After the nurse left the room, my mother started to give me the good ole fashioned silent treatment. All the way through the doctor coming in, explaining the aftercare instructions, and discharging her—which took hours—my mom didn’t speak one word to me.

It wasn’t until we were in the car on the way back to the trailer that she graced me with conversation. “So where’d you run off to? Find a man?”

I rolled my eyes. “I went to find dad.”

She forced a laugh. “That deadbeat. I bet he’s dead in some ditch somewhere.”

“I found him.”

I could see her pissed off face out of the corner of my eye. “And?”

“He’s doing well. It was surprising to find him with hundreds of letters and page after page of legal papers. Why the fuck did you let me think that he had abandoned me for all those years? Don’t you know what that did to me?”

“He walked out on us, Crit. Don’t let that slime ball ever try to fool you into thinking otherwise.”

“Let’s just leave it. We’re not going to agree.”

I helped her hobble into the trailer and propped her leg up on the couch with a couple of pillows like the nurse had explained to me before we left.

“Get me my damn pills.”

I grabbed her purse out of her reach. “You can’t take one for at least another hour, Ma. You know that. And you have to eat with them.”

“Fuck you. You’re not the boss of me.”

I was over it. All of the feelings of guilt for leaving her washed away as she looked at me with complete loathsome disgust. I looked around the tiny living room of our trailer, which was falling apart. The two buckets were nearly full of water from the roof leaks, the mildew was stinking up the place from carpet that had needed to be replaced years before, and the furniture was falling apart and mismatched, but none of that bothered me. The fact that the stove hadn’t worked right since I was fifteen was fine, and the way that the faucet in the bathroom made a glugging sound while it ran wasn’t the issue. The biggest problem in that whole dilapidated place was the woman who’d settled for that shithole so many years before. She was the problem with my life that I was running away from. She was the wretched quicksand that tried to suck my life away. My mother was a miserable excuse for a human being. I had known it for years, but I was finally letting myself be at peace with it.

I handed her the bag and started to dial the pizza place just up the road. “If you’re going to insist on abusing your medications, then at least eat something so you don’t destroy what little liver you have left.”

I barely got her to eat half a slice of pizza before she was popping two more pills into her mouth and falling asleep on the couch with a lit cigarette between her lips.

I pulled a blanket over her, put out the cigarette, and decided to call it a night. She had taken enough medication to keep her knocked out for the night and the walls were thin enough that if she needed me, I would be able to hear her.

The feeling of my old room, my old sheets and bed, my old everything was awful. I hated how stifling being back there was. My phone vibrated with another unread text from Abel. I powered it down; there was only so much drama I could handle for one day.

I knew that he was worried about me and that it was probably wrong to ignore him the way that I was, but the image of him killing a man in cold blood right in front of me was something that was not going to go away easily. I wasn’t completely naive; I knew that it was the nature of the beast. Abel was the freaking vice president of the motorcycle club for crying out loud. I had seen a few episodes of Sons of Anarchy, I knew there was probably blood on his hands, but knowing it was probable and knowing it was fact were two very different animals in my book. Ignorance really was bliss.

I woke up to a loud crash coming from the living room around five in the morning. I grabbed the robe that hung on the back of my door and raced to my mother’s side. She was laying on the couch, her eyes barely open, drool dripping from the left side of her mouth. She had knocked the side table over trying to shove up from the couch without her crutches.

“Do you need to go to the bathroom?” I asked, putting my arm under hers, ready to hoist her up. That’s when I saw the almost empty bottle of pills lying open on the floor next to my feet.

Horror rushed in. “Mom, oh my God! You didn’t.” She slurred a few words that I was unable to make out as I shook her. I looked down to her hand: she was gripping a syringe full of what I figured to be heroine.

“Mom what the fuck do you think you’re doing? This is not the answer.” I kept shaking her and she came to a little bit more.

“Please, Crit. I’m so tired.” Her head rolled onto my shoulder and I sat down next to her, silently panicking.

She groggily patted my thigh. “I don’t want to fight anymore.” Her words slurred together as her eyes struggled to stay open.

My voice cracked as I tried to figure out what to do. “Mom, you can turn this around. Let me help you get out of this hellhole.”

“Honey, it’s too late.” Her drool was dripping onto my arm as she started to position the needle to her vein. “There’s nothing in this world left for me. They’ve taken it all from me. I have nothing left.”

I was like a deer in headlights, just waiting in the middle of the road for the accident to happen through the tears welling in my eyes. Slowly she pushed the drugs into her bloodstream. I knew that she was done. I knew that I should have been calling the police, but I just sat there paralyzed while I watched my mother take her own shitty life. The worst part, the part that really scared me, was that I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t sad. I was just numb. Maybe deep down I knew that it was all for the best, and if that was what she really wanted then who was I to stand in her way?

I cradled her in my arms while she shook, tears rolling down her swollen, bruised face.

“I love you.” It was the first time in years that I had said those words to her.

“Love you too, Crickett.” Her eyes rolled back in her head as her slurred words faded. Her last breath was shallow, fleeting. I felt her leave, and I crumbled.

For what felt like hours, I held her in my arms and cried. Really it was only about twenty minutes before banging started on the front door as Abel’s and Rave’s yelling called to me.

I just sat there, scared to let them into the horrifying scene that I was entrenched in. Part of me didn’t want to open the door because once that happened, it all would be real. The whole nightmare of the past few days would all be too real for me to deal with.

It didn’t take long for Abel to kick in the front door. I was still a blubbering statue, clinging to my mother’s lifeless body as they busted into the trailer. The light flooded in from the open door, stinging my eyes as they rushed to my side.

Rave grabbed my mom and Abel scooped me into his arms. “Oh, fuck, babe what happened?” I fell apart in his arms. No words would form. It was all just too much.

Rave repositioned my mom onto the couch. He rubbed the back of his neck while he stared down at her. “I have to call the cops, Crickett. We have to get this taken care of.”

Abel whispered, “You didn’t…?”

I gasped and smacked his chest, pushing away from him with the little energy that I had left. “Who the fuck do you think I am? Do you really think I would kill my own mother?”

“Babe, don’t take it the wrong way. I had to ask. We don’t know what happened here.”

Rave put his hand on my shoulder. “I think we need to have a little chat, sweetheart. I know it’s hard, but you need to let us help you right now.”

I followed them into the kitchen, the three of us taking seats around the table. Through light sobbing I told them the whole roller coaster I had been on since I’d stormed out of the bar the day before.

“All right. Here’s what’s going to happen.” Rave started to pace around the kitchen. “I am going to call the cops and we’re going to tell them the truth, that Helen offed herself, that Crickett came to take care of her, and that we were just showing up to help out too. No lying, no crazy stories to keep straight. They might ask a lot of questions, but no one can get in trouble here, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

Rave walked outside to make the call, leaving Abel and I awkwardly sitting in the kitchen staring blankly at the walls.

“I am so sorry about yesterday, babe.”

I grabbed his hand. “I know you’d never put me in danger, Abel, but the life you live is dangerous. And the fact that you killed that man, it just haunts me.”

He weaved his fingers with mine. “I will do anything to make it up to you.”

I took in a deep slow breath and crawled into his lap. “Just love me.”

I was too tired, too shook up, and too in love with him to fight or push him away any more. He had driven almost thirteen hours to fight for me. It was the first time I experienced what that truly felt like, someone loving me enough to stop at nothing to get me back.

He sighed into me, kissing the top of my head. “You’re mine. I’m never letting you go again.”