My stomach erupts into heaving I can no longer control. I struggle up toward my feet, one hand over my mouth, the other pushing against the arm of the sagging couch for leverage. I can taste the acid. I’m not going to make it.
But then Tony is there, just in time, with a plastic grocery bag he grabbed up off the cluttered floor. When I take it from him, he holds back my hair. His hands are so gentle; his presence feels like a fortress of protection. When the spasm ends, he takes the bag, knots it, and sets it outside the door. Marley brings me a glass of water, silently, wordlessly, an act of grace.
Boots wheezes laughter. He taps a cigarette out of a half-empty pack and lights it.
“I remember that day like it was a painting on my wall,” he says, blowing a stream of smoke out in a cloud around his head. “It was about this time of year. Blue sky. The whole world turning green with promise, but what does she do? Can she enjoy it? Of course not. Nothing was ever good enough for her.
“‘I’m leaving,’ she told me. Just like that. No by-your-leave, no warning. ‘I’m leaving and I’m taking Maisey.’
“‘How am I supposed to raise a child?’ I asked her. ‘A man’s got to work and such.’
“‘You’ll figure it out,’ she said. ‘You’ve got your mother to help you. I can’t manage both of them on my own.’
“She didn’t even kiss Marley good-bye. I know this is a sore spot with my daughter, but let me tell you this. I raised her, and she turned out good and strong, so good riddance to Leah, I’ve always said.”
His words fill the room with finality.
I sit with the enormity of it. My mother did this thing. She was justified in leaving him. I can see that. He’s a heinous example of a human being. But leaving a baby. I try to imagine leaving Elle behind and can’t do it. I’ll go back to Kansas City with her, if I have to. I’ll put up with Greg for the rest of my life, if that’s what I need to do to keep her safe.
I wish she wasn’t here now, though. She’s too young for this. I’m too young for this.
And then Dad leans forward, puts both hands on his thighs, and says, “Enough with the lies. How about if you tell them what really happened?”
Leah’s Journal
And here we are, at last, at the moment I’ve been dreading and avoiding and talking circles around since I started writing this story. The moment that has cast its wide shadow over the rest of my life, and your life, Maisey’s, and Marley’s. And I suppose even over Boots.
If we were Catholic, maybe I’d go to confession, but I don’t think I could speak this aloud. I’ve always told myself I did the only thing I could. Truth? Or a comforting lie that helps me maintain my distance from the past?
I don’t know. I’ll never know. So here are the facts as I remember them.
It was a Sunday morning, just past dawn. Boots was out all night, partying.
I didn’t sleep that night. I spent it packing. Very carefully, knowing that I would have to carry everything with us in one battered old suitcase. I packed their favorite blankets and their blue bears, the one good thing Boots ever gave them. I took the little stash of money I’d been hoarding from what I coaxed out of him for groceries and rent.
We had moved into an apartment in Pasco, not far from the Greyhound station. I’d already bought the tickets. All I had to do was get us there. It wasn’t a long walk, not more than half a mile, but with the way my ribs were hurting, the weight of the suitcase, and trying to coax the girls to walk, it stretched out ahead of me like a marathon.
All the while, there was the fear that Boots would come home before we left the house or would drive down the wrong street at the wrong time and see us walking. I told myself over and over this wouldn’t happen. It was way too early for him to come home after a party. He’d be sleeping until noon; it was only 6:00 a.m.
I told the girls it was a game and that I would buy them ice cream when we finished our walk. They were only two, but bright enough to capture cause and effect. They didn’t get ice cream often, and they loved it. We started out, me with the suitcase in one hand, holding Maisey’s hand with the other. Marley held on to Maisey, and so we went, down the sidewalk, a small human train headed for freedom.
It didn’t work out that way. Boots had found a woman who sourced his fondness for cocaine. Instead of lying on a couch somewhere, sleeping off too much alcohol, he was wide awake and supercharged.
He found us before we’d made it more than a few hundred feet.
That moment, when his pickup truck nosed up to the curb on the wrong side of the street and he stepped out to stand on the sidewalk, blocking our path, has played out in nightmares over and over again. He had the mean look on his face. He stood like one of those western gunfighters, legs spread wide, hand on his hip.
I thought he was just posturing. My fear was solely around another beating. And then he pulled something out of his pocket, and I saw that he had a gun. When he got it, where he got it, I’ll never know, but I will never forget the instant I realized what he held in his hand. The terror of knowing what power he had in that moment to end me, to end all three of us.
“And what exactly is this?” he asked. His voice was too calm. It didn’t match the crazed look in his eyes. There was a little too much white around them. His hair was uncombed. He needed a shave. He looked like he belonged on a street corner.
I set down the suitcase, knelt on the sidewalk, right there, and gathered both girls into my arms. There was no point making up a lie. It would only make things worse.
“I’m leaving,” I told him. “I’m taking the girls.”
“Is that right,” he said. It wasn’t a question. He turned that gun in his hands, pointed it at Marley first, and then at Maisey, before aiming it at me. “I thought it was you and me forever, Leah. Things changed after the girls came along. Maybe it could go back to how it was if they were gone.”
Showing him fear would have been the worst thing I could do. I knew that, but what do you do when a madman has the lives of your children in his hands? I didn’t care about my own at that point. I knew I was going to have to go back. Going to spend the rest of my life in his prison, because I wouldn’t have the nerve to try again.
So it was the girls I was thinking of, their safety. Their lives. If it was just me, I would rather he shot me and got it over with. But for the little ones I was willing to grovel.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I was being stupid. Don’t hurt the girls. I’ll go right back home. I’ll never do it again.”
“What makes you think I still want you?” He spat on the sidewalk, as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. “You’re ruined, in case you hadn’t noticed. Stretch marks and fat and useless in bed. No fun anymore. I’ve got a new woman who’s actually worth fucking. So don’t bother ever trying to come home.”
He stepped off the sidewalk, down the curb, and into the street.
I stared at him. At the gun. At the open sidewalk. I got to my feet. Picked up the suitcase. Took Maisey by the hand. Both of the girls were whimpering, but they already knew better than to cry outright when he got like this.
He still stood there, the gun at his side.
I took a step.
“Course, there’s always a price for freedom,” he said. “I’m not about to let you treat me this way and walk off without me having something to show for it.”
“What do you want?” My mangled hope died a sudden, misbegotten death right then. I knew that what he wanted wasn’t going to be simple like money or my suitcase or a final purchased kiss.
But I never could have imagined the sort of devil’s bargain he was about to offer me.
Chapter Thirty
“You calling me a liar?” Boots shouts. “In my own house. In front of my daughters. You can get out. All of you. Just get out!”
“Sure,” Dad says, very quietly. “We can go outside. It’s easier to breathe out there, anyway. Did you want to come, Marley? And I’ll finish telling you what your father did.”
He makes a move to get up, but Boots isn’t having any of it.