or bringing home men, but the drugs weren’t always a thing. I’m not sure when she started the drugs. Anyway, life was miserable. We lived in a small trailer in Dallas a few blocks from my grandparents, who were great. Thank God I had them growing up. Money was always an issue. Travis and I have been working since we were old enough to walk, be it babysitting, handing out flyers, cleaning houses, or whatever. Then during our freshman year of high school she met Harry, who was visiting some friends in town.”
“Harry? The hot dog vendor?” Enzo interrupted.
“Yep. And not a week into their relationship she uprooted us to Amarillo to follow Harry. Honestly, it wasn’t too bad. For one thing she was busy with her new relationship to be too hard on us. Well, me, really. She wasn’t too bad with Travis, but everything I ever did was wrong. Nothing was good enough. She put me down constantly.”
Enzo’s mother and father might have been absentee parents, but they had never been cruel to him. Hearing how horrible her life had been made him angry and sad for her. He palmed her neck and caressed her cheekbone, knowing that she loved it when he did that. He didn’t interrupt her, since she seemed so introspective.
“Harry was a great buffer, plus, he was a really nice guy,” she continued. “Great guy, actually. He quickly became like the father we never had—at least for the few years it lasted. And when I moved to Amarillo, I met Violet, which was a godsend. I’d never really had a friend like her before. She didn’t judge me or look down at me for where I lived or who my mom was; she just accepted me. So things weren’t so bad for most of high school, except that when Harry would show me loving fatherly affection, it would make Mama furious.”
“She was jealous? Of her own daughter?”
“Don’t know, I guess. She hated it when Harry was nice to me. Anyway, their relationship lasted until a few months after I graduated from high school and Harry moved away to be closer to his parents here in Tarpon Springs. I came to visit him one day, loved it, and moved down. Travis followed, and about two years ago, so did Mama.”
“And she’s been harassing you since.”
“Well, that’s not really true. When she moved down here she was completely sober. I hadn’t seen her like that in years. Travis is right, she can be very toxic, so at first I was wary. But what Travis refuses to see is that when she’s not doped up, she’s different. He’s hard on her. Won’t give her any second chances. He won’t speak with her and hasn’t done so in a long time. I, on the other hand, started to bond with her when she came down because the change was so noticeable. She was great. I should’ve seen it coming, though—the impending relapse. She kept asking me for money here and there and couldn’t manage to keep a job. When I was finally ready to say she was, for a lack of a better word, cured and let all my defenses down, she relapsed. It was bad, Enzo. She almost died. The cops found her in an abandoned building, unconscious, with a needle still in her arm. She emptied out my small bank account and used my money to buy drugs. Anyway, I had been keeping the relationship mostly secret because Travis was so against it. When he found out about her relapse and the money he was furious. That happened about a year ago, and he even got a job at EE’s Diner for a few weeks to help me get my rent paid. She is a liar and a manipulator, and I’m an idiot for allowing her to hurt me and to steal from me.”
Enzo lifted her into his lap. “No, you’re not. You’re a good person with a big heart who wanted to see the best in her mother.” He put an arm around her and kissed the top of her head. She opened her mouth to continue her story, but was interrupted by a shadow above them.
“Who do we have here?”
Shielding their eyes from the sun with their hands, both Enzo and Jamie Lynn looked up at the gruff voice.
A muscular man who’d been jogging by had stopped and stood swiping his brow with the back of his arm. “Heard you were too big a