is it okay if your mother starts?”
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “That’s fine.”
“Julianne? Tell Liam what you’re thinking right now.”
“I miss you,” she said immediately. I didn’t look up at her. I couldn’t. I knew there were tears running down her face, and I didn’t want to see them. “So much, Liam…I can’t even…”
She took a long, staggered breath.
“I’m so, so glad you’re with your uncle now and that you are willing to talk to me.”
“Tria wanted it,” I replied.
It sounded worse than I intended.
“Do we…?” She stopped, and I heard her breathing become more unsteady.
“What do you want to say, Julianne?” Erin asked quietly.
“Do we have a chance?” she asked, and a small sob escaped her throat. “Will you talk to me, please?”
For the longest time, I just stared at my fingers on my lap. My mind was completely blank, and I had no idea what to say to her. I had no idea what could make everything all right again, and I wasn’t even sure if that was what I wanted.
“Tria wants a family,” I said finally. “She’s…she’s having a baby, you know.”
“I know,” Mom said. “Your father told me.”
“November,” I said. “She’s supposed to have it in November.”
“Michael said you were…scared.”
I tensed. I didn’t like that he was talking to her about me. I mean, I knew he was—it’s not like he kept any of that shit a secret—but hearing her actually say it out loud…well, that was different. I didn’t like it.
Well, I didn’t like most of it.
Part of me reminded myself that she wanted to know—that they had all been talking about me the past ten years all the time. I was still in their minds and in their hearts even when I wouldn’t accept it. I wanted to know they hadn’t forgotten me or stopped caring and that she really did miss me.
“It will be all right,” she said quietly. “We’re going to take care of you. We’re going to take care of Tria, too.”
I had no idea what it was. Her words…her tone. Maybe it was just because she said she was going to take care of Tria…I didn’t know. I just fell apart.
Completely.
Utterly.
For once, it was my mother’s arms around me as all the pain and sense of loss poured out. Though she had been at the center of it years ago, I couldn’t help but lean on her when she was next to me on the couch and holding me against her. She cried. I cried.
It was actually really fucking weird.
Too weird.
Too much.
I pushed her away from me and raced across the room. I ended up next to the window instead of the door, so I had no way to get out. I just leaned against the ledge and counted the plum tree’s lame excuse for fruit.
“Liam, can you tell your mom what you are thinking right now?”
“She fucking let him,” I mumbled.
“Let him what?” Erin pressed.
I turned and glared at my mother.
“You didn’t stop him,” I stated. “You just let him…let him say all that shit. He said all that shit to Aimee and scared the crap out of her. She didn’t know what to do, and she wouldn’t tell anyone after that. You let him…”
“I knew he was right, Liam,” Mom said softly.
I tensed and was about to walk right the fuck out because staying meant possibly punching out my mother. Erin stopped me with a hand and made me sit back down.
“Julianne, could you please clarify what you mean by that? It sounds like you are agreeing with Douglass’s harsher words toward Aimee.”
“Not the words themselves, no,” she said, “but the thought behind them. If you were out of each other’s lives, you wouldn’t have been so hell-bent on becoming a father at seventeen. You weren’t ready for that kind of responsibility.”
“How did you know what the fuck I was ready for?” I bellowed as I turned to glare at her.
“Because you were my son!” she cried back. “You still are, and I still know you—even if you haven’t been in the family all this time! I can see how much you’ve changed…grown. Even since the wedding, you’re different.”
I looked back to the window and tried to keep my breathing from going completely overboard. I couldn’t think straight when that started to happen.
“He only wanted to
protect you,” I heard her whisper.
“Well, he didn’t!” I snapped. “He didn’t fucking protect me at all!”
“I know!” she sobbed. “It didn’t work! Nothing worked! And then you were…you were just gone!”
I didn’t move from the window as I tried to tune out her crying. It didn’t work, which wasn’t surprising. My chest clenched, and though I wasn’t hyperventilating any longer, I was still dizzy.
“We looked for weeks, Liam,” she said. “After…after the funeral. There was no sign of you—none! The police kept looking for you, but every time they thought they found you, it was someone else. When the report came in…when they finally did really find you…”
Another choking sob.
“You…the way you were living…and you wouldn’t leave! You wouldn’t talk to us! You said you’d rather go to jail than come home with us! You had been strung out for…for days, they said! You almost overdosed! Liam, you used to lecture our friends about smoking when you were in kindergarten, and you were using heroin!”
A shiver went thought my body.
The warehouse.
I knew the place she meant. There were vague, heroin-clouded memories of police cars, an ambulance, a coroner…but nothing concrete.
Been dead for days…
Should be condemned…
Goofy, drugged-up kids…
“Liam?” Erin’s voice floated over to the window and bounced back into my face. “Can you speak to me?”
“I…I don’t remember…” I admitted. “I don’t remember any of that.”
“Would you sit back down?”
I let her lead me back to the chair—the one opposite Mom on the couch. A blood vessel in my temple throbbed, and I stared at the area rug on the floor. In order to push the memories from my head, I tried to make some sense out of the patterns on the rug. I couldn’t. It was random and pointless.
“Liam?” Erin asked again. I eventually looked up at her after she repeated my name a few times. “Do you remember what we talked about before? Your concern about Tria when she first told you she was pregnant?”
“Um…” I cleared my throat again. “Yeah.”
“There were things you were thinking then…things you said to Tria.”
“That shit…” I wanted to say it didn’t matter—that it wasn’t the same. I wanted to deny it all, but I couldn’t. Instead, I looked up into my mother’s eyes for the first time.
Pants creased, hair beginning to fall out of its pins, makeup smeared.
When had she ever done anything but try to make it right? When had I done anything but try to push her away?
“I…I…I can’t…” I stuttered, and then I remembered what Erin said earlier and started tapping my finger on my knee.
“I think that’s enough for now,” Erin said immediately. I could see my mother’s surprise, but it didn’t matter to my counselor. Twenty seconds later, she had ushered Mom out the door. She was gone less than a minute before she came back in and knelt beside me.
“You okay?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think…maybe.”
“Pretty intense?”
“Yeah.”
“Good intense?”
“Not sure yet.”
“Fair enough.” Erin stood back up. “Take a few minutes to get yourself together. That’s more than enough for one day. Next week we’ll talk about today and talk about whether you want to do that again.”
“Again?” I said. “Are you nuts?”
“You don’t think that was the end of it, do you?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“One step at a time,” Erin said. “You did really well. I’m proud of you.”
She smiled at me and nodded her head. I gave her a bit of a smile back, sat there for a few minutes while she wrote in her notebook and then headed out to the lobby.
“How are you, Liam?” Damon asked as we walked down the stairs.
I wondered if he had ever asked me that before and couldn’t really come up with an answer.
“I’m…okay,” I replied. “Tired.”
“I think that’s to be expected,” he said with a nod. “Home, I assume?”
“No,” I said. “I want to go to the gym and beat the shit out of something.”
“Then the gym it is.”
The trainer wasn’t ready to defend himself against me, and I was okay with that. I slapped him around the mat for a while, and it definitely made me feel better. Even with the gloves. By the time I was done, I was sweating and exhausted.
Damon stayed on the side of the ring and watched with a half grin on his face.
“What?” I asked as I flipped over the ropes.
“You did well,” Damon said.
“I kick ass,” I told him. I offered up my own lopsided grin.
“You do,” he agreed. “Feel better?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Home?” he asked.
“To Tria,” I replied.
“To Tria,” he agreed.
*****
The next day was the long-awaited sentencing hearing for one Keith Harrison, assaulter and batterer.
The fucker plea bargained his way down from attempted murder, for Christ’s sake. No one asked for my opinion. I didn’t have any doubt he was trying to kill me, not that it mattered now. I got the girl. He was going to get a prison sentence.
Tria tightened her grip on my hand as we walked into the courtroom and sat down. Keith was in one of those prison-orange jumpsuits and sat with a court appointed attorney near the front. He looked back at us as we walked in, and his eyes narrowed at me.
I glared back, and just for good measure, I reached over and rubbed at the center of Tria’s abdomen. Tria covered my hand with hers and turned her head into my chest. She didn’t want to see him—I knew that much. I only hoped he’d be going away for a long time.
Keith’s eyes widened, and I knew he got the message. A moment later he slumped slightly in his seat and shook his head.
I resisted the urge to yell to him and remind him just what had to happen for her to be in such a state. It didn’t quite seem like the time or place, but I would have been lying if I said I didn’t take great pleasure in his duress over it.
Actually, I fucking loved it, sick asshole that I was.
The DA walked up and told us not to worry—it should all be over pretty quickly, and Tria probably didn’t even have to get on the stand. I was glad about that. The prosecuting attorney still thought I was going to have to get up there, but about twelve seconds into the hearing, the defense attorney and the prosecuting attorney went up to the judge’s bench for a little powwow. When they were done, Keith was sentenced to five years, and we were told we could go.
“Fuck!” I exclaimed. “That was easy. We didn’t have to do anything.”
“I’m just glad it’s over,” Tria whispered. She was pale, and I wrapped my arm around her waist to hold her close.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “He’s gone for a long time, and we’re fine.”
We each got paid twenty dollars for showing up.
“We could go out and celebrate,” I suggested.
Tria gave me a slight smile but shook her head.
“It would probably be better to use it for something we need.”
I couldn’t argue with her logic.
“We could…um…” I steeled myself against my own thoughts. This made it more real for me than anything. How many times had I done this before—ran to a store after school to buy things the baby needed? “We’ve got a few hours before the sonogram appointment. We could go shopping for…um…for the baby?”
Tria wrapped her arms around my neck.
“Yes, please.”
So we did. And by paying close attention to prices, we got quite a bit for forty dollars.
Damon drove us to one of those stores that had pre-owned items for babies. We found one of those pumpkin-type car seats that would normally cost quite a bit at a
price we could handle and a few other things as well. Tria started crying when we picked out the seat.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. I pulled her against me and let her get my shirt all wet.
“I’m just…glad,” she said. “I was really worried about not having any place to put the baby. Now I have a place for it.”
It made no sense whatsoever to me. There would be months before the baby would need to be put anywhere, but it was apparently really important to Tria. She held on to me and cried a little more, then laughed at herself.
“I feel silly,” she whispered. She glanced around at other patrons.
“Don’t,” I said. “Is there anything else you want to have now?”
We picked out a few more things before Damon drove us back to Michael’s house. I sighed as soon as we got there, immediately recognizing my cousin’s car parked near the front door. His customary taste in vehicles hadn’t changed.
“Ryan is here,” I informed Tria.
“Are you okay with that?”
I shrugged.
“It’s okay.” There wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it anyway. It was his parent’s house.
I carried the bags inside and was thrilled to death to see Amanda in the foyer as soon as we walked in.
How was that on ye old sarcasm scale?
“Hello, Liam…Tria.” Amanda’s smile was disingenuous, to say the least.
I didn’t like the way she said Tria’s name, either. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it reminded me that I had never asked Tria about knowing Amanda as a child. I was going to have to remember to do that.
“Mandi.” I nodded. As long as I was in this house, I’d be relatively polite to her.
“I hear congratulations are in order,” she said. “Doing things all out of order, but marriage and baby, hmm?”
I stopped and stared at her, mentally revoking all thoughts of being polite.
“Too bad you didn’t have a ceremony we could all attend,” she went on. “It would have been nice to see what sort of scene I could have caused during your reception.”
“You pretty much forced me there,” I reminded her. “If you think I’m going to apologize to you for that, you can suck my cock.”
“Liam!” Tria hissed.
“Just a figure of speech,” I said with a glance in her direction.