“What the fuck?” His voice is clear. His anger obvious.
“Is it him?” I ask, fairly sure by the instant shift in Dustin’s mood that whomever is on the other side of that door isn’t a threat as much as they are unwelcome.
He turns in place, hands still threaded together over his head, his jaw slack and mouth frowning in what looks like exasperation.
“It’s Trisha,” he says.
I fall back on my ass and hug my phone. It takes my mind a second to decipher that name. It’s been so long since I’ve heard it, thought it even. It’s been that long for Dustin, too, other than the emotional baggage he’s had to work through in terms of his fake mother.
She pounds on the door again, her knock manic, the kind a desperate creature delivers. My eyes hold Dustin’s gaze as he shakes his head. He doesn’t want to do this. He finally found his real mom, and Alysha is everything he hoped she would be. Alysha is forward. Trisha is backward. She’s the past, one meant to be left where it ended. Sure, it turns out she had some form of heart in that empty cavern of hers and did leave Dustin a connection to Alysha. She drove him to a drive-in movie once when he was four and let him see her. And then she took him back to a trailer riddled with smoke stains and meth and let Colt beat him senseless.
She’s no hero. She’s a junkie looking for a fix. It doesn’t matter what costume she’s wearing on the other side of that door. We know who she is inside. Some forgiveness doesn’t deserve to be earned.
I slip into one of Dustin’s sweatshirts to stave off the cold before padding down the stairs to his side. I hand him my phone and place my palm on his chest before looking him square in his wild, lost eyes.
“I got this.”
I turn to the door and slip it open enough that I can step outside but keep Dustin hidden behind it.
“Can I help you?” I doubt she’ll recognize me. She barely did when she saw us as teenagers. Even when she worked at the gas station convenience store I think she was high most of the time. Dustin said he found out the only reason she was there was to pass money to people for Colt so they didn’t have to come far off the highway. She wasn’t so much a wife as she was a middleman. About as much as she was a mother.
Trisha looks up to the numbers above the door, confused probably that a woman is answering and not her estranged fake son.
Her body is thin, arms nearly bones and skin blotched from drug abuse and years of alcohol and smoke. Her dirty-blonde hair needs a trim, and a shampoo, but it’s clear she’s trying to present herself as more than she really is deep down. She’s wearing a dated business suit, a white blouse with ruffles that puff out between the lapels of her black jacket. The pants pucker around a red belt she’s cinched tight to keep them on her frail hips. Her shoes are black leather, shiny with tiny silver buckles on the toes. She’s dressed for a job interview.
“I was looking for Dustin? Does he live here?” She doesn’t remember me. I figured.
“No.” The lie comes easy. I hope Dustin is smiling behind me, behind the safety of this door.
“Oh, I must have gotten the wrong . . .” She struggles to pull open the purse tucked under her arm and slung around her shoulder. She rummages through papers, pulling out a half-smoked pack of cigarettes and random one-dollar bills, all crumpled. “Here it is,” she announces, handing me a small paper with terrible handwriting on it.
I work to read the near illegible scratches and match the numbers to the one above my head. I hand it back to her.
“I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am.” I grow firmer in my position between her and the boy she fed to the wolves. Her face twitches with panic, or maybe withdrawal. It’s hard to tell with her.
“Oh. All right. I just . . . I need to find him. He’s my son, and it’s been awhile.”
“Well, I don’t know him. He isn’t here.” I lift my shoulders and smile with tight lips. I will never give him up to her. I’ll carry this lie to my grave. She shoves the paper back into her purse along with the cigarettes, then takes a step back, opening more space between us as her red-stained eyes stare at mine.
“I understand,” she says after several wordless seconds.
“Good.”
“When you see him, please let him know that his mother is home. I’m better now. And I . . . I miss my Dusty.”
Even though I am prepared to tell her fine and call her crazy on her way off this front stoop, apparently something about her desperation grinds into Dustin’s skin. I feel the air rush out behind me as he flings the door open with enough force that it crashes into the wall inside.
“You are not my mother.” His body slides in front of mine in a blink, and I reach to hold on to him, to keep his temper low, knowing the fire this woman has the power to ignite.
“Dusty—”
“Don’t!” He holds his palm in her face then points at her, his finger close enough to touch her nose. “That is not a name you get to use. That’s a torture technique you leveled me with when I was a kid, when you wanted me to feel sorry for you, and I will not accept it. I am not your son. I’m not your Dusty. I survived you. You left my life and it was the best thing you ever did for me. You walked away. You should have stayed gone. Now, get the fuck away from my house!”
His hands are fists at his hips, his biceps pumped with blood, muscles filling the sleeves of his shirt. His back grows with every breath as he paces a few steps left then right, like a tiger protecting his cubs. He practically growls as he breathes, a deep-seated hate simmering behind his chest and growing more dangerous with every beat of his heart.
“I’ll go. But I’m living in town now. I . . . I know I don’t deserve your time, Dust . . . Dustin. I did terrible things and I can never make up for the damage of it all. I was sick.”
“Excuses,” Dustin shouts at her face.
She flinches, but somehow remains where she stands, determined to finish this step in her own personal amends.
“They seem like that, yes. And maybe I used them as excuses. But it’s true. I was sick. I may never be fully well. But I am sorry. I would like to be a part of your life if you’ll let me.”
Dustin rears back with a deep, throaty laugh that stops abruptly as he steps closer to her.
“You do not get that. Any of it. I have a mother. That’s right. I found her. On my own. I met her.”
“You . . . you talked to Alysha?” Her voice wavers, and I swear there is a tinge of joy to her tone.
“No thanks to you. Yes, I talked to her. If I’m building a relationship with anyone who deserves to be called my mother, it’s her—my actual mother. You? You’re just some ragged tramp who sucked off my father’s drug habit to feed your own fix. I can’t believe I ever cried, afraid you were going to die in some hospital after an overdose. I would have been so lucky.”
The vile remarks seem to cut through her armor this time. It cuts me as a bystander, as a witness. She shrinks against his words and her eyes flinch, filling with tears. Before they fall, she runs her hand over her face and sniffles.
“Okay. That’s . . . okay. I understand. Thank you for your time.” She lifts her chin and backs away from my broken man. From the father of my child, the man I love more than my own life. He has so many things to overcome, and Trisha Miller is barely the beginning of the darkness inside his soul. He battles it with light every minute of his life. And I will never again doubt his resolve to win.