Page 79 of The Pleasure of Panic

So I take a deep breath and continue. “I found a photo album of her once. My grandpa had it in the attic. I lived with him in Montreal until I was eight. By then my mother was… what? Twenty-three? Jesus. She was so young.”

“Was?” Finn asks.

“We’re getting there,” I sigh. “So I was up in the attic one day looking for old clothes of my grandma’s. For a school presentation. I was doing a report on Viola Desmond and wanted an old-fashioned dress. I don’t know why I thought my grandma would have one of those.” I laugh. “Because she was young too, when she died. Only thirty-nine. But I was like seven then. So I had no concept of what old was. And I found a photo album. It was all about my mom. This woman I barely knew because she was twenty-two years old and wasn’t raising me. I saw her every now and again. Sometimes she’d show up on my birthday. She came by the Christmas before, I remember that. Brought me a book called How to Be a Lady.” Which makes me pause to laugh. “Ironic, since she wasn’t what I’d call a lady. More on that later.”

I feel Finn let out a breath. A sigh comes with it.

“My mother was… I dunno the word for a person like her. I’m not really sure what it’s called. Maybe charismatic? But that word, for whatever reason, makes me think of a man. So not that. Maybe alluring. It was in her eyes, I think. She had very dark hair, like me. And pale skin, like me. But she had these weird brown, not-brown eyes. Unlike me, because mine are blue. But it wasn’t her looks, it was her… personality? Her soul?”

“Charming?” he asks.

“What?”

“She was charming, like you.”

I shrug. “Maybe.”

“She was… captivating?” he tries again.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes. Captivating.”

“Like you.”

“Maybe.”

Which makes Finn smile. And I stop my story, all thoughts of my story, to enjoy his smile. Because he won’t be smiling much longer if I keep going.

“Go on,” he says, after his smile fades and I stay quiet. Still trying to burn that smile into my memory. One day I might need that smile. One day I might have nothing left but that smile. So I like to keep things like that tucked away for future use. “I want to hear the rest.”

He really doesn’t. What he really means is that he needs to hear the rest.

Which I get. So I do. Go on.

“So when my mom was twenty-three and I was eight, she showed up at my grandpa’s house with this guy. Her new husband.”

“No,” Finn says, jumping ahead.

I nod. “That was Caleb Kelly. He was a little older than her, but still very young. Like twenty-five, I guess. And there was a lot of yelling, and a lot of crying, and a lot of threats. From both sides. My grandpa, who already had lawyers in place for this, kept his head. I do remember that much. All the drama came from them. He knew this visit would come eventually and he was well-prepared. But she was married now, her life was in order, and her record was clean. So… what’s a judge to do? Right?”

“Fuck,” Finn whispers.

“It took three years of legal battles, but she won. Mostly because my grandpa was really sick by that time. He died shortly after I was sent to live with her in Philadelphia. And then my new life began as the daughter of a Mob… well, what was he back then? I dunno. Not a boss yet. But he was making a name for himself.”

“Caleb Kelly is…”

“One of you,” I finish for him. Because that’s just the truth.

The silence that ensues is painful.

I burn that into my brain as well. Because one day there might be a time when I’m happy. When I’m satisfied. When I feel safe. And then I’ll take this moment out and turn it around in my hand, looking at it from all angles with detached acceptance. And it’ll bring reality crashing back into focus.

“And then… and then he started touching me. Pretty much almost immediately.”

There’s this low rumble that fills the room. It takes several full seconds to realize that it’s Finn. Some deep, animalistic growl emerging from his chest.

I go on, because this story isn’t even close to over yet. “I started taking kid karate when I was six. You know those classes, right? Fifty small children in a room wearing white gi and white belts. Screaming and punching and kicking the air like kids do. Well, I took that seriously. I dunno why, I just did. I had passed the kids’ black belt test by the time I went to live with my mom, and even though he’d have never encouraged me to continue if he knew what I’d eventually become, Caleb let me continue. Used to parade me around his gang, I guess, if you want to call them that. It might’ve been more of a cartel by then though. Make me fight them. He used them to scare me, and then he used me to scare them. And I just kept going to the dojo, kept getting better, because it got me out of the house. It was all I had back then. The fight was all I had.”

“So that’s how you won that world championship?”