Sadie(18)

“H-how’d he end up here in W-Wagner? How long ago was th-that?”

She shrugs. “It was a couple years. He was just passing through. He knew I lived here because he and my brother keep in touch. Anyway, he stopped by and he seemed different, little more put together, nothing like he was when he was…” She looks at the floor. “He was only supposed to be here for dinner and he ended up staying a lot longer.”

“Mama,” Breckin says plaintively, and Marlee moves to him, resting her hand on his head. She turns to me. “Once he knew he was staying, he told me he was going by Darren Marshall now and if I could play along, that’d be swell.”

“H-he say why?”

Breckin giggles. She shakes her head.

“And you st-still l-let him stay?”

I guess I don’t do so well keeping the disgust out of my voice, because she tenses, raising her hand from her son’s head. She waits a minute, like she expects me to push it, and part of me feels young enough to want to. I used to be an age where I believed I could talk my mother out of her worst decisions, the drinking, drugs, certain men she’d bring home to bed. Keith. Sometimes, I think about that Sadie, begging her mother to save her from … her mother.

I hate that version of myself.

“I don’t gotta answer to you. But yeah, I did.” She shakes her head a little, her brow furrowing. “You know, all the time I was with him, Darren never said he had a kid. My brother never mentioned it either. He would’ve known.”

“I’m n-not lying t-to you,” I lie. She just looks at me and I’m afraid if she does that for too long, she’ll see the truth somehow. “So w-what h-happened?”

“We were together a few months. He’d sit right where you’re sitting, every morning, and he’d have his coffee looking out that window.”

I follow her gaze to the schoolyard. There are a couple of women at the playground now, pushing their kids, or their charges, on the swings. I imagine that place during the school year, the grounds teeming with children, running, playing, laughing, under the watchful eye of the man at the kitchen table.

“I was doing the laundry,” Marlee says. “Cleaning out his jeans pockets before I threw ’em in the wash and I found this picture … this old, worn picture—an old Polaroid. It was…” She closes her eyes briefly and her forehead creases, like she can see it there, behind her eyes, and she wishes she could see anything else. “I don’t want to get into it, but it was the kind of thing you can’t explain or defend.” She takes a shuddering breath out and opens her eyes. “People don’t change. They just get better at hiding who they really are. I turned him out the same day. I wanted nothing to do with it then and I want nothing to do with it now.”

She lifts Breckin from his high chair, pressing her face into his baby neck. I scratch at my chest and immediately regret the abuse of my own gentle touch. My skin is on fire.

“You h-hear of him since? Where he m-might be?”

“No.”

“W-what about your b-brother?”

“I don’t talk to my brother anymore,” she says tightly. “He’s of the opinion that how I treated Darren was wrong and we haven’t spoken since.”

“P-please—”

“Look, I’m sorry for whatever it is brought you here,” Marlee says, “and I feel bad enough for you that I was willing to tell you that much. But I got a kid and I can’t afford to get mixed up in whatever…” She waves her hands. “Whatever this is.”

“—”

She watches me struggle.

“P-please,” is all I finally manage.

She closes her eyes and Breckin sits between us, oblivious.

“Jack Hersh. That’s his real name. Do something with that.”

“H-he d-doesn’t go by it! That’s n-not gonna get me anywhere!”

“Maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world,” she snaps. “You shouldn’t be chasing after someone that fucking sick in the soul, father or not.” She eyes go wide. “Did he hurt you?”

“Yes,” I say, flat and clean. “And m-my sister.”

“Well, I’m sorry.” She pauses. “But I can’t help you.”

It should earn me something but it doesn’t. You can’t buy people with your pain. They’ll just want away from it. I pick up one of her past-due envelopes and turn it slowly in my hands.

“Hey—put that down,” she says. “I told you. I don’t know where he is now.”

I slip the bill out, take a look at the number and she can’t stop me because her arms are too full of baby. Not that one. Too high. I reach for another bill, this one outside of its envelope and take a look at the number. That—that’s a number I can do.

Just because you can’t buy people with your pain—well. It doesn’t mean you can’t still buy them.

I hold it up and try again:

“W-what about y-your b-brother?”





THE GIRLS





S1E2


WEST McCRAY:


The ID tag on Sadie’s green backpack lists May Beth Foster as her emergency contact. She collected it, and Sadie’s belongings, from the Farfield Police Department in July.