The memory of his broken body, his eyes staring lifelessly at the starry sky above would never leave me. Sometimes all I had to do was blink and I was looking at him lying there again, clutching onto his hand and begging him not to leave me. That night tore me apart, ripped me open and stole everything from me in one fell swoop.
“Troy Memphis was on his phone and some other people arrived, calling for ambulances and the police. But when they came, they didn’t arrest him. The police chief greeted him like an old friend, wrapping an arm around him, comforting him. I didn’t realise what that meant at the time but when they took my Mom away it began to sink in… My memories of the rest of that night aren’t that clear. An ambulance took Michael’s body away and another brought me to the hospital to get patched up. When I was released, I was put in emergency foster care. My mom was charged with drunk driving and running a red light even though she hadn’t done any of it. Even though it was him. Troy Memphis in his top of the range bullet proof car that smashed through ours like cannon fire.We used all of the money she’d worked for to pay my school fees on a top lawyer but of course, all of our money was nothing at all to him. He had even better lawyers prosecuting, no one would listen to our side of the story, he’d paid off officials and the chief of police, hell he probably paid off the judge too. In the end they upped her sentence to eighteen years because they claimed she’d caused Michael’s death by dangerous driving as well as being under the influence. It was a fucking farce. All of it. She never drank. We’d had coke floats. And when she was sent to jail, I was given a permanent place in a group foster home. But I didn’t give up. I wrote to newspapers, posted online, created petitions, even managed to find some security footage from that night which showed his car swerving all over the road a couple of blocks away from the site of the crash. Mom sold the house, we got a new lawyer and we were working on an appeal.”
“Did he stop that from going through too?” Tatum asked as I paused, her fingers still stroking back and forth along my ribs. It was soothing in the most instinctive way. Like that touch against my flesh was her way of letting her soul connect to mine. Of saying she could feel my pain and she understood it. That it hurt her too.
“Of course,” I scoffed bitterly. “But not in the way I’d expected. One afternoon I was leaving the lawyer’s office downtown and this van pulled up beside me in the street. These huge guys yanked me inside it before I even knew what was happening. We drove for fucking ages with me rattling around in the back and these fucking psychos just sitting there glaring at me, as we headed right out of town and up into the mountains. We came to a stop and they shoved me out again in this clearing in the woods. There was another car parked up, some stupidly expensive thing with blacked out windows. Troy Memphis got out of the car and a boy followed him. Saint must have only been about seven but the way his upper lip curled back as he looked at me told me he was already well on his way to becoming a monster just like his father. Troy told me that it was over, that I needed to stop dwelling in the past and move on with my life. He said he was sorry that it had had to come to this, but that it was my fault for not just letting the past stay there. I didn’t know what he was talking about at the time and I remember asking him why. Why had he done this to my mother after what he’d done to Michael. And he said because we live in a world where most people are ants and a few of us are giants. And sometimes the ants must get squashed so the giants can rise. Then he shoved me into the dirt and told me I’d be next if I didn’t leave it alone. I looked up as he stalked away and found Saint staring down back at me. And he was smiling.”
My grip on Tatum tightened until I was sure I must have been hurting her, but she didn’t flinch or wriggle away from me. She just held me, her hand stroking back and forth on my side, the material of my wifebeater the only thing parting our skin and for a moment I let myself forget what she was and just enjoyed holding her in my arms. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done that. I wasn’t even sure if I’d done it at all since my family was destroyed.
“They drove off and left me up there. I managed to make it back to the road and walked for hours before a passing car pulled over and offered me a ride. By the time I got back to the foster home, I found the police waiting for me, those falsely sad faces they give as they offer up condolences about someone they never even knew. The said my mom got into a fight in prison
