Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 96802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
There were still three blocks ahead of me when I began to bring the car to a crawl. It wasn’t the kind of neighborhood to leave a brand-new Mercedes idling. Not if I wanted to find it where I’d left it when I came back. But I couldn’t exactly park it in the driveway either.
I didn’t even know if I wanted to see my mom.
It had been nearly five years.
I could remember the day in its entirety as if it were a movie I’d watched over and over and over again. She’d begged me to come see her. To meet her at the house, so she could “fawn over” me. I’d gotten the job at Poise about six months before. Josh and I had only been dating three months. She pretended to be proud. Her little girl off to conquer the world.
But it was a pretense. I could see it in her eyes. It was the same look she’d given me as a kid when she thought she’d come in to some new money to pay for her problem.
And at first, it wasn’t her fault. When I was a toddler, only three or four years old, she’d gotten into a horrific car accident on her way to pick me up from daycare. They’d had to remove the doors to get her out of the car. I’d seen pictures of it. It was beyond comprehension that she’d lived.
What they hadn’t accounted for… was that she’d live with the chronic pain of the accident.
Like any good doctor, he wanted to manage the pain. But at that time, there wasn’t enough information about opioids. Or the information was a lie. And what had started out as managing pain turned into full-blown addiction within a couple years.
No matter how many times we tried to get her to stop, to treat the pain with marijuana or go to a rehab facility, the drug had her in its grasp.
And that day that I went to see her, she saw me as the dollar signs.
I’d put up with her bullshit as a kid. Hated myself for it in my teens. Thought I’d finally escaped in college and law school. And realized in that moment when she asked me for money to further her addiction that I’d never escape.
When I said no, she railed against me. Screamed in my face. Called me every horrible name I’d ever imagined. And then she threw something at me. Her favorite coffee mug. I cried out as it hit me in the jaw and then shattered on the linoleum floor.
She tried to run after me as I raced to my car with tears streaming down my face.
“Baby, baby, I didn’t mean it,” she cried. “I just need the money. You know I need the money. What will I do without it?”
I looked at her then. Hopeless, ragged, refusing help after she just struck me, her only child, and knew then it was over. “That’s all you care about. The money. The drugs. If you won’t get help, then I can’t help you.”
She spat more vitriol at me, even as I sped away and promised myself that I’d never come back.
Yet here I was. A block from her house. I could see her driveway from where I sat in the car.
I eased the car forward until I slowly moved in front of the tiny two-bedroom that I’d called home all those years ago. The front curtains were pulled back. I could see my mother standing in the kitchen, taking a drink out of the refrigerator. She popped the top on the can, opened a pill bottle nearby, and swallowed the pills and the drink together.
I frowned. Of course she had.
I followed my mom as she walked into the living room and handed the drink to a man seated on the same sofa she’d had when I was a kid.
I didn’t know who he was. How could I? But I knew the type. After my dad had left, there had been a string of guys she dated. It got to the point where my dad didn’t want me to stay in the house with them. My every other weekend with my mom became only when he really needed someone to watch me. I should have given my dad more credit for that. I hadn’t understood when I was young.
I knew what would happen if I knocked on that door.
The same old.
My mom looked happy now. But she wouldn’t be happy to see me. Because I wasn’t going to give her money. I wasn’t going to go back into that toxicity. And if she was still popping pills, then had anything really changed?
I swallowed back my own sadness and then pushed the pedal to take me away from the sight before me. I’d seen what I needed to see. I’d made the right decision five years ago when I cut her out of my life.