Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 78631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
But I don’t have all the details, so my feelings for this woman are ambivalent. Part of me wants to offer comfort—comfort for the loss of not one but two children.
The bigger part of me wants to punch her into next week. Take out a gun and shoot her even.
“All right.”
“You could find all these records,” she says. “About Dragon. About Griffin.”
“Juvenile records are usually sealed,” I say. “Don’t you think Dragon would’ve found them before now if he could have?”
“I don’t know what Dragon would do.” She sighs. “I don’t even know the man.”
I shake my head. “The man? You mean your son.”
“Only biologically. I gave up my rights as his mother. Felix gave up his rights as his father.” Her face twists slightly, but she doesn’t shed a tear. “At the time, we thought it was the best thing.”
“Let me ask you this, Mrs. Locke. If a social worker had not suggested that Dragon be removed from your home, would you have given him up?”
She doesn’t answer.
At this point, I’m not sure I would trust anything she says anyway. I believe her when she says that time in her life was a blur. Especially if she and her husband were on drugs. It couldn’t have been easy to give up her son. But she did it. I suppose the question is whether she and Dragon’s father gave him up willingly or if they were coerced into doing so by a social worker.
But at this point? None of that even matters. It won’t change anything about Dragon’s past. It won’t bring Griffin back.
But it might help Dragon to know it.
“Can you answer that question for me?”
“I don’t really remember, and that’s the God’s honest truth.”
“Did you ever have any regrets about giving Dragon away?”
She closes her eyes, breathing in deeply. “After Griffin was taken, Felix had a lot of regrets. He wanted to go back and get Dragon.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I just couldn’t. What kind of mother gives up her child and then changes her mind?” She folds her arms across her chest. “I didn’t really miss him. He was never my baby after Griffin came along. He would have just reminded me of her.”
I jump to my feet then, my hands curling into fists. I walk toward her, stand right in front of her as she sits on the sofa. “Look at me, Mrs. Locke.”
Reluctantly, she tilts her chin upward and meets my gaze.
“You are the worst kind of human being on the planet,” I say to her. “And you deserve to live in this hellhole. You deserve everything you fucking get.”
I leave the trailer, slamming the door. I walk down the rickety wooden steps and—
“Oh!”
I cry out as the wood splinters beneath me fall. My ankle hits the hard ground, and a sharp pain shoots up my leg. I reach my hand out instinctively and cut it on the wood.
My ankle is throbbing as I attempt to get up.
I try to walk on it, and pain slices through me as if a knife is cutting into my left ankle.
“Mrs. Locke!” I yell.
A moment later the door opens. Her eyes are wide. “What happened to you?”
“Your rickety old stairs broke under my weight,” I say. “My ankle is killing me. It hurts to walk.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
Is this woman for real?
“Nothing, I guess. I’ll just stay here until an ambulance arrives.” I wrangle my phone out of my purse and call 9-1-1.
“Shit. Are you going to sue me?”
It would serve her right, but she doesn’t have a pot to piss in, and I have health insurance in addition to my trust fund.
“No,” I say.
“Good. Then you still owe me a hundred bucks for the information I gave you.”
And I can’t help myself.
In spite of the pain, the blood dripping from my hand, the ache in my heart for Dragon and his little sister, I burst out laughing.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dragon
My heart nearly stops.
“What did you say?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“Her daughter. Your sister has a daughter. You have a niece.”
“Who the fuck is the father?”
No response.
I already know the answer. This degenerate is the father of my sister’s child.
“How old is this daughter?”
He gulps. I can actually hear it through the phone line.
“I’m waiting…” I say again through gritted teeth.
I’m well aware that I need to watch my tone with this man. He could easily hang up, and then I may never hear from him again.
But my fists are clenched, the hair on the back of my neck standing at attention. My stomach is in knots, and my heartbeat is racing.
“Her daughter’s name is Bridget,” he finally says. “And she’s thirteen.”
I quickly do the math in my head. Griffin would be twenty-seven years old now, which means, if her daughter is thirteen, she was…
Fuck.
Jesus fuck.