Page 571 of Not Over You

“She showed some interest in Sonny. He rocked her gypsy soul for some reason. He had a motorbike. Something his mom went nuts over. But his dad liked it, so he used to help him hide it. Sonny and Janis got serious really fast. Well, he did. A few guys tried to warn him. She was a shameless flirt. But he’d hit anyone who said anything about her. He couldn’t see it. He was the poster boy for a guy blinded by love. She gets pregnant right before graduation.”

“Lucila.”

He nods. “Lucila. His parents forced the marriage. Hers wanted nothing to do with her. Janis fought the marriage some because she had plans. She wanted to travel the world while having sex on different foreign soils. Don’t believe me? I have a yearbook at home with the proof. That’s what she wrote.”

I make a motion to go ahead. I believe him.

“You can imagine how unhappy she was. She was a girl whose biggest goal was to screw on foreign dirt—be a free spirit. But what can she do? Her parents disowned her. She had nothing. Sonny was her best option. I’m not saying she didn’t care for him at all, at first, but she wasn’t the type made for a long-term commitment. To be honest, I didn’t think he was, either. But he surprised the shit out of me. He got a good job on the river and hustled day and night to support her. She had Lucila, and a year or so later, Ava came. That’s Lucila’s little sister.”

“I figured that.”

“Smart ass,” he says. Squeeze. Balloon. “I don’t know how many years pass at this point, but here’s where things get bad, or sad, if you’re looking at it from the kids’ point of view. I’m not sure when it started, but Janis was having multiple affairs on Sonny. He either had no clue or he pretended not to. I don’t think he was pretending. I honestly believe the poor bastard was working hard to give her and the kids everything they wanted. But he was too blinded by his own fatigue to notice. She came on to me at a bar once.”

“How nice for you,” I say.

He shrugs. “No matter how you spin this, temptress or not, she was hot. It went as far as flirting, but she got freaked when she remembered who I was. That still blows my mind, though. She was having an affair with her neighbor at one point. It’s not like she wasn’t taking risks.”

“If Sonny is working day and night, where were Lucila and Ava when she’s having these affairs?” I sit up some, truly interested in what he’s going to say next.

“Funny you should ask. Ava made a comment to a fellow student. She told her that her mom gave her a ‘potion.’ Not just at night, but during the day, too. She told her it was magical, and it worked at all times. Once she and her sister took it—” He closes his eyes and makes a zzzz noise. “The teacher thought it was odd, because for a while she’d noticed how groggy Ava was when she came to class. She’d have to sleep for a few hours to really get energized. First the teacher thought she wasn’t sleeping at night, but then Ava made the comment, and it made the teacher suspicious. She gets with Lucila’s teacher, and she confirms the same thing. Lucila comes in really groggy, and it takes her a while to wake up.”

“Janis was giving them something?”

“Hold up, Romeo.” He holds his hands up. “Let me finish.”

I nod and he continues.

“Both teachers go to the nurse. She questions both girls. Both say they take a ‘potion’ Janis gives them. The nurse asked them when, and they both basically say, whenever. Both say it makes them sleepy after. The staff knows the situation at home, so instead of going to Janis, they get in touch with Sonny. He swore up and down the girls were not taking anything. Neither of them was sick or needed meds to help them sleep. He thought the girls were just making it up.”

“They weren’t.”

“No.” He places his hands on the desk, keeping the ball between them. “Sonny went to Molly. She works for your dad.” He continues after I nod. “He left for work one night and Molly watched the house. Sure enough, about ten o’clock or so, mom of the year left. No girls with her. Molly had a key, so she crept over and found the girls knocked out. Normal for a school night, but it was Friday. And the bottles she found in the cabinets? Even less normal. Janis was giving them all sorts of shit to sleep. Not all of it made for children.” He lifts his brows.

“Instead of Sonny drilling into her, he decided to confront her. Janis swore she wasn’t giving them anything. She was the one taking it to help her sleep. He went on a rampage and cleared the house of everything Molly had found. She gave him the crying act. The I wanted to travel the world but I’m here with you instead! sob story. Her favorite thing to hold over his head was the fact that he didn’t have a condom on him and Lucila was conceived because of it. Sonny told Janis she had to get help. She agreed. The son of bitch believed her, but he wasn’t so blinded anymore.

“Molly was in his ear. Telling him how he should be worried. That she would never lie and saw her leave that night. Where was she going? Molly got into Sonny’s head. And even though Janis stopped going out, because she knew Molly was watching—you know Molly, she wouldn’t raise her hands for a stickup—she started to stir. The little bit of freedom she had was slipping. The girls were constantly getting sick. Janis blamed it on the flu, or whatever, but the staff knew. Lucila and Ava had become addicted to the shit she’d been giving them. She couldn’t give them even a little without Sonny knowing, so…cold turkey.”

There are only a few times in my life when I remember where I was, what I was doing, when anger totally consumed me. I’m consumed. I’ll never forget this moment. I’ll look back years from now in my thoughts, sit where I am now, seeing and hearing what I am now, and be consumed again.

My light.

My Lucila.

I’ve never felt my heart through the numbness. I’m feeling it.

“Why didn’t the school get involved?”

He shrugs. “They tried, but without Sonny admitting it to them, what could they do? All checked out after the house was cleaned. All they had was Molly, but Molly was out for her own kind of justice. When Lucila really got sick—she seemed to struggle the most with it—Janis started giving her some of the meds again. Stuff for a cold or the flu. She knew damn well that wasn’t what it was, though. The girl was having withdrawal. Molly went and drug Sonny away from work. She told him if he didn’t do something, she would. Of course, she had been in his ear after she found out. And her words had taken root in his head. He left with Molly. They got to the house and Janis was walking out. A car was sitting at the curb.”

“Janis was leaving.”

He lifts his hands. “Who knows? But she did, after what happened. All the pieces finally clicked in Sonny’s head. He knew she’d been playing him the entire time. The affairs. The girls. His daughters were being drugged by their own mom. It was hard for him to believe. What kind of mother does that? Janis was a lot of things to him, but never that. That day, the truth punched him square in the face, and he opened his eyes. He went after her. He was going to kill her. I really believe that. Molly will tell you the same if you can get her to talk. She stopped talking about it long ago, at the insistence of Sonny.”

He whistles. “Janis and Sonny played dodge in the street that day. She was using cars to keep distance between them. He probably would have wrung her neck. But—” he shrugs “—the car that had been waiting at the curb had left. Molly had been watching—with a bat. She figured he didn’t want Sonny to see him in front of his house.”

“He came back,” I say.

He nods. “He came back. Molly started yelling when she saw him. The tires were fucking squealing, which tells me how enraged Sonny was. He didn’t even hear it. What must have tipped him off was Janis’s face. Her eyes went wide. Fuck. I really don’t know. But the point is, the son of a bitch in the car clipped him and sent him flying. It wasn’t a hard enough hit to kill him, obviously, but it did some damage. His head.” He touches it. “His back. Molly threw the bat and hit the windshield, but that was the only hit she could get in. It might have scared him enough to take off, though. He might have killed Sonny that day if he would have rolled over him.”

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