“Wait where? What if Javier or Travis follow her back?”
His mustache twitched. “We’ll get you in her bedroom. You’ll already be on the inside when she comes back.”
If she comes back, I thought. Gus looked at me like he was thinking the same thing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ELLIE
I remembered being about eleven years old when my parents first started talking about leaving Mississippi. It was a hot spring day, hot like hell, and I was sitting on the front step of our trailer, watching the kids run down the street, laughing, having a good time. They were all wearing their bathing suits as kids tended to do when it got in the 80s with one hundred percent humidity.
Not me. I sat there in the hot sun, in my own sweat, wearing jeans. They were baggy, really lightweight and I had a hole in one knee, but it didn’t make up for the fact that I could never be like one of those kids. I used to be then that all changed in one night. After that, I fell asleep in tears because it hurt so bad, my teeth being ground into nothing because my mother refused to give me anything stronger than Children’s Tylenol. During the day, when the pain was a bit better, I’d cry anyway because I could never be normal again. All I wanted to do was strip down to my bathing suit and join the kids in their search to find the nearest hose or sprinkler. But I couldn’t. I didn’t dare. Fear of being different, of being made inferior, had consumed me at a young age.
So I sat there on the steps and watched the world go on without me. Behind me there was a screen door to let in the filthy breeze and behind that my parents sat at the table and started discussing my future. I don’t know if they realized I was listening and could hear them or if they didn’t care, but they talked about me as if I wasn’t there.
My father was scared because Child Services had visited him at work, wanting to check in. I suppose they had come by when I was at school too. I hadn’t really seen any of them, least not that I knew of. No one was asking me questions yet, but that’s what they were afraid of. I wanted to tell my parents that I knew my lie so well I wouldn’t do anything to get them in trouble. Funny thing is, I don’t think they ever believed me. I bet they sat around in fear like I sat around in fear, thinking that one day I would turn on them.
Instead, they’re the ones who turned on me. They’re the ones who got up and left me one day, leaving me with my uncle.
Anyway, before that even happened, my parents were planning their escape. I remember it was my mom’s idea for us to go to California. My dad was totally against it, and as I sat there on the porch and started thinking about how magical California sounded, how my uncle Jim seemed like a real cool guy, I wondered why. My dad kept saying if we went to California, we were only going so we could see “him,” but not her brother, someone else, and the last time my mother pulled a stunt like that, it had nearly gotten me killed.
At the time all I could fixate on was California and movie stars and the wild Pacific Ocean. Everything else went over my head.
Now all I could wonder about was how on earth my mother was able to have an affair with Travis. Not that she wasn’t a gorgeous woman back in her day, that real Eastern European look, but why? How did it get started? What made my mother look at him and want him for herself? I didn’t care how charming he was or sweet he must have been to her – wouldn’t she have looked at him and seen the monster underneath? Did she seriously think she could fix him? Redeem him? Was she ever in love with him, or had she just been a fool, foolish and reckless enough to use her own flesh and blood to get back at him?
The longer I sat across from Travis at a small, smoky bar that blotted out all the light and heat from outside, the more I couldn’t understand her. How she could be with him and not be afraid for her life. Because I was her daughter through and through. And I was extremely afraid for my own life.