Page 67 of Reformation

He slips his fingers through mine and I’m grateful for the connection.

Here goes nothing.

“First of all, my real name isn’t Paige.”

Garrett gives me a confused look, which I don’t blame him for. It’s probably the first of many in this conversation. “It’s not?”

I shake my head. “No. Paige is my middle name. Josephine Paige Blackstone. I hated my name growing up, so I always went by Paige. Mama hated that I hated it. She’s the only one who calls me Josephine.”

“OK. Is that who called you?”

“Yes. We haven’t talked since I left Alabama. That was twelve years ago.”

“Did you two not have a good relationship?”

“No. It… this goes back a long time. Are you sure you want to know this?”

He nods, and I’m grateful, even though part of me really wanted him to say no. But I know that’s the chicken way out. It’s time I faced my past. It’s way past time.

“When I was growing up, I never knew my dad. Still, to this day, I’m pretty sure he was a random guy Mama hooked up with. I knew at an early age that I didn’t have a normal family. She drank a lot. When I was younger, she did drugs from time to time, depending on the boyfriend. And there was always a boyfriend. Some were rich, some were poor. Some of them were married, some of them were leeches who never left. The only thing that they had in common was that the relationships never lasted long. And when one left, there was never a long wait until the next one. Naomi Blackstone always had one in the wings.”

Garrett swallows, and I don’t know how, but I know what he’s about to ask. “Did any of them?”

I shake my head. “No. Thank God. A few of them I think wanted to when I was older. By then I knew to lock my door and I kept a can of pepper spray with me in my bed.”

I take a breath, knowing this is the hardest part. “When I was in high school. One boyfriend did stick. Ralph Baker. I knew from the second he came into our house that he was no good. And turns out, I was right. He was a lowlife dealer who got my mom addicted to drugs for good.”

I feel the tears start to form in my eyes and Garrett lifts my hands to his lips, placing a reassuring kiss on my knuckles. “It’s OK. Take your time.”

“I never had a lot of friends. I was too embarrassed that they’d possibly find out about my living situation. Or that if they had a single dad that my mom would go after them. I didn’t have time for friends anyway. I had to make sure she was alive and that the boyfriend of the week wasn’t stealing from us. So, when I wasn’t making sure she wasn’t dead on the side of the road, I was studying. By middle school, I knew that the day I graduated I’d be leaving Alabama. I was determined to get a scholarship out of state. I didn’t party or date. I had one goal, and that was to get the hell away. Because I knew that if I stayed in that godforsaken town, I’d always be making sure she was OK. And it was very clear that she didn’t care about her life or mine.”

“And you did,” Garrett says assuredly. “You got away and started your own life here.”

I nod. “I did. But it came with a cost.”

“A cost? Did you have to pay someone?”

“In a way,” I say, preparing myself for the next part. “There were some kids in my high school who started popping pills. Oxy, in particular. Again, we were a small town, so it didn’t take long for Ralph to realize that he could use me to start selling to my classmates. No one would think that a straight-A student was a pill pusher.”

“How could he make you? Did he threaten you?”

I nod. “I need to back up a little. By this time, Mama was completely hooked. She couldn’t go a day without something. She started shooting heroin. I hated going home, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go. One day I had locked myself in my room. I could hear Mama and Ralph arguing. I didn’t think anything of it until I heard glass break. I had to go out and see if she was OK. I found them in the living room, and Ralph was holding a piece of broken glass to her throat. I couldn’t believe it. I begged him to let her go. That I wouldn’t call the cops if he did. He told me he would, on one condition.”

“That you start selling?”

“I had to say yes. He was standing in the middle of my living room about to kill my mother. What choice did I have? So I became a drug dealer to save my mother’s life from a man who wasn’t worth it. I don’t even know why I agreed. It wasn’t like she cared about me, or herself.”

A laugh that is laced with frustration, hurt, and anger comes out of me as I say these words out loud.

“What happened next?” Garrett asks softly.

“I started selling. I hated every second of it. I was watching kids I had known since I was in kindergarten come to school high, or not come at all. I watched girls I used to envy for their beauty start withering away. One of my classmates overdosed. I hated it. I hated myself. Most of all, I hated Ralph. He was the one behind this. So I did what I should have done a long time before, I went to the cops.”

“You did? Paige, that’s amazing.”

I swallow back my emotions. I didn’t realize what saying all of this out loud would do to me. “It was the hardest thing I have ever done. The local officers had to call in the drug task force in Birmingham. They knew Ralph wasn’t a big-time dealer, but they thought if I could get enough on him, or maybe find out where he was getting his supply from, it could lead to something bigger. I sold for another two months, wore a wire, and got as much information on him as I could. It was enough to get an arrest warrant for Ralph, but I could never figure out who the top guy was.”

“Was your mom arrested too?”

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