Page 13 of Wicked Promises

“Can you tell me about your adventures?” I stall. “Where you’ve been, or…”

“I’ve been dealing with a loss,” she told me. She kept tapping her finger against her arm. Crossed and uncrossed them. Shifted her weight. “And coping the only way I know how.”

I sighed. “What is it now?”

I knew it was drugs. Ms. McCaw and Lydia Asher had both told me, in very different ways, that my mother was giving up her parental rights. She’d been checked into a rehabilitation centeronly a few months after Dad was locked up, but that didn’t seem to solve anything.

They let her go when the state funding dried up, and as soon as she had something to barter, she was getting high.

I blamed Dad for her addiction. But while I hated him for what she’d become, I couldn’t give her the same level of loathing. Some little voice in the back of my head whispered that it wasn’t her fault.

I wondered who she’d lost. Dad, maybe?

“You could go see Dad,” I suggested. “If you’re feeling like he’s gone.”

She scowled.

It’d been four years. Maybe she saw him and didn’t want to tell me. She tended to be petty like that. Everything was my fault in her eyes, just like her addiction was Dad’s.

Simple… but sometimes I wondered how we got here.

“Margo, I need to go.” She inched closer. “You were right. I’ve been traveling a lot. I had a job in the city, but I was late because my car broke down, and they fired me…”

“What do you need?”

She turned away from me. I hated the sharp angles of her body. She used to be soft—someone worth hugging. Now, her bones threatened to slice through her skin every time she moved. There were pockmarks not only on her neck and face, but track marks in the crooks of her elbows. I saw them even when she tried to hide.

“If you can’t help me, I’ll leave.” She took three quick steps back, her shoes scraping on the concrete.

“I can find something.” I reached for her, but she was already out of range. “Please. I don’t have anything right now, but?—”

If I couldn’t make her stay, she wouldn’t come back.

“It can’t wait.” Mom shifted again, pulling at the hem of her shirt. Strands of dark hair slid from the clip on top of her headand caught in the wind. She finally turned around and walked away. She went down the sidewalk like she wasn’t fleeing from her daughter.

The pain started slow, but it grew the farther away she got. There wasn’t a kind word she could’ve said to staunch the flow. Not that she would’ve said it.

“Take care of yourself,” I whispered. She was out of earshot, so it didn’t even really matter. I’d only said it to make myself feel better.

A tear slipped down my cheek.

I hastily wiped it away and glanced back at the house. The new coat of paint, the manicured lawn. Nothing but the ivy burrowed in the stucco walls, gripping like its life depended on it, betrayed what was on the inside. Rotten hearts.

They wouldn’t notice if I went for a walk.

All my belongings were on my back anyway. Shirt, pants, shoes. I reached into my pocket and ran my finger across the threads of the blue-and-gold bracelet. I stopped wearing it some time ago, afraid it would fray and break. But I didn’t trust this house. It stayed in my pocket, safe and comforting.

Mom didn’t want me. The foster system certainly didn’t want me.

Caleb…

I exhaled, and my stomach cramped. I missed him, but he was so far away. There was no chance of his family taking me in. The angry look on his mom’s face, the way she told me, with no small amount of gleeful malice, that my mother wouldn’t be taking custody of me…

No one would take me.

Maybe I’d just keep walking until I found someone who did.

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