Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 80664 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80664 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Preppy was right, but there was no way I would ever know if she was telling the truth. I wouldn’t put long and prolonged torture past Chop, but why would he lie to everyone about it? There was more to the story, and I didn’t know if Sadie was lying, or if she truly didn’t remember.
She cleared her throat and my eyes fell to her long hair which she was twisting in her hand. It was a lot longer than it was in my memory, touching her waist, and the almost black was now streaked with white. The wrinkles around her eyes were more prominent, her signature red lipstick was gone, her lips bare as well as the rest of her face.
“I signed in with a different name. Plus, after I leave here today, I’m disappearing. For good. I just…I just needed to come, I guess. I had to see you first before I was really gone for good this time.” She picked at her nails.
I no longer had to hide my smile because it had disappeared as quick as it had come. “What do you expect from me? A big hug and an ‘I missed you, Mommy’?” I leaned back and crossed my arms over my chest.
She ran her fingers over a long faded scar on her forehead that ran into her hairline. She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I was looking for by coming here. It was selfish of me to come, but I had to. I had to tell you what he’d done do me. You needed to hear what kind of man your father is.”
“I know all to well what kind of man he is.” I said, leaning forward.
Sadie shuffled in her seat. “I think he did it. Kept me alive I mean because he thought I told on the club, but I didn’t. Maybe he thought death wasn’t good enough a punishment. It wasn’t good enough to end my life, he wanted to take it and make me suffer more instead of putting me out of my misery.” Sadie sniffled and that’s when I noticed her glassy eyes. “You know? I hope to Christ I never do remember what really happened. I pray that it always stays a mystery.” She pushed her chair back from the table, scraping it along the linoleum, but remained seated. “Because something tells me there is nothing he did to me I’d want to remember.” She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and suddenly the void look from earlier was back. The sniffling stopped.
“Why the getup?” I asked, gesturing to the light blue scrubs she was wearing.
She glanced down and pinched the hem of the top. “If anyone questions who your visitor was, or if Chop gets wind, hopefully they will be looking for a nurse.”
“Why even risk it at all?”
Sadie ignored my question. She sighed and looked up at my face like she was observing me. “You have his eyes,” she said, staring right into my eyes. I shifted uncomfortably on the hard plastic chair. “You look so much like him, when you first came out I thought you were him.”
“I’m nothing like him,” I barked.
“You’re in here,” she argued.
“I’m here because I chose to be here. Don’t get it twisted in that doped-up mind of yours. You don’t know me. You don’t know the shit I’ve done that’s bad, and it’s worse than you could ever imagine. You don’t know the shit I’ve done that’s good either, and it’s better than you could ever know.”
“It’s for a girl,” she said. It wasn’t a question. The corner of her lip turned up in a half smile.
“So what if it is?”
“It means you might just be human after all.” She pointed out. She seemed to relax, satisfied with her new discovery. “You got that from my side of the family, no doubt.”
“Family?” I asked, scoffing at her casual use of a word she knew nothing about.
“I AM your family,” she argued, “I just wanted to be—”
“I’ve got family,” I interrupted. “You don’t gotta be nothing.”
“Andria? Is that who you’re talking about?” she asked, I hated the way she said my half-sister’s name, like it disgusted her. Andria was family, even though I hadn’t seen her in many years. She was the product of a brief affair Chop had with a waitress in Georgia. Andria should thank her lucky fucking stars she wasn’t born a boy because I had a feeling that if she would have been born with a dick she would’ve been wearing a cut just like me. “Yeah, but she’s not who I was talking about.”
She again looked down at her lap. “My Abel. My boy. I think that you and I should—”
“McAdams!” a deep voice bellowed. “Time’s up. Stand,” the guard ordered. By pulling on the back of my chair, he forced me to obey.
“You should know I’m not a Bastard anymore,” I said to the ghost of my mother. “I took off my cut and laid it at that motherfucker’s feet. I might not be a monster, but I am a dead man, so I guess it’s good you came to see me, even if you don’t know why you came.” I stood up, sliding the plastic chair against the concrete, startling Sadie who looked up at me with big hazel eyes filled with sadness and naivety, as if she was still the teenager who gave birth to me almost thirty years before. “Get a good look at me now while you can, Mom,” I said, emphasizing “Mom” and holding my arms as wide open as the cuffs attached to my wrists would allow. “’Cause it might just be the last chance you’re ever gonna get.” The officer yanked on the chains connecting my cuffs, dragging me away from Sadie.
From my mother. Even thinking of her as my mother didn’t feel right.
Because, I realized. I already had a mother, even if I didn’t address her as mom she was someone who’d earned the title.