Page 82 of Badd Ass
She nuzzled closer, and I held her as tight as I could. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled against my shirt. “I tried to go back, once. Right before I joined the Army.”
“What happened?” I asked.
She sighed. “He slammed the door in my face.” Another sigh. “I’d just broken up with this guy. We’d been dating a few months, and—I was homeless at the time, right? So I was couch hopping. My lease had run out and I’d lost my job, and I only had a few friends, and most of them were druggies. I was fucking…I was lost, a complete mess. No job, no family, no real friends, nowhere to live. So I’d hooked up with this guy, a decent guy, not a bad guy at all. Just…average. I was living with him, but then he broke up with me and…I had nowhere to go. I’d worn out my welcome with most of my so-called friends…so I went back to Mom and Dad’s. Thought I could beg them to let me stay with them for a while, get my feet under me.”
“And he turned you away?” I couldn’t believe it.
She nodded. “Yep. He answered the door when I rang the bell, took one look at me, and slammed the door in my face without a fucking word. Mom came out, gave me forty dollars, and told me to give him some time. My dad started shouting for my mom to stop consorting with a prostitute, and I realized then that…” Claire had to pause for breath, and start over. “I realized that he’d never get over it. No amount of time would change his mind. I’d actually considered prostitution, honestly. Before I got the courage to go home to Mom and Dad’s. I was on the streets, hungry, cold, broke…it seemed like a way to put a roof over my head and food in my stomach. I’d have been able to find a john easily enough, I figured. I didn’t end up doing it, but I thought about it, and the fact that I even considered it was the reason I ended up going back there at all.”
“Jesus,” I breathed. “I didn’t grow up religious, but isn’t there something in the Bible about, like, having compassion and forgiving people seventy times seven times?”
She laughed bitterly. “Yeah, but apparently that doesn’t apply to wayward daughters.” Another long silence, and then she continued. “I walked away from Mom and Dad’s house with that forty bucks in my pocket. I bought a Happy Meal, a bottle of Popov, and a bottle of Aspirin.” She let out a shuddering breath. “I meant to kill myself, and I probably would have succeeded, too. Some skinny teenager vomiting in an alley? Who’s gonna give a shit? Well, on the way to find somewhere I could chase the Aspirin with the vodka, I passed by an Armed Forces recruiter. He got me to go inside and listen to his spiel, and I ended up joining the Army right then and there. His name was First Sergeant Tim Troyer, and he saved my life, very literally. I got into computers while I was in the Army, met Mara in our Sixty-Eight Whiskey unit, and then I met you…” another pause. “But I can’t go back, Brock. I won’t be turned away again.”
I let the silence linger, until I could keep it in no longer. “He’s yourfather, Claire.” I spoke this in a low murmur.
“He’s no one.”
“Claire—”
“NO!” She shouted, lurching off of me. “Stop trying to push this! He can fucking croak for all I fucking care. He’s a goddamn bastard and I hate him and I don’t fucking care if he dies!”
I stood up and grabbed her, hauled her close, and she readily collapsed against me. “You’re going back, Claire, but you won’t be alone this time. I’ll go with you. I won’t leave your side, not for a second.”
She leaned against me, crying, for several minutes. “I hate you.”
“That’s not how the word ‘love’ is pronounced, babe. But I know what you mean.”
She laughed, despite herself. “You’re so annoying.”
“If by annoying you mean practically perfect in every way, then yes.”
She glanced up at me. “Isn’t that fromMary Poppins?”
I shrugged. “So?”
She shook her head, rolling her eyes. “You’re really weird, you know that?”
“I do know that.” I tipped her face up to mine. “So. Where are we headed?”
She rested her cheek on my chest, staring out the window. “Huntington Woods, Michigan.”
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