“How did he come into the picture?” Sig asks.
“He’d been looking for Tommy. I guess he’d been watching the house for a while. Probably wondering if Tommy took off with his money or his drugs. He caught me outside hanging laundry on the line one day. He was asking for my brother. Must’ve thought I was lying to protect him when I said I didn’t know where he was. He got a little rough. Forced his way into the house. I suppose he’d been watching long enough to think no one lived there other than Travis and me. Which no one did. Not really. My mother never counted.” I sigh wearily. “Anyway, he searched the place for Tommy, for the money and the drugs that Tommy never made good on. Unfortunately he did find Tommy. Dead. In the freezer. It didn’t take long for him to realize he had a unique opportunity. And that’s when the threats started.”
“But why did you–”
“Oh, if it had just been me, I would’ve told him to go to hell. I’d rather have gone to jail for murder than spend an hour being nice to Lance Tonin, but it wasn’t just me. There was Travis. I was all he had in the world. The only person who cared, who understood. The only person who would never hurt him, who would always protect him. So I made a deal with the devil. To make sure that my brother would have a home and what was left of his family. To make sure that he wouldn’t have to live the rest of his life with no one to love him. And to make sure that all our secrets were kept until I could find a way out. An escape. I went to prison that day. I just never had to leave home to do it.”
Not for the first time, my heart aches with excruciating regret. With the fervent desire for a do-over, for things to have been different. For me, for Travis, for our family. Sometimes I think I’d give anything…anything in the world to be able to go back and change things. Make Dad stay. Make things better. But there was no going back. There is no going back.
“So who are you, really?”
It seems odd to talk about the real me. Sometimes it feels like she died with Tommy that day. But it’s also a relief to talk about her, to remind myself that parts of my plan are still in place. And that there’s still hope. And maybe, just maybe, someone I can trust with it all.
But still, there’s bitterness. So much bitterness as I think about who that girl is versus who she could’ve been, if only…
If only…
“Tia Lawrence,” I say stiffly. “My name is Tia Lawrence and I’m a twenty-one year old whore to Lance Tonin because that’s the best I could do with the cards life dealt me. At least for a while longer, until Travis turns eighteen and the state can’t take him from me. But on that day…by midnight, on the morning of his birthday, we’ll be long gone from here. We’re leaving, going some place where no one will be able to hurt us anymore. Not even Lance Tonin.”
“Aren’t you afraid he’ll tell the police about your brother? How will you ever be free of him?”
“Oh he might. He took Tommy’s body. I don’t know what he did with it. He says he’s got it buried somewhere safe so he won’t have to worry about my loyalty. The thing is, he knows why I have to be Tommy. I think, in a way, to all of us, I am Tommi. No one has called me Tia since the day I came home from the DMV. It had to be that way. I think even Lance sometimes forgets, so much so that I don’t think he keeps tabs on Tia Lawrence. I never mention her. No one does. For all he knows, she disappeared and won’t ever come back. He thinks he saved me. He thinks he has me. But he doesn’t. Tia got her GED online. She also has almost enough credits to graduate college with a degree in psychology. And when she does, she and her brother will go to a non-extradition country and she’ll be able to get a job helping kids like him and they can finally live a happy life, free of Lance Tonin. Free of our past. Where nobody can hurt us. And nobody can take us away from each other.”
I hear his whispering sigh of understanding.
“Ahhhh, so that’s what you sneak away to do on the computer. You’re getting your degree.”
I nod. “Yes.”
As I always do when I think about my plan, I feel lighter. I can even smile when I think about what our lives will be like once Travis turns eighteen and we can start over somewhere else. It’s like the mental picture alone is capable of lifting away the weight, the shame, the sadness, the fear. Everything that I’ve lived with for so long. For just a few seconds, it fades away.
Only this time, it doesn’t return in the same way that it usually does. Today, only one emotion comes back in full force. So strong, in fact, that it drowns out all the others.
Fear. Fear for my brother. If something happens to him, everything I’ve done will be for nothing. I will have ultimately failed him. And I’m not sure I can live with that. I’m not sure I’d even want to.
Finally, after baring my soul to the only person other than Travis and my mother that I actually care about, I turn to Sig. I wait until he meets my eyes and then I beg. Without dignity or hesitation, I beg.
“Please help me find Travis. Help me save him. Please.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT- SIG
“We’ll find him,” I tell Tommi. “We’ll find him if I have to tear this town apart.”
She falls quiet for the rest of the trip, leaving me to my chaotic thoughts. Holy mother of shit, what the hell am I going to do? I’m a cop, for chrissake. The woman that I’ve been steadily falling for is not only the girlfriend of a drug dealer, which was something I could’ve gotten around, she’s also a murderer with a laundry list of other felonies to her credit. In more than one name.
Christ on a cracker! Where do I even start?
I don’t even know. I can only think of all the ways that this can go, none of them good. I mean, how can this end well? How can I save her from the shitstorm that she’s created for herself?
There’s only one answer. I can’t. Unless I were to compromise everything that I believe, everything that makes me me, there’s no way I can save her from this. There’s just too much.
But how can I not? How can I be yet another person to let her down? How can I beg her to trust me and then let life take her from me?