Page 34 of Recovering Ivy

“No, he knows about you, Ivy, Joey’s sister. He’s known all along.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Is it? Because I have a hooker in lockup that says otherwise.”

“What?”

Zane spent the next thirty minutes filling me in on what Destiny… Amy, I couldn’t think of her by her street name, had told him. And in the two hours he’d been waiting for me she’d told Declan more. Forester was using hookers to sell his drugs to other prostitutes and their Johns. That didn’t surprise me, he was a scumbag. The devastating part was Joey had told him about me, and he’d used me to control her.

“It’s my fault she’s dead,” I cried.

“Don’t go there. Nothing is your fault.”

“She wanted to leave. Maybe she could’ve gotten out if he didn’t know about me.”

“I’m gonna say this once, and it’s gonna fucking hurt, so brace, baby. Joanna’s choices were hers. She chose that life. You tried to pull her out of it when she was a kid and she chose to stay in it. She could’ve gone to the police, she could’ve warned you, she could’ve chosen a different path. Bottom line is, she didn’t. Everything that happened was her fault. Not yours. And not the shit parents she had or the way she was brought up. We all have choices in life. She chose poorly and bore the consequences for those choices.”

“But she wanted out.”

“How many times did you hear that?” he asked.

A lot.

Each and every time she hit bottom and got arrested she promised that was it, she was getting help.

“I’m a sucker. I talk a big game and say, I’m done and I don’t care. But then I’d see her high out of her head or going through withdrawals and I’d cave. I’d think, this was the time she’d get clean. I wanted better for her. I thought I could want it enough for her.”

“You’re not a sucker, baby. No one likes to see family in pain. But it never mattered how much you wanted it for her. She had to want it. She had to make the choice to change.”

“Why me? Why’d I get out? What makes me any better?” I’d struggled with those questions for years.

“Because you’re stronger than she was. You took what you saw and instead of following you used it to become the strong, independent woman you are. You didn’t want that life, so you made it so you didn’t.”

“But I’m fucked up.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“No. You don’t understand. I’m a horrible person.”

Without warning, Zane had scooped me up in his arms and walked back to the couch, situating me on his lap and let me cry. It felt good to let it out. The death of my stepsister, my shit mother, the last few months following Forester. Everything had taken its toll. I was nearing my breaking point. I hated remembering my childhood; the vicious memories always gutted me.

“When I was seven, I walked into the house after school and saw my mom on the couch. The belt was still wrapped around her bicep and the needle was in her arm. I stood in the doorway and hoped she was dead.” He didn’t speak. He simply held me while I sniveled in his lap. “A short time after that, she woke me up in the middle of the night, shoving a butcher knife toward me, asking me to cut the snakes off her arms. She was having some kind of bad trip and kept screaming there were things coming out of her arms. She was bleeding and freaking out and wanted me to cut her. I prayed that time she’d bleed to death. I wanted my nightmare to be over.”

“Baby,” he whispered.

“My whole life is filled with stories like that. Sarah getting high in front of me and me wishing she were dead. What kind of person does that make me?”

“It makes you a child who wanted to survive.”

“By wishing her mother dead?”

“No, by wanting your nightmare to be over. Baby, no child should ever have to see what you’ve seen. You’re strong. You survived it and made a good life for yourself.”

I picked my head up off his chest, laughed, and gestured around the room.

“A good life? I have nothing. I’m broke. I sold everything I had so I could move to Annapolis after Joey died. The thought of Forester getting away with murdering my sister was appalling.”

“Objects and possessions don’t make a good life. You’re a good person. That’s what matters.”