Pixie bit her lower lip and breathed deeply. She shook her head and wiped the tears threatening to leak.
Dred looked tired. His hair was tied back off his face. She’d missed the gold flecks in his eyes, missed the way one side of his mouth lifted before the other when he smiled, she’d just all around missed him. He also had a puddle of what looked like spit-up on his shoulder.
“Your daughter’s beautiful,” she managed.
“Yeah,” he said, his gaze shifting in Petal’s direction. “She is, isn’t she?” He studied her for a moment, then looked back at the camera. “I’m sorry, Pix. With every part of me, I regret behaving like a complete asshole. I should have listened and not stormed off like a jerk. You deserved so much more than that. But I’m here, and I want to know. Can you tell me about it?”
Pixie walked over to the couch and sat down. “I was thirteen when Arnie, who is my stepdad, came to live with us. He was a small-time dealer in Pahokee. The trailer was never big enough for the three of us. Slowly but surely, Mom started to use. Recreational at first, but over the course of the year she was using almost daily.” She looked at Dred’s concerned face, wishing they were having this conversation face-to-face. “I was fourteen when he first threatened to kill my mom if I didn’t sit on a stool with my sundress wide open so he could jerk off while looking at me.”
“Fuck,” Dred mumbled and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, Snowflake. If I’d known, I would have crushed the fucker where he stood. Did he . . . Shit. Did he . . . sexually assault you?”
Pixie shook her head. “No. And yes. He was a voyeur. And he got off on embarrassing me. He’d make me sit and watch porn with him at fifteen.” The tears came, but it was useless trying to stop them. “Sometimes he’d touch me inappropriately or get me to stand naked and read stories to him. Shit. I’ve had years of therapy, but things still get tangled in my head when I think about it.”
“Tying your wrists?” Dred asked.
“Yeah. He’d do that, but I’d fight sometimes, especially when he invited his friends to watch. One day, he forced me to take two pills. I had no idea what they were, but when they kicked in, I could escape. Nothing mattered. I could slip away from what was happening and pretend I was something or someone all together different. Then next time, he didn’t need to force me to take them. Eventually I started to ask for them. At the time, I thought it was one of the only things I was in control of, but I realized in rehab it was pure addiction.”
They sat in silence for a while, Pixie lost in her thoughts, Dred obviously trying to process everything she was telling him.
“There’s something else. He was trying to blackmail me. I’ve never told anyone the why. Not my therapists, not Trent and Cujo, my sponsor kind of guessed, but you need to know.”
“I’m here, Snowflake. And I really wish I was fucking there with you right now.” He glanced toward Petal.
Strangely, Pixie felt her confidence building. They were going to come through the other side of it if Dred could accept the one fact she still hadn’t told him. “I wanted out. The day before my sixteenth birthday I had packed a bag, planning to run the next day because school would no longer care if I showed up or not. That night, Arnie had some of his friends over. They were playing poker. He told me to sit on my stool like a good girl. The pot was larger than I had ever seen. Arnie played dealer. When the last player went out, and only Brewster, a friend of Arnie’s, was left, Arnie split the pot in half. He gave half to Brewster, and then walked over to me, told me to open wide. I looked between Brewster and Arnie. I just knew. I was the prize. I shook my head, but Arnie forced my head back and dropped powder into my mouth. I couldn’t spit it out. It stuck to my gums and coated my tongue.
He looked at Brewster, and told him to give it a minute, and walked out of the trailer.”
Dred leapt to his feet and started to pace. It was hard to focus on the screen as the background bobbed about. She saw him reach for the anchor he always pulled on, but it wasn’t there.
“Come to me, Pix. I spoke to Trent this morning. He said you could fly up here tomorrow morning. I’ll get you on the early flight. Please, come be with me, and little-miss-poopy-pants over there. We’re a package deal now.”
She took a deep breath. The hardest part. “There’s one more thing. I—”
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is. We need to talk some more. And we have enough shit to deal with to fill the SkyDome twice over. But let’s deal with it together.”
“Dred . . . I killed Brewster.”
*