And in some ways, I would never forgive myself.
“Did you ever see your dad again?” Dean asked.
“No. I guess Aunt Stella heard from him a few times when he was looking for me, but she didn’t often know where we were either so she couldn’t tell him anything. Then when I was eleven, we got word that he’d died.”
“How did your mother manage to support you?”
“She hooked up with a lot of men,” I said. An unwelcome barrage of male faces and voices went through my brain. “That was how she found places to stay. She’d convince a guy to let us live with him for a while with the understanding that she’d share his bed. Most of the time, she waited until they agreed… or sometimes after she’d moved in… before telling them she had a daughter.”
“What the—”
“She told me to hide a lot,” I explained. “To wait in the car while she spent a few hours at a bar. Sometimes she left me at a public library, then came back to get me after she’d found a guy. Sometimes she made an effort to earn money by selling jewelry that she made, but I think she found it easier to rely on men to support her.”
I stared at my hands clutched around the glass of water.
“She was quite beautiful,” I said. “That was part of the reason she never had trouble finding a man. She had long blond hair and green eyes. A great figure. And she was confident as a woman, secure in her sexuality. Even if she wasn’t looking for someone, men were attracted to her. The problem was that it was rarely the right kind of man.”
My voice faded. There had been good men in the six years we were on the road. A karate instructor who gave me forms lessons and talked to me about things like respect, focus, and self-discipline. An insurance salesman who built model airplanes as a hobby. A camera-shop owner who taught me the basics of photo composition.
An MIT-graduate-turned-hippie named Northern Star who convinced me I was worth something.
I pushed the thought of him aside. That one hurt too much.
“Through men and sex, my mother found the attention she’d lost when she was younger,” I said. “It seemed so… easy for her.”
“But it was horrible for you.”
“I hated every minute of it,” I admitted. “When she left me alone, I was so scared she’d never come back. And I couldn’t stand having to live with men I didn’t know, sleeping on dirty sofas or on the floor. I’d often hear my mother having sex in the next room. A few times I walked in on her and some strange man. It doesn’t take a genius to understand why I’m still a virgin at twenty-four.”
Finally I looked up at Dean. He was watching me, wary, tense, as if steeling himself against what I hadn’t yet confessed.
“I was… I’d always tried hard to be invisible so no one would notice me,” I said. “And for a while it worked. My mother was so stunning, so forceful, that no one paid attention to her quiet, mousy daughter. I’d also learned there was safety in hiding, that if people didn’t know you were there, they couldn’t bother you. That was exactly how I wanted it.”
I drew in a breath. “But my luck ran out when… when one of the men messed with me.” I spoke in a hard rush, desperate to finally get it out. “Another one tried a year later, but I got away from him in time.”
Dean swore—a violent, cutting sound—and shoved to his feet.
“The guy was… he masturbated in front of me,” I said, bile rising in my chest as the memory stabbed the back of my head. “First when I was asleep. I was nine. I woke up once in the middle of the night and saw him standing beside my bed. I didn’t know at the time what he was doing, but I knew it was wrong. I… I didn’t know what to do, so I pretended I was still asleep.”
“Jesus, Liv.”
“My mother… she knew about it.” I could hardly speak past the tightness in my throat. “I saw the door open one night, Dean. There was… there was no lock on the door, and I saw her look in when he was doing it. I thought for sure she would stop him, that she’d protect me, that she’d do something, but…”
“She didn’t?” His voice was strangled.
I shook my head, the harshness of the betrayal splitting open inside me. “I watched her close the door. I didn’t move. Couldn’t. She’d left me alone with the sick bastard.”
“Liv, I—”
I held up my hand. “She wouldn’t listen when I told her we had to leave. All I could do was avoid the guy as much as possible and pray he didn’t do anything else. Then one day he brought me a cake for my tenth birthday. Told me he’d only let me have a piece if I touched his penis. He took it out and started to… and before I could get away from him, my mother walked in.”
“What… what did she do?”
Old, raw anger and fear pierced my heart. My vision blurred.
“She blamed me for exciting him,” I confessed. “Said if I’d been wearing a looser T-shirt, he wouldn’t have been tempted.” I hugged my arms around myself. “It wasn’t the last time I’d hear some version of that accusation.”