“Heroin?” I asked, pointing to the needle on the side table.
Trish looked up at me for the first time as if she were just noticing I was there. “None of your fucking business. You think just because you’re a stiff that you came come into my fucking home and take my kid for nothing? That you’re some how better than me ‘cause you’re not depending on a fucking needle to get you through the day?” Trish shook her head from and lit the butt of another cigarette from the overflowing ashtray on the side table to next to her chair.
I stepped closer and knelt down next to her. I pulled up my sleeves and set my forearms across her bony knees. My touch startled her and she sat up as if I’d stabbed her. “I haven’t always been a stiff,” I said, using my eyes to point to the scars on the inside of my arms. “I know a lot more about how you’re feeling then you think I do.” Trish’s gaze roamed my scars. Her eyes met mine. “I’ve been where you are. I know what it’s like to have something so small take all the control when it comes to your life.”
Trish looked like she was contemplating something. She sat back in her chair and I stood back up, pulling my sleeves back down my arms. She looked at her own arms then back up at me. “So you think because you used to be a junkie that you can bully me into giving you my kid? Is that it?”
I shook my head. “No, I think that because you’re a junkie you understand why he’d be better off living somewhere where your addiction isn’t what he sees every morning and every night. Where heroin use won’t be his normal. Where the fridge will be full and so will his belly. Where his clothes will be clean and he’ll go to school every day. But most importantly, where he’ll be loved and that love will be more important than anything. It will come first...” I glanced down to the needle and spoon on the table. “Before any needle.”
Trish scoffed. “My love for him comes before...”
“Don’t bullshit me,” I interrupted. “That comes first, second, third...and only.”
Trish’s shoulders hunched over even more. With a growl she grabbed a pen off the side of the table and was about to sign her name to the page when Preppy opened the front door and said. “Wait,” he said, throwing me off. I was about to ask him why when he turned and called for Billy who came in a second later carrying something in his hand. He walked over to Trish without looking around, without saying a word. I think it was the only time I’d ever seen him not smiling. He nodded for Trish to sign and when she was done he grabbed the pen from her hand. That’s when I realized what he was holding was a stamp which he pressed down on bottom of each page. He initialed a few lines under her signature, and with a nod to Preppy on his way out he left without saying a single word.
I gathered the papers and handed them to Preppy who was still standing by the door.
“You’re alright, kid. You know that?” Trish called out just as we were about to leave. “I knew you weren’t going to let that one over there kill me.” She flashed me a rotten toothed smile.
“You’re right,” I turned back around and glared daggers at the reason behind poor Bo’s pain. I stared at her with all the hatred I could muster. “Because if you didn’t sign the papers and do the right thing by Bo, then I would have killed you myself.”
Trish had the audacity to laugh. “So much for understanding a fellow addict,” she grumbled. “For a minute I thought you were like me. But you lied. You’re just another stiff making threats to get what you want.”
I grabbed Preppy’s hand and turned back to Trish. “You’re confusing understanding for sympathy. I understand what you’re going through, but I hated myself when I was going through it and because of what you’ve put Bo through...I hate you even more.”
Preppy helped me down the crumbling steps where Billy was waiting for us, leaning against the van.
“Hang on a sec,” Preppy said, heading back up to the door, he opened it and disappeared inside, re-emerging just a few seconds later?
“What did you do?” I asked, although I was pretty sure he didn’t kill her considering I hadn’t heard any gunfire.
“She wanted payment for Bo,” Preppy said, with a shrug. He opened the van door and I slid inside next to a sleeping Bo who was sprawled out across the bench seat. His chest rising and falling in slow rhythm. “So I gave it to her.”
“You gave her money?” I mouthed, not wanting to wake up Bo.
Preppy smiled wickedly and with his hands on the roof he leaned into the van and whispered in my ear. “Nope. I gave her something she wanted more, and enough of it to almost guarantee she won’t ever be a problem for us.” Preppy kissed me on the cheek and slid the door shut, rounding the van.
Heroin. He’d given her heroin.
Preppy was right. As far gone as Trish was she wouldn’t be able to resist. The chances of her surviving until the morning were slim to...she’d be dead by morning.
I waited for the familiar guilt that used to come all the time, even when it had no reason to. At any second I expected that inner voice of mine to tell me I shouldn’t allow Trish to die.
Nothing.
By the time Preppy popped into the passenger seat and Billy started the van I couldn’t stop the smile from creeping onto my face.
As we pulled out of the trailer park Bo stirred so I pulled him onto my lap and softly stroked his newly cut hair. I took one last look at the dilapidated trailer as we pulled out onto the road, grateful that Bo would never have to spend another second there, never mind another night. The thing wasn’t fit for human habitation. Not for Bo. Not even for Trish.
Bo snored lightly. Preppy leaned back and brushed Bo’s hair out of his eyes and with a loving look in his eyes he gazed down at his son.
Our son.
“I could’ve easily ended up just like her,” I whispered, feeling the tears prickling behind my eyes. Relief and happiness filled me with each rotation of the tires that brought us further and further away from that trailer park.
“No, you could never have ended up like her,” Preppy argued.
“You can’t say that; you don’t know that.”
“You would never have ended up like her,” he said again. “Not fucking EVER.”
“How can you be so sure?” I flattened my hand over Bo’s little cheek feeling the warmth of his skin against my palm. Preppy covered my hand with his much larger one, intertwining our fingers. I looked up to find his eyes glistening as they stared directly into mine. I felt his determination when he said, “Because I wouldn’t have let you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
PREPPY
“I’m sorry it took me so long to visit,” I said as I stood above Grace’s grave, feeling my heart smack against my rib cage like it was angry with me for taking it along for the ride it never asked to go on, pounding against my insides to let him the fuck out.