“Think hard.”
“I’m tired of thinking.” Her eyes had a sheen that looked more like oil than water. “That’s all I’ve been doing since I got home—thinking how Adam’s life was cursed on account of me. It wasn’t his fault I fell for Jack, or that A.J. could never look at him without picturing what I’d done. I was kind of relieved when A.J. finally ran off with that whore from New Hampshire. It seemed like a good omen. Then Adam got into ASA, and for a while it seemed like his luck—our luck—might have been turning around. He was winning ski races. Getting OK grades. Why’d he have to meet that cunt Alexa Davidson?”
Smoke had begun to slither toward me across the room. “I know you’re grieving, but—”
“Adam was raped in prison,” she said, lapsing back into monotone. “He told me about it one day when I went to visit. Just broke down into tears and called me ‘Mommy’ and whispered what they’d done to him. One of them bit off part of his ear! He’d been trying to act so tough before, like he could take care of himself. I’d been trying to tell myself not to worry, and then all my worries came true. He begged me not to say anything to the guards, said it would be even worse if I did. I remember coming out of the prison, and it was seventy degrees and bright sunshine, and I realized it was the worst day of my life. Until today.”
Suddenly, she let out a curse as the cigarette burned her finger. Reflexively, she dropped the butt to the carpet, where it continued to smolder. She watched it, unmoving, uncaring, until the ember died.
“I would have done anything for my son,” she said. “And I mean anything. I would’ve let every HIV-positive scumbag in that prison gangbang me if it meant they left Adam alone. I would have traded places with him in a second.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. “It must have been hard for you.”
“Not as hard as when he got out,” she said. “I thought it was going to be a second chance for him—for us. But Adam had already given up. ‘You know what the worst thing is, Mom?’ he said. ‘The worse thing is they’ll never stop punishing me. Any other crime—I could’ve run over a kid or stabbed someone in a bar—and eventually they’d say, “All right, you’ve paid your debt to society, go live your life.” But they’re never going to let me pay my debt,’ he said. ‘Every time I ask a girl out now, she’s going to Google my name. “Once a sex offender, always a sex offender.” And all I did was have sex with my girlfriend.’”
Amber reached for her lighter again and her pack of Capri cigarettes.
“Did you end up going out to Don Foss’s place?” she asked, seemingly out of nowhere.
“I did.”
“That self-righteous asshole. I don’t trust him, and neither did Adam. What kind of person takes in sex offenders like stray puppies, then works them for slave wages? There’s something weird about that man. Holier-than-thou, my ass.”
The tobacco fumes swirling around the room had begun to make me light-headed.
“Maybe Foss really does believe in redemption,” I said.
“Adam hated living there. Said it made him feel even worse about himself, sleeping in the same bunkhouse with actual perverts. There was one guy who had done twenty years for raping a toddler. And another guy who used to be a wrestling coach. He’d molested dozens of boys. You know what Adam said to me? He said, ‘Mom, someone should take a match to this place and burn it to the ground.’”
I remembered what Davdison had told me about Adam’s having a black eye.
“Did Adam mention anyone in particular to you?” I asked. “Anyone he was afraid of at Foss’s?”
“He said prison burned the fear out of him. It was true, I think. How can you be afraid if you don’t care if you live or die?”
“Maybe fear is the wrong word, then. Did he have any enemies?”
When she laughed, she opened her mouth wide, revealing her missing molar. “My son didn’t have anything but enemies!” She leaned her head back to study the smoke-stained ceiling. “What does it matter? It’s too late anyway.”
“We don’t know that.”
“It’s too late,” she repeated. “Adam is dead. I’m his mother, and we’ve got a special connection. As soon as I heard the news tonight about the truck, I felt the knife go through my heart. He’s dead, and I’m done.”
I wanted to shake her. “Amber, you asked me to help you find Adam, and that’s what I’m still trying to do. I’m not giving up hope yet, and you shouldn’t, either.”
“What do you care?”
“I care because he’s my brother.” I rose to my feet and stood over her limp body. “If you’re telling the truth.”
She measured me with her eyes, all the way from head to toe. Then she stubbed out the cigarette and climbed awkwardly to her feet. “Do you want to see his room? Come on, I’ll show it to you.”