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“Travis? What are you doing here?” I asked again, a wholly different tone in my voice. I felt detached from everything, already knowing and feeling the cold that only death could bring.
“You know how we move from place to place all the time?” my mom asked me.
I shook my head, needing to clear that voice from my memory. It wasn’t the time right now.
But I heard my own voice respond, like I was twelve. “Yeah?”
“Things are out of my control now, sweetie. I need to tell you the truth.”
“Mom?” I started crying.
“Brett sent me.” Travis’ voice was off. His demeanor was off. “He couldn’t get ahold of you and he needed to stay with that girl.”
Right. That made sense. It was something Brett would do.
I couldn’t focus. I was distracted by the flashback in my head.
My mom was crying too. “We didn’t move around so much because I kept getting fired, sweetie. I didn’t want you to get attached. I told you it was because I didn’t want you to have friends. That wasn’t the truth.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No, honey. I would’ve loved it if you could have friends. You and your brother. You were both so full of goodness and love, and you both deserved to have that in your life. You know that, right?”
I’d been so young back then, and it was the day after I lost my friend.
“Billie, are you okay?” Travis asked.
“What?” I couldn’t focus, yet every fiber of my being screamed that I could not be distracted in this moment.
Travis was talking. From a distance I heard him say, “Did something happen after the game? Broudou seemed off tonight…” He kept talking, but I couldn’t hear him.
I could only hear my mom.
“It’s your father, Billie.”
“Dad?” I whispered aloud.
Travis stopped abruptly.
“He’s not a good man. You know that,” Mom continued. “He keeps finding us, and he’s never done anything to you, but yesterday…” She trailed off, more tears cascading down her face. Her hands shook and she tried to draw in some oxygen. She tucked my hair back, smoothing it before she forced herself to move away. “He hurts me, sweetie. And he did something with your brother yesterday—”
“What’d he do?” my voice was so flat. The panic was locked up, real tight.
My emotions needed to be off.
It all came back to me. I used to do that. That’s how I would get through those visits with him. I’d shut everything off and become a rock. I’d pull all the way inside myself, turning into a robot when he was around.
Travis came closer to me.
I needed to step back, but I couldn’t make my feet move. This, whatever had been unleashed in my mind, I needed to remember it first.
I made a choice and went back to the memory.
“What’d he do with Ben?” I asked my mother.
“He took him somewhere, and I can’t let it keep happening. I have to go somewhere, Billie.”
“Where, Mom?”
