Page 141 of Savior

TWO WEEKS LATER

Coming home is like gambling. I never know what I’m going to find when I walk in. The apartment smells like the stale, putrid air after a house party—one that didn’t get cleaned up. Beer, liquor, and cigarettes waft up my nose as I walk inside and look around. Mom’s on the couch, a lit cigarette dangling from her fingers. It teeters, close to falling to the throw rug beneath the sofa.

Sighing, I drop my purse on the table next to the door and take it from between her charred fingers. I put it out and then work around the room, picking things up as I go with a grocery bag I found on the floor.

I don’t like returning here, not knowing what I’ll see when I do.

My whole life, I’ve been an optimist.

I always wanted to believe that when I walked in here one day, it would be clean—she would be clean. It’s never the case.

She’s too set in her ways.

Now that Dad’s gone, she’s even worse, like he was the one keeping her going somehow.

She’s too fucked up all the time to even take clients to keep herself afloat.

I pile the trash by the can, eyes scanning over the final notices and unpaid bills littering the counters.

“Ray,” Mom says, turning over on the couch, face smashing into the cushions on the back.

Closing my eyes for strength, I cover her with a blanket.

There was a time when I loved her—believed in her.

That time came to a halt at some point, though I can’t recall what caused my falling out with her.

Before I leave, I snatch up some bills to pay, not leaving a note to tell her I was there.

She’ll know.

She always knows.

I come to,rolling onto my side in the bed as I cast my eyes over the room. Luca’s in the chair beside the bed, slumped over and snoring.

It can’t be comfortable, but I can’t bring myself to move or even call out to him.

I haven’t been back to my mom’s house in years. I gave up once I realized she was doing harder things than alcohol, and my bailing her out all the time was enabling.

Shit, I don’t know if she’s even alive anymore.

I don’t know how long it’s been since Luca brought me back to what he said is our place. Days, I think. Possibly weeks.

There are trays of food on every surface, left untouched. I don’t feel like eating. I don’t feel like drinking. I don’t want to move or even exist.

I only want to sleep.

Then, sleep brings nightmares and memories, and I lay here for a few hours, eyes open but never speaking.

Luca has read to me from the bible on strength and courage. When that didn’t work, he moved on to Sherlock Holmes. The book lays in his lap now, close to falling to the floor.

As much as I want to crawl into his lap and breakdown, I’m too numb.

My mind is a fractured, broken place where thoughts of murder and molestation dwell. When they don’t, reveries of my mother and father take up in their place.

Ardesia enters the room, touching Luca on the shoulder and nodding toward me.

Luca snorts awake. It would be endearing under any other circumstances. “What’s wrong?” he says, looking around as the book hits the floor from his lap.

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