Priceless (Forbidden Men #8)(15)

We’d been a couple months behind on the rent, so Mrs. Garrison had come to collect it since she owned the house we lived in. She and Mom had gone a few rounds, Mrs. Garrison threatening eviction, and Mom begging for leniency.

“Patricia, please. There has to be something I can do to convince you to give me just a little more time. Our next check from the state comes in this—”

“I’m sorry, Dawn.” Mrs. Garrison lifted her hands to cut Mom off. “But I’ve already allowed you to get this far behind. I’m not running a charity case here. You can’t just—”

This time, she cut herself off when Mason entered the kitchen in his car wash uniform. It wasn’t much of a job. He doled out change, scrubbed tires, refilled vending machines, and kept the place clean. But Mason took pride in any job he did. He looked nice in his outfit, and Mrs. Garrison noticed.

Pausing uncertainly in the doorway when he saw that we had company and he was interrupting something, he glanced between Mom and Mrs. Garrison before whipping off his ball cap and murmuring, “Sorry. Excuse me. I was just going to grab a bottle of water before I headed off to work.”

Mrs. Garrison smiled widely at him. “Why, by all means, don’t let us stop you.” She waved for him to pass, even though it was our kitchen and not hers. “It’s nice to see you again, Mason. Having a nice summer?”

He seemed leery as he glanced at her. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

Then he darted by her and yanked open the refrigerator to retrieve his drink. Pointedly ignoring the landlady, though she openly watched him, he glanced at Mom before telling her goodbye. When he finally turned my way, his smile warmed and his shoulders relaxed.

“Be good, squirt.” He teasingly tugged on a piece of my hair before ambling out the back door.

Mrs. Garrison continued to watch the door before she licked her lips and turned to my mother. “My goodness, he’s certainly grown up nice this last year.”

Mom had the grace to scowl at the totally inappropriate comment, but she didn’t say a word in rebuke.

Rubbing her hands together, the landlady gave a delighted sigh. “I’ll tell you what, Dawn. Why don’t you take a little trip this Saturday, leave your boy home alone, and maybe then, if my day goes well, I’ll consider giving you a bit longer of a grace period.”

My mouth fell open. I mean, literally jaw-droppingly open. I couldn’t believe the woman had just said that. To my mom. She was so totally off her rocker.

I expected Mom to ream her up one wall and down the other to stay away from her son. I waited for her to throw the bitch out on her ass. But my mother only pinched up her lips tight with disapproval, narrowed her eyes but then regretfully answered, “Fine.”

I whirled to gape at her, certain I’d misheard her, but no. No, she’d said fine, clear as day.

Mrs. Garrison smiled her approval before clasping her hands to her chest and murmuring, “Good. We’ll talk again on Sunday.” Then she’d strolled out the door like the regal wicked witch she was.

After watching the door click shut, I spun to Mom, hoping to hear some ulterior plan she had to pay the bills, one that didn’t involve Mason at all.

Sadly, she said nothing. She didn’t even look at me as she went about fixing us supper. It was as if she’d forgotten I was sitting right freaking there and had heard everything that had just been said.

For a second, I wondered if maybe she didn’t understand what Mrs. Garrison had meant. But hell, I’d only been ten or eleven at the time, and I’d understood. She’d flat-out sold her own son for rent money. So I figured she hadn’t realized I understood what had just happened, which only made me more upset.

Because if I’d been old enough to understand, then I’d been old enough to stop it.

Except I didn’t.

I never warned Mason. I tried to convince myself that whatever Mason had done that Saturday we’d left him home alone had been his own decision. If Mom had consented to it, planned for it behind his back without even giving him fair warning, then it couldn’t have been as bad as I’d imagined. But deep down, I knew it had been.

I thought Mom would come through and save him, that he’d blow off Mrs. Garrison, that everything would be okay. Except he was never the same again after that Saturday.

When we arrived home that evening, he’d been in the shower. After he got out, he hadn’t looked Mom in the eye, and she hadn’t looked him in the eye.

From that night on, he changed. He visited the landlady more, and she got him a new job at the country club. There, he met other women who paid him for stuff. Bad stuff.

The guilt ate away at my insides because I’d never told him how Mom had set him up, mostly because I didn’t want him to hate me, but also because I didn’t want his affection for Mom to die the way mine had.

He still thought there was some good left in her. He continued to believe her when she told him she was no longer stealing my medicine and taking it herself. He wanted to think things were getting better.

But they weren’t.

When Reese came along to babysit me two years after he’d started selling himself to provide for us, it felt as if all my dreams had been answered. She helped drag Mason out of the hell Mom and Mrs. Garrison had put him in. She sparked to life that part of him that had died so many months before, and when she moved back to Ellamore, Illinois where she was from, she took Mason and me, and Mom with her.