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“I’m going to guess this might have something to do with a friend or family?”
“My mother,” he admitted. “She’s been calling me for months and leaving messages.”
“And you don’t know what it’s about?”
“Nope,” he said. “She has no idea where I am. I’m not sure she even knows I was in the service. I had this phone when I was a teen. I should have just changed numbers and am not sure why I didn’t.”
“Because there was part of you that hoped something would change, Luke,” she said. “That she is your mother and maybe she’d get cleaned up. That you turned your life around and maybe she could too. And if that was the case, she could find you. Right?”
He didn’t realize the truth to that until she’d said it. “I don’t know, Heather. Maybe as a kid I thought it. But the older I got, it didn’t seem like it’d happen. And when she did reach out, the first words were she was in trouble and needed help. She might even think the number isn’t right since I never called her back.”
“But you answered this time,” she said.
“Because it was a friend of hers,” he said. “I didn’t recognize the number and thought since I’m on call this month I should answer it.”
“Which means you’ve got your mother’s number listed with her name on your phone,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“So that you can decide if you want to answer or not.”
“Obviously.”
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“More of the same that happened in my life. She’s whoring and selling drugs. She lost product, which means she probably used it herself. Her john wants it back and made an example of her by putting her in the hospital.”
“Oh my God,” she said.
“Nothing different there, Heather. Her johns have done the same to me hoping to get her to do what she was told.”
“That’s horrible,” she said.
“That was my life. The reason I’m not sure I can give you what you want. That I have it in me to even try.”
“Don’t use that excuse,” she said firmly. “You can do anything you want and you have. You pulled yourself out of that life and are thriving. I just said I loved you because I love the person you are today. There is nothing in you of that person you are explaining to me.”
“It’s always going to be there,” he said. “I can’t get rid of it.”
“You don’t have to get rid of it. You just have to move beyond it. You have.”
“But it’s following me again,” he said. “It’s always going to follow me.”
“Maybe it’s time to take a stand,” she said. “I’m guessing they want the money from you?”
“Four thousand,” he said. “I’ve got it but would never give it to her. I don’t trust her to do anything with it other than get her next fix.” Nor was he putting money into anything that was a crime. It’d make him no better than the past he left behind.
“At this point in her life, you’re probably right. But your job is to protect and serve. Can you walk away from this? There are other women out there just like your mother. They are addicts and in a bad place. Maybe your mother was a good person that got caught up in the wrong thing and had no way out. Do you know anything about her life before?”
He hadn’t thought of those things. “No,” he said. “I don’t. I just know she’s always been a whore and user.”
“Then get her help. Find help for her. Then you can say you did everything you could and walk away without that guilt. Because I know you’ve got it. I think you’ve got a lot of guilt in your life that you won’t share with anyone.”
Again, she got him. “You shouldn’t know these things about me,” he said, pulling her close to him. He found he needed the comfort of her touch.
“But I do know them. And it makes me love you even more.”
Luke felt his eyes start to itch a bit. Probably tears that he never let himself shed. “I love you too, Heather.”
