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Ray loomed over my shoulder as I searched through archives and the internet on one of the library’s computers. She held a cup of coffee in hand and took a sip before offering it to me.
“Thanks,” I muttered, keeping my eyes on the screen as I gulped it down, then winced at how sweet she liked it to be. There had to be an entire bag of sugar in that mug. “Jesus, your teeth aregonnarot out of your head.”
She giggled, taking the cup back and clutching it right to her chest, protecting it as a mother would her child. “That’s what my mom always says.”
“Yeah, well, she’s not wrong.” I sucked at my teeth. “I feel like my whole mouth was just sandblasted.”
“Oh, stop. It’s not that bad.”
“Sure … if you don’t mind chewing your coffee.” I shot a teasing glance over my shoulder.
Ray only laughed before taking a hearty sip and humming with dramatic satisfaction.
Shaking my head, I returned my attention to the computer screen and scrolled through the articles for anything related to a woman named Diane Mason. Anything mentioning drugs. Anything that might point me in the right direction. And even though a lot came up in the search, none of it had anything to do with my mother, and my time was running out before I had to get back to the store.
“Like finding a needle in a haystack,” I grumbled as Ray took a seat on my lap. I wrapped my arm around her and sighed, pressing my cheek to her shoulder. “I should’ve come by later when I had more time.”
She frowned sympathetically. “I didn’t think it would be so—wait, what’s that?”
“What’s what?”
Ray pointed at the screen. “Right there.”
“Man dies in accident. Woman arrested on the scene,” I muttered, reading the headline, then scrolled down further to see a picture of—you guessed it—my mother. “Well, holy shit, this has to be it.”
“Your mom is gorgeous,” Ray said, gawking at the picture of a much younger version of Diane Mason, one I used to know. The one I’d called Mommy, the one I’d once thought walked on water. “God, you look so much like her.”
“Fantastic,” I grumbled bitterly, frowning as I read.
A twenty-four-year-old man was killed in a car accident yesterday at the corner of Lake and Shaw. Police say David Stratton was driving the car when it lost control and struck a tree. Also in the car was his girlfriend, Diane Mason (24), who survived the accident but sustained minor injuries. Controlled substances were found in the vehicle following the crash, and Mason was arrested at the scene. Hours later, she was released from police custody after no drugs were found in her system. Legal action will not be pursued.
“Wow,” Ray uttered quietly once we were both finished reading. “Her boyfriend was killed. That’s so sad.”
“Yeah …”
I tried to resist feeling any kind of empathy toward my mother, but it was hard as I looked at the grainy picture of thetotaledcar after the wreck that had taken the life of her significant other. She had suffered a major loss, and I hadn’t known about it until now. Was that what had sent her down a path of destruction? Could grief have been the culprit?
I sucked in a breath of heavy air, allowing that familiar ache to gnaw away at my heart again, until their ages and the date on the article sank in.
“I was six,” I said, thinking out loud. “This was right before Christmas. My grandparents told me she had just gone on one of her little trips, which I eventually assumed meant rehab. But …” I wipeda handover my mouth and shook my head. “She’d been in an accident, arrested, and then …”
“Maybe she went to rehab after that,” Ray offered, shrugging.
“Yeah, probably. But she was in afreakin’ fatal car crash.” I scoffed incredulously. “How the hell did they not say anything to me? I mean, why—”
“You were alittle kid, Soldier. Maybe … maybe they didn’t want you to be afraid. You said they always protected you from the stuff she was up to, so obviously, they wanted to protect you from this too.”
I knew she was right. God, logic told me that she was. Hadn’t I been saying it all along? But this newfound knowledge, the reality that my mother had been in a fatal accident when I was six years old, made the thought of simple protection seem so far-fetched and absurd and … fuck, it was socruel.
What ifshehad died? Would Gramma and Grampa have even told me?
Of coursethey would’ve, I told myself, pressing my white-knuckled fist to my mouth.Don’t be stupid. You know they would’ve said something if she had died.
Yeah, but how can you be sure of that now, knowing this? You don’t even know how long she was in the hospital. You don’t even know what her injuries were. You didn’t even know about—
“Stratton,” I blurted out too loudly, earning myself a couple of questionable looks from others in the library.
“Huh?” Ray narrowed her eyes at the screen as I sat up higher and pointed at his name.
