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She shook her head.
“This isn’t your first time behind bars.” It wasn’t a question. Her head snapped up and her eyes rounded.
“I spoke to Mr. Chavez.”
“How?—”
“His name and number were in your file.”
“He can’t tell you anything.”
“He didn’t. But you will.”
She shook her head again. “No. I won’t. It has nothing to do with my predicament now, so it’s not admissible in court.”
“Fine. You may not want to tell me as your lawyer, but how about as the man you slept with? Do I have a right to know as that man?”
She held my eyes and leaned forward. “No.”
“Damn it, Laura. I’m trying to help you.” I paced the small room.
“Why?”
“Because… because you don’t deserve to go to prison, especially not for a crime you didn’t commit.”
“Do you think I’ll lose?”
I turned to look at her. “Yes,” I whispered. “Look, evidence could come out at trial that would make your past admissible. I need to be prepared and not scramble later. When it was just about us, I didn’t press you on it, even though I sensed you may have been keeping something from me. Although I admit, I’d never imagined this.”
I sighed. “It’s over. No more hiding. You have to tell me everything.” I waited with my hands on my hips for her to decide. To see reason.
She stared up at the ceiling and closed her eyes. When she shook her head, I thought she wouldn’t say anything.
Then she inhaled sharply and the words poured out.
“I was twelve when my father OD’d the first time.” Her voice was steady, but her eyes remained closed. “Then again, six months later. After that, I asked the paramedics which meds I needed to give him to keep him alive. I knew it would happen again. And it did. For years, I came home terrified of finding my father dead on the floor. Anytime he dropped something, I ran to the room, hoping not to find him lying there. I was fourteen when I couldn’t get his heartbeat going again. I thought I’d lost him.” Her voice cracked. I wanted to reach for her, but she kept her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her eyes shut tight.
“That was the breaking point for me. I told him either he got clean or I was running away. The threat seemed to work. He didn’t stop taking drugs, but at least he didn’t overdose again. I thought he’d turned his life around. But then the police started knocking on our door. They arrested my father multiple times. We lied. We said my mom still lived with us. I didn’t want to go to foster care and my mom stayed with me while he was in jail. But those years were tough.”
Finally, she opened her eyes. She didn’t look at me. Her eyes were still staring up at the ceiling. Ironic how the coldness of her demeanor began to melt the ice around my frozen heart.
“I stayed out all night, skipped class, and even started getting arrested. It was for small things at first. Smoking weed, stealing from the local convenience store. Nothing that would stick for more than a night or two in a cell.”
I sat down in front of her. My hand itched to grab hers, but I was worried she’d stop talking if I touched her. “Where was your mother in all of this?”
She sighed and finally, looked down. Sadness crossed her face, despite the dullness in her voice. “My mom would bail me out, then leave and do her own thing the next day. She couldn’t handle me as a baby. There was no way she was going to handle an out-of-control teenager.”
This was awful. It triggered my own fears of abandonment, but I needed to hear the rest. “Go on,” I said.
“Shortly after my fifteenth birthday, I came home to a kitchen table full of drugs. And not just weed. There were bags of cocaine piled on top of each other and tiny plastic bags strewn all over.”
She bit her lip, and her jaw quivered but she quickly kept it in check.
“My father flew through the front door, panting and out of breath. I screamed at him, pointing to the table, demanding what the hell was going on. He said not to worry about it, he had everything under control. He grabbed a bag, and left without another word.”
My hand on the table inched closer to hers. “What did you do?”
“I was angry. I didn’t want to touch anything on the table. I would not clean up his mess or have anything to do with that stuff. I knew acting like a stupid teenager was one thing, but dealing drugs was another. So, I went to my room, stuffed in my earphones, and threw myself on the bed.”
