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Lucy had watched as Sam finally walked into the condo after the group had all hurried inside, as if they’d heard something in there. And that’s when Lucy had seen the knife Sam was carrying.
Lucy had been up and out the door before she’d even realized she was doing it, thinking only one thing.
Oliver.
Once Lucy had approached Sam, she’d tried to get her to leave on her own, but Sam’s hatred of the hippie girl had made it impossible for her to leave now that she had shown herself. She was only going to be satisfied by doing harm, by tearing down any happiness in her path. So Lucy had had no choice. She’d had to call upon a past she’d spent more than twenty years trying to forget. Lucy knew from experience that if you get hit, you can call the police. If there’s physical contact, you can press charges. When she was younger, it had been a tactic Lucy had used as punishment for lovers and drug dealers if she felt ill-used or betrayed. She would pick fights, always making sure that she ended up wounded but the other person bore no marks so the blame would appear to be entirely on them.
Once Sam’s knife had been confiscated by the hippie girl, Lucy had stopped fighting and had simply fallen to the floor and taken Sam’s blows until they’d pulled Sam off. But Lucy’s body wasn’t as resilient as it used to be. She’d treated it too badly over the years. She almost hadn’t made it home. In the old days, she’d be high when she would fight, so she hadn’t felt pain. She hadn’t feltanything,which had been the whole reason for using in the first place—for that blessed, beautiful nothing. Now the pain was so intense it made her teeth chatter.
But Oliver was safe.
And that was all that mattered.
She’d just taken her first drag of her cigarette, hoping the nicotine would take the edge off, when there was a knock on the door. She went still, her cigarette frozen at her lips.
“Aunt Lucy? It’s Oliver.”
She waited for him to go away. But he knocked again.
“Please, Aunt Lucy. I just want to know you’re okay.”
She finally stubbed out the cigarette and lifted herself heavily from the chair, wincing. She wondered if she had a broken rib.
She opened the door only a sliver but concern bloomed across Oliver’s face when he saw her. “She hurt you,” he said.
She put her hand to her cheek, to the long scratches there. The sweat from her palm made them sting. “I’m fine.”
“Thank you,” he said. “For what you did.”
She nodded.
Oliver hesitated. She could see all the questions he wanted to ask. His eyes darted past her into her dark living room. She angled herself slightly so he wouldn’t see his photos on the TV tray.
She began to tremble again, but not from the pain this time.
She had a dream, once. It was the only reason she came back tothe island after prison. She was going to take Oliver. She was going to save him. First her mother betrayed her by not sending her updates and photos like she’d promised, then Lizbeth took over after their mother died. They were always so happy to let Lucy bear the brunt of things, as if Lucy were stronger, meaner, and better able to survive than them. How else to explain the way they just let her father abuse her? And then they seemed to blame her because of how messed up she became as a result. But she hadn’t messed up with Oliver. He was perfect, her one good thing, her tiny baby with dark curly hair and bottle-green eyes. She held him every day for a month before she left to serve her sentence, committing everything about him to memory. Once she got out, a DNA test would prove Oliver was hers, and she would scorch the earth with her vengeance. She didn’t stop to consider how this might affect Oliver. She remembered how small and vulnerable he was, so she figured all she would have to do was grab him and hold him to her like she used to and everything would be fine.
She looked all over the island for him. She didn’t find either him or Lizbeth—they were no longer in the house where Lucy and Lizbeth had grown up—but she did find people from her old drug life, far more than she had anticipated.Theywere right where she’d left them. Her head felt muddied when she was around them, her skin itchy. She stayed on a few couches at first, but she had to leave before she gave in to temptation.
Then out of the blue, one day Frasier found her. He said he knew her sister and understood that Lucy needed someplace to stay. He led her straight to Oliver! She set eyes on him for the first time since he was a baby right here in this magical garden. He was twelve, a young man, nearly grown. She didn’t recognize him. She didn’t know her own child as he peered at her from around a tree.
She’d seen enough counselors in prison to know about bipolar and borderline personality disorders. Childhood abuse. PTSD. Addiction. She could recite all the recovery steps by heart. But none of it had ever really sunken in, like words someone else had written on her skin. She was fine. Everyone else was the problem. Agreeing with the counselors had only been a means to an end. If she agreed, then they would let her out.
But those words on her skin, Oliver could read clearly that day.
The world outside of prison was unexpectedly frightening, from the moment she walked out. She suddenly had the freedom to doanything she wanted.It would be so easy to go back to old habits, as easy as slipping into a warm bath. Oliver was supposed to be her shield from all of that temptation. If she didn’t have Oliver, she didn’t know what would happen to her. She realized in that moment that coming back wasn’t about saving him at all. It was about saving herself. And the only way she could possibly do both was to be as close to him as possible, while staying as far away as she could.
“Aunt Lucy?” Oliver said when she was silent for many moments, one eye peeking at him from around the door. “Are you hungry? Do you need food?”
“No.”
“The police will be here any minute. They’ll probably want a statement.”
She nodded.
“Mom left me her place. I’m going to stay for a while, if that’s all right with you.”
She nodded again. Of course it was all right with her. She would get to watch him every day, just like she used to before he left—a reminder that she was capable of at least one good thing.
