“Better? From what?”
Lake shrugged. “I was six when I left her. I don’t really remember knowing names or any official diagnoses of what was wrong with her. Looking back on it, and just from what I saw on her Facebook, she was… obviously on drugs. She made some crazy poor choices when it came to men.”
My muscles tightened. “Did any of them hurt you?”
“No. They hurt her but they never touched me. Then again, I think they forgot I was even there.” She looked at me, bracing me for laughter. “I hung out in the closet a lot, with the door closed. Even when I was home alone. I just liked the dark. I’d just sit there braiding my hair like a little dumbass,” she giggled at herself. I cleared my throat, offered a smile as my heart crushed at the thought of little Lake before I knew her, sitting alone in a pile of laundry and oblivious to how she was saving herself. “I mean I’m sure it wouldn’t have stayed like that if my grandma didn’t eventually take me away, but honestly, all the bad that came from that time was from Trish. From living with her. She just wasn’t mother material – she was fifteen when she got pregnant with me.”
I kept my face decidedly frozen. I didn’t want any look of surprise to discourage Lake from going on. But I hadn’t known that detail. I hadn’t known much at all about her family aside from her grandmother, Elena. I didn’t consider Trish her family at all. I had no idea she was ever curious to. “What was it like living with her?” I asked. From what my mother told me, Lake came from a “broken family” but it hardly seemed like she even had a family to break.
“It’s foggy. I remember being home alone a lot. I honestly can’t even remember if that house was an actual house or a trailer home. I don’t even remember what the neighbors’ houses looked like.” She let out a breath of disbelief as she realized it. “I didn’t even go to school. I kind of existed as this little thing that floated around bothering her and reminding her that she probably should’ve gotten an abortion instead of thinking that a baby would make her a better person.”
I flinched. Couldn’t help it. I supported every bit of a woman’s choice but the thought of Lake never existing rocked me to my core.
“Anyway, I’m sure you can imagine it,” she murmured, setting her empty champagne flute
on the stair below and gazing into it. “She was unemployed, on drugs. A complete mess if there wasn’t a man in her life or at least her bed that week. It’s weird – I feel like I can’t recall a single image of her eating.” She laughed but I was sure she found nothing funny. “It was like – bottle or needle, bottle or needle. That was what she subsisted on. I thought maybe that was the secret to not being hungry so I was like, four years old, for God’s sake, when I tried drinking what I’m pretty sure was whisky. Spit it all out. She smacked me right across the face for wasting her shit.”
My insides burned hot. I hated this Trish with everything inside me but I continued bottling it all up so Lake could have the peace with which to keep talking. When she looked up at me, I leaned in and pressed my lips to her forehead. She closed her eyes.
“She asked me to send her money to get away from her new husband.”
When I pulled back, she was looking into my eyes with shame. I figured it out before she said it and suddenly, it made so much sense I wondered why I never thought of it on my own. It was for Trish that Lake used to steal from us.
“Your mom gave me a credit card to use for emergencies. You had one, too.”
“Yeah.”
“Except you actually only used yours for emergencies, which you basically never had,” she smirked, shaking her head at herself. “Even before Trish started messaging me, I took that thing and got myself mani-pedis with Isabel so many times. I was such a little asshole. But your mom was like, ‘Who says nice nails aren’t an emergency?’”
I laughed. “That sounds about right.”
“Anyway.” The slit in Lake’s dress fell wide open as she hugged her knees to her chest. “Trish said she needed money, so I started buying things with the card that Theo was gonna buy anyway. He’d just give me the cash for it and your mom would just think I was buying him a lot of presents. And that seemed to work. She thought we were cute. But then I went too far and she finally had a talk with me. And even though I knew I was always pushing her to her limits, the second she got mad at me for anything, I turned into this… depressed, kicked puppy.” Lake snorted at herself. “I said to myself after that – no. Never again with the credit card. I can’t handle when Caroline’s mad at me so I’m going to find another way. I felt like I had to. Trish always said she couldn’t wait for the day that she’d see my graduation photos but at some point, she started talking crazy, like she was afraid she wouldn’t make it to see that day.”
“Because of her husband?”
“Dean. He was a vet and she said he had really bad PTSD. She sent me this article from this assault charge he got. They lived in this trailer park and he was the manager of it and the article said he…” she trailed off and suddenly looked with guilt at me. “Sent someone to the hospital with a baseball bat. But it was different from you. That guy ended up brain-dead.”
Christ.
“Am I scaring you yet?” she asked, her voice small.
“No.” I gave her some sort of look to lighten the mood. “You don’t scare me.”
“You’re not mad that I took so much shit from you and your mom and sold it to give to my horrible family?”
“That wasn’t your family. We were your family.”
“Exactly,” she murmured, shaking her head. “So why did I do it? I don’t know why I ever let her talk to me. I should’ve known she was poison. Real…. hateful… bloodsucking poison.”
I took one look at Lake’s fast-falling expression and pulled her tight. “Come here.” I buried a kiss in her hair. “That was a complicated situation. You were young and she was blood. Anyone would’ve felt at least some obligation.”
“She was horrible though. She was nice at first but then she got so mean and I still let her into my life. Why was I such a stupid teenager?”
“Because that’s redundant. Every teenager is stupid.”
“You never were.” Lake’s lips grazed mine as she lifted her head at me. “You were always so smart and even and logical. You were mature beyond your years because I was crazy and your mom was crazy and you had to be. You were perfect for me but it was a punishment to you.”
I frowned at her. “Never once.” I tilted my head to meet her roving gaze so filled with shame. “Lake. You were never anything but a blessing to me. Even when you were away because it made me build things I couldn’t have if you were here. Maybe I needed you to be gone for a little bit. So I wasn’t distracted.” I laughed when she did, like it was some ridiculous suggestion. But I meant it. “And now that I have you again, I know to hold on tighter than ever before. I have you back. I have my mom back. I have my career. It’s going good, Lake,” I whispered with a grin. “You’re not a punishment. You’re worth everything.”