“Thanks for meeting me tonight, Haz.”
She looked at me with a little shock and I knew it was because my voice cracked a little.
“Of course. You’re my best friend.”
I really wanted to ask her to pinky promise on that and say “no matter what” because for whatever reason, the sad, scared girl I pushed down and suffocated all those years ago was starting to surface, and looking for something—someone—to cling to.
All Amy’s absence did was remind me that something bad was going on in my world, and I was alone in dealing with it.
“Three different men from New York have called me, Paiges,” my mother said.
I pressed the phone harder to my ear. Between the loud hum of the bus taking me back to Albany and my mother’s startled voice, I had a hard time hearing her.
“What did they want?”
“They asked all kinds of questions about you and your job with the governor’s office, about your boss who’s plastered all over the TV.”
“Bill Vorse?”
“Yes, that’s him.”
Great. Just great. Now reporters were looking for the next big scoop on the scandal and calling my mother to get info. It wasn’t a secret I had worked for him and no longer was now. My mother, however, didn’t know the meaning of no comment.
“They asked me all kinds of questions about you and what kind of woman you are. If I thought you were the kind to hide details, lie, and . . .”
“Mom?” When she trailed off, my heart rate picked up. “What did you say?”
“I said you had some trouble in your teen years, but who doesn’t? All girls have to learn what the truth is and how their imagination can run away with them.”
“You didn’t . . .” I cupped my forehead. “I was a minor, Mom. And your husband was the one who—”
“That’s enough, Paige!” she snapped. “We put that to rest a long time ago. Everyone is finally getting back to normal. The town doesn’t gossip the way they used to.”
Lucky me. Because yeah, I remembered the looks and harassment. The pointed stares and having no friends my entire high school career. I’d had Amy, and she was great, but between her difficult parents and her sister dying, high school wasn’t exactly spent braiding each other’s hair and gossiping about boys. I had constantly looked for a way to escape, and Amy looked for a way to make her parents notice her. We had always been friends, but the last couple years of school were rough on both of us.
Even the teachers had hated me, thinking I was some lying drama queen looking to pin an innocent man with such a despicable charge.
“I don’t want this drug back up again, Mom.”
“Neither do I, Paiges.” Her tone was softer and it hurt something in my heart. Never once did she try comforting me when I went to her in the middle of the night, crying and terrified. Nor did she when I stood up and tried to battle Frank on my own. No, she was only kind when she was trying to get me to admit what she wanted to hear.
The truth was, her husband was an asshole. But in the end, she chose him.
Still did.
“I don’t know what’s going on, or what you did—” she said.
“I didn’t do anything.”
She sighed and even with the creaky wheels of the bus, the vast night sky, and the smell of diesel around me, I could picture her clear as day. She didn’t believe me.
“You can come home. The truth is always the best way to beat anything.”
I nodded. “You’re right, Mom. But sometimes the truth doesn’t seem to matter to anyone.”
With that, I hung up and rested my head against the cold glass of the window. I was tired. A penetrating exhaustion that came with years of fighting something I could never win, and now there was a new battle I was taking on. My mother thought me a liar, one of my best friends couldn’t be around me, and my boss didn’t look at me as anything beyond temporary.
My muscles hurt and my head ached.