Mom stops me on the porch of our house. She studies me for a minute and I hate the scrutiny. Finally, I snap. “What?”
“I underestimated you, Starlee.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“In my mind, you’ve never stopped being that six-year-old that came home from school crying about Sophia picking on you. Or that eight-year-old that cried about the boys fighting at school. Or at ten, when getting out of the car was a challenge. You’d always forget your hair band or a sock or your homework. I figured you were sensitive, a little quirky and would grow out of it, but you didn’t. Things got worse and,” she touches my cheek gently, “you know. Things got bad.”
“They did,” I whisper, hating remembering those days.
“What I didn’t realize was that when I pulled you out of school and focused all my attention on helping you, I didn’t realize that I was helping you. And that you were helping yourself. And growing up and getting better.” She smiles at me. “You’re so strong, Starlee. You’re loyal and smart and you care for your friends fiercely.”
“I know what it’s like not to have any.”
“I know, and I’m so sorry about that. I was wrong about a lot of things and that is one that I regret the most.”
“They’re good boys,” I tell her, looking her in the eye. “They’ve been through a lot—really bad stuff—and, well, they didn’t have a mother or grandmother to take care of them. Just Sierra.”
“And you.”
I nod, because I do take care of them. Just like they take care of me. From the first moment Dexter saw me, he’d been fighting for me.
“We’ll do everything we can to help them,” she says, wrapping her arm around my shoulders.
“Thank you,” I say, meaning it in a million ways. I hadn’t been able to say it before. I was too filled with resentment and fear.
She opens the door and we enter my grandmother’s house, warm and safe. I don’t know what will happen at the hearing, but I do know my family is by my side. And not only will they fight for me, they’ll fight for the wayward sons, too.
40
Dexter
I’m rummaging through my closet, looking for my suit jacket, when I hear a knock on my bedroom door.
“Yeah?” I say, glancing back. Sierra stands in the doorway. “I can’t find that stupid jacket.”
She walks over and pushes me aside, flipping through the clothes.
“It may be time to clean this out,” she says, noting the full rack.
I shrug. “I like everything.”
She stops and wrestles with a coat hanger, a second later she frees the jacket. She holds it up. “I hope it fits.”
I take it from her. “Yeah, me too.”
“You could borrow Jake's.”
“He’s two sizes bigger than me. I’d rather not look like a clown.” I toss the jacket next to the pants already laid out. It’s a testimony of how nervous I am that I’m actually sorting through this ahead of time.
She lifts a dark-blue and gray tie off a hook in the closet. She looks at it for a minute and holds it up to my chest. “Dad looked good in this tie. I remember he wore it to my graduation.”
I nod, trying to remember. That day is cloudy. Not just because it was so long ago, because I was stoned. What a jackass. I wasted so much time, so many memories.
I take the tie from her and lay it over the shoulder of the jacket.
She leans against my dresser. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
I drop to the bed. “Yeah? What’s up?”