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He nodded numbly, getting in behind the wheel. I got into the back with Lyric, not bothering with seat belts, so I could pull her onto my lap and rub slow circles on her back. “I’ve got you. I’m going to fix this.”
I let her fall apart, holding her together while a storm of hate swelled in my heart. This was the woman I loved. No matter how broken we were, none of that mattered in the moment.
“Where is she, Zeph?” Lyric sobbed into my shirt. “I know your mother hates me and thinks Amelia is better off without me, but Amelia doesn’t know her. She’s going to be so alone and scared…” The rest of her words were muffled by her cries.
My heart ached. Lyric was everything that was important to me, and Amelia was everything important to her. I’d promised to protect them and I thought I had. Beating up Father Byron was what I’d done to keep them safe, but he hadn’t been the only threat. I’d missed the one living in my family home.
Her words struck something in the back of my mind. “What do you mean she thinks Amelia is better off without you?”
“She told me that. That no child should grow up in poverty with a prostitute for a mother or something along those lines. That the church had programs in place to help whores like me.”
“You aren’t a whore.”
“I am in her eyes.”
My mind whirred. Toby was still missing.
Tammie had been sleeping with men, trying to make ends meet.
My mother had been there that day in the hospital, where Tammie had admitted it to me.
I was sure the color drained from my face, and my expression had changed to one of pure horror.
It was confirmed when Lleyton glanced in the rearview mirror and caught sight of me. “What?” he asked. “What is it?”
Lyric sat up and looked at me.
I shook my head. “Toby. The son of a woman I met through the homeless shelter. One of the last people to see him was my mother. And she knows Toby’s mother was sleeping with men for money.”
Lyric’s mouth dropped open. “You think…?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what to think. That she took two children from their families and is holding them somewhere is crazy. And yet…”
Kelly twisted in the front seat and stared at me. “Zeph…your mom…I mean your biological mom…”
I stared at her. “What about her?”
“She was a prostitute.”
I blinked. I’d been reminded many a time my parents had rescued me from my birth family. But there’d never been any mention of who they were or what they did. Just that they were too poor to care for me. “What do you mean? How would you know? I haven’t seen my biological mom since I was four.”
Kelly twisted her fingers in her lap. “Jonathan and I weren’t ever allowed to talk about it. He probably wasn’t even old enough to remember. But I was fourteen when you came to live with us. I remember seeing you at church every week with your biological mom. You were this skinny kid who seemed like he never had enough food. But your mom always came to church, no matter what.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
She shook her head. “We all learned pretty quickly that any mention of Juliette set Mom off, unless we were saying how horrible she was and how badly she treated you. Even you, at four, stopped crying for her quickly after seeing the way Mom reacted to it. It wasn’t pretty.”
A repressed memory of my mother’s palm slapping across my face appeared in my head.
“She used to hit me.”
Kelly nodded. “Only when you talked about her though.”
“Why did Juliette give me up?”
Kelly sighed. “I don’t know the full story. I only caught dribs and drabs. But it was after Mom convinced her to take that parenting course she runs at the church.”
Lyric lifted her head curiously. “She tried to get me to do a course through the church.”
