Tragic Love (24 page)

“How did that make you feel? Turn to Presley and tell her how finding out she was using drugs made you feel.” Dr. Garner begins to scribble and give me a reassuring look.

Jesus, fuck…I don’t want to do this. I look over to Presley and her sad eyes are looking back at me. “Initially, I was angry.” Tears start to fall as she looks down at her lap then back to my eyes. “I was infuriated with that worthless punk that brought her home. I was even madder at myself for not recognizing she had a heroin problem, especially since my own mother died from it and my adopted mother dealt the drug.

“Then I looked at her arms. I was scared and confused because I had no idea why she did this to herself. I knew she had a serious problem. For several months prior to discovering this, she slowly started slipping away from me and I couldn’t figure out why. I was just angry; at her, at me, at everyone. I couldn’t understand what the hell was happening to her.”

“Good, Drake. Now, you mentioned several feelings through that statement. Let’s walk through those feelings. Look at Presley and tell her what made you so angry with her when she was, as you said, slipping away from you.” Dr. Garner looks down at his notepad and then back at me.

“She didn’t seem to care about anything and she could hardly stand to be around me or our daughter. I was so frustrated with her because here is our little baby, the most innocent being in the world, and she wanted nothing to do with her or with any of us. I guess…” I really fucking hate this. My insides feel like they’re being sliced open and decaying in my lap. I have to do this for her to heal, though. I can’t stop it now. “I felt like she was abandoning us and the old feelings of my birth mother started to resurface.” Dr. Garner’s face almost lights up as he hears I have issues with abandonment. Oh, great.

“What happened with your birth mother, Drake?”

“She traded me to the Evans family for vials of heroin when I was three-years-old.” God, I really hate this.

“Interesting. Do you remember the time you spent with her before you lived with the Evans family?” Okay, doc, this is not my therapy session. I’ve already spoken to my own head doctor about this, not really in the mood to rehash it with him. “Not really, until…” I look over to Presley and she is staring at me through her tear-soaked eyes, “until I found Presley the night she overdosed.”

This is awful and practically unbearable. I don’t know how she’s done this for the last sixty days. I am ready to walk out the door just so I can stop seeing the pain in her face. I grab a hold of her hand and raise it to my lips, once again placing a kiss to the top of her delicate skin. She needs to know I love her, no matter what I say. I will always love her and be there every agonizing step of the way. I won’t let go of her hand. I will never let her go because we have to walk through this together.

“Now, Drake, tell Presley how it felt when you found her that night.”

This is going to be so hard and it takes me a moment to collect my words. “I was terrified. When I broke into the door and saw what she’d done…I was so scared. She was lifeless and not responding to anything I was saying. Then her heart stopped and the paramedics started doing chest compressions. I had to watch her die.” I do what I can to choke back my own emotions when I recall the worst night of my life, watching the one I love dying. There’s nothing I could do to help her. I was fucking helpless. “I felt like I died right along with her.” I let the single tear swell in my eye and drip down my face. So many feelings I didn’t even know existed surfaced that night and began raging through me like a rapid river. I’ll never forget it. I shed many tears and almost beat my brother senseless. “That’s why I chose to move out of the apartment. Everywhere I look, it reminded me of that horrible night. Nothing felt good about living there and I had to get out—had to go home.”

Dr. Garner recognizes my need to take a break and stops with all the horrifying questions. He exits the room to retrieve sodas, leaving Presley and I with all the emotions that are stagnant in the air. I’m not sure what to say.

She has no idea what really happened the night she overdosed because we’ve never talked about it. It kills me to tell her what it felt like to watch her die in front of me, but I’m glad she finally gets to see what her actions caused. She’s staring at her feet, lost inside herself. I crave to touch her and take all the pain she feels away.

We continue the silence between us, but I can’t handle another moment with her out of my arms. I slide to the middle of the couch and pull her up into my arms. She climbs onto my lap, tucking her body against my chest, taking deep breaths in and out as I squeeze her close to my body. She looks up into my eyes and I can see she’s scared.

I lean down and kiss her on the lips then whisper, “I love you. We’ll make it, baby.” I lift her chin. Her hypnotizing brown eyes meet mine. I want her to know how serious my devotion to her is. “I promise, baby. We. Will. Make. It.”

Before she can respond, Dr. Garner comes back in with bottles of cherry soda and resumes his seat in the chair across from us. Presley nods her head then slides off my lap, but stays tucked under my arm.

“So we’ve talked about that night and your feelings around her drug use, but now I want to talk about your daughter. I know there are some mixed feelings surrounding your daughter and to be fair to both of you, we need to get those feelings out. Drake, tell Presley how you felt when you discovered she was going to get an abortion.”

“She already knows how I felt.” I really don’t need to rehash these old feelings because we lived them together twenty weeks too long. “I couldn’t speak to her for several weeks, I was so angry with her.” Man, this dude is starting to really irritate me.

“Okay, and when did that feeling change?”

A big smile stretches across my face, remembering seeing my baby girl on the screen and Presley’s growing belly. It was an amazing moment in my life. “When she had her ultrasound and I saw my baby. Every negative feeling fell away and only Presley and Mia mattered from that point on.” I look over to Presley and she is smiling as big as I am.

That was a very emotional day and the first time in years I cried. Seeing Mia made my entire perspective change. I now had to be a protector and advocate to a very delicate life. Every single thing I did from that day on mattered because this tiny little baby depended on it. My life changed that day. Presley has always been my focus from the moment we met and now there is also Mia. She gave me purpose. Direction. Dedication. I wanted to be everything my father wasn’t. And the moment I saw Presley’s enlarged belly and Mia’s little shape on the screen, I knew I was put on this earth to love these girls. Nothing has changed and nothing ever will.

Presley

We’ve only been at this for an hour and I’m ready to jump off the roof. Drake was very open and honest with his feelings which made me happy for his participation. However, mostly, I’m feeling like shit, knowing every stupid thing I did broke him apart bit by bit until he was nothing other than pieces of human carnage. Knowing his true feelings explains the look in his eyes the night he came to the hospital; the night I overdosed and the last night I spent in Sulfur Heights before I left to come here. I will never forget the way he looked at me. He was like I’ve never seen him, a husk of the person I fell in love with, completely and utterly shattered all at the hands of my selfishness and my disease.

“Now Drake, we’ve dealt with a lot of emotions already today, but now I think it’s time for Presley to start talking. Presley, are you ready to talk about what happened when you lived with your uncle?” I nod, but can’t meet his eye. “Drake, I’m assuming you know what happened?” He nods. “She told me she would be ready to tell me what happened when you were here. Go ahead, whenever you’re ready, Presley.”

I really hate him right now and I don’t hold off the daggered look I’m boring into him. It’s now or never. I take a deep breath, diving head first into the pits of Hell.

The moment I start speaking, the words fall from my mouth. I begin shedding all the pain I’ve held inside myself for the last three years. I hold nothing back when I talk about the few months I spent in Robert Stein’s house. I talk about the first time he physically hurt me by singeing my skin with a cigar, just like Darcie. I tell Dr. Garner how he was always calling me Margaret and taking any anger he had toward his missing stepdaughter out on me. Then finally, I start to relive the last two weeks I spent with him. The last two weeks that have been haunting my thoughts, feeding on my sanity.

The same night Darcie was almost raped, I was kidnapped and held captive in her prior hell. “I was scared to tell anyone what Robert was doing to me, and at that point in our relationship, Drake and I were not physical. He never saw the injuries I was hiding.” I expel a deep breath and keep up my courage to talk. “The night he took me to the house where I escaped, I had no idea what was in store for me. I think he drugged me because I don’t remember exactly how I got into the house. When I woke up, I was stripped to my panties and handcuffed to an old bed.”

Flashes of those two weeks are playing like a horror movie through my head. Drake refuses to let go of my hand as I travel down the deranged memory lane. “All he kept saying to me while I was there was, ‘Don’t worry. You’re only bait. I just need to make this look good’. Then Robert would cut me with his razor blade or whip me with a belt. He would say he was setting the stage for his revenge, and I had no idea what he meant. I didn’t even know who he wanted his revenge on. I was so scared, and all I knew was that I was going to die in that house. The fear was crippling. I was sure I wouldn’t make it out alive.”

The tears are pouring down my face when my mind recalls every horrific event. Drake keeps his jaw clenched tight as here calls just how painful that time was for him. “Robert called the school, telling them I had mono. Then he took my cell phone, texting Drake and Darcie, telling them the same thing, so for two weeks, no one was looking for me.”

Dr. Garner looks over at me with astonishment and I can safely say it’s the first time in sixty days he has been rendered speechless. I don’t want to talk anymore. I don’t want to mention how I got out of the house or how Robert really died. Dr. Garner can pick up on when I’m withholding the truth, I’ve tried many times and so far he always calls me on it.

After several moments of silence he asks, “Wow, Presley. We definitely identified your trigger for your bouts of depression, but what I’m struggling with is why? Why did you choose to hold it all inside instead of talking to a councilor, policeman or anyone about what happened to you?”

And there it is. The fucking questions I’ve been trying to avoid for the last sixty days. What the hell am I supposed to say? What can I say that won’t ruin everything I already have?

Before I have a chance to respond, Drake speaks up. “Where we live, there really isn’t anyone who can help you. The police are corrupt and don’t really care what happens to some white trash kids on the Southside. Talking to the police really would have done no good. Robert was rich and had all of them in his pockets, or so we thought. Teachers, councilors and all those types of people turn a blind eye to these types of things. I’ve lived in this town my entire life and it’s always been this way.”

Holy crap. There is no way I could have come up with an answer like that. My man is amazing, always saving me when I’m drowning in a sea of doubt. I look from Drake to Dr. Garner and he seems to be please with Drake’s response, well, almost.

“What do you mean ‘so you thought’?” Dr. Garner asks.

I chime in because I know this to be true, “Apparently, Robert had a gambling problem and owed money to gangsters. The police found his remains in the house where he held me captive. They said he died in the fire.”

“How did you escape? Did the gangsters free you?” Dr. Garner looks confused and now I’m starting to panic all over again. Drake squeezes my hand and reassures me with a little kiss to the top of my head.

“No, Darcie.”

“Darcie? Wait a minute…was she his revenge, his missing stepdaughter?” Dr. Garner is practically sitting on the edge of his chair, like a little kid watching a movie on the big screen for the first time. It makes me feel sick.

“Yes.” The painful memories are surrounding me in the room, cloaking me in fear, and I can feel my body begin to shiver. The memories have been expelled from my body, yet now they are living breathing monsters hanging in the air. “The only reason he held me captive was to get to Darcie. I was his bait and he knew she would come rescue me once she saw where I was. Darcie was once there herself before she escaped. Robert hated her. He thought she was the reason his wife died and he tortured Darcie for years. Then he found out we were friends and knew exactly how he was going to get her to come to him. Darcie managed to get past him and we escaped out of the window. And now he’s dead.” I release a breath, hoping he doesn’t dig up what happened once I left that house. I wasn’t there, but I know what Reggie did and I commend him for it. He killed a monster. Darcie’s been right along. Reggie is a modern day knight in shining armor.

“Where did you live after Robert’s death?”

“Reggie Evans adopted me. We worked with the guidance councilor at school and she referred us to her social worker friend. It took a little while, but Reggie got legal custody of me and I’ve been living with them ever since.” Thank God. It’s the only thing I can say. Who knows what would’ve happened to me if Reggie hadn’t adopted me. I may have been put in foster care or moved back to Memphis, living with Delilah. I’m not sure which scenario would be worse.

“Who is Reggie Evans? Is he a relation of yours?” Dr. Garner asks, looking at Drake.

“He’s my brother. After my birth mom traded me for heroin, Reggie pleaded with his mom to keep me. I guess she was just going to leave me in front of a fire station or some shit, but he said he would take care of me. That’s how I came to live there and when Reggie was eighteen, his mom overdosed on meth. Then he became legal guardian for his two half brothers and me. We’ve been on our own ever since. When he found out what happened to Presley, Reggie took her in and that’s how she came to live with us.”