Page 122 of Off-Limits

“I have them in the garage kitchen if you took any notice, you cheeky minx. You know, for customers and shit.”

A small grin breaks through at his sassy remark, and I welcome it.

Sobering, he reaches for me with his free hand.

“How are you doing?”

“I−I don’t know to be honest. I guess I will be ok eventually,” I say glancing down at the bracelet.

It feels hot against my wrist, and a small part of me wants to believe it’s my mum’s lingering energy within, even if it’s just wishful thinking. When I finally tear my eyes from the trinket, I look up and find Damon’s eyes on the bracelet. His brows are pinched as if in pain.

“I saw your mum wearing that bracelet once.”

“And?”

“She wasn’t in the best… state.”

“What do you mean?”

“Blossom, please don’t make me tell you this before you go to her funeral.”

“Damon, just tell me.”

“I was at the roller-skating rink when she showed up. Shehad a split lip, marks around her throat that she uselessly tried to cover with makeup, and a black eye. She was wearing that,” he says, pointing to the bracelet, and I swear it heats with his words.

I swallow, glancing down at it and toying with it before looking back up at him.

“How old were you?”

“I was eighteen, and your mother would have been sixteen or seventeen.”

The puzzle pieces start to slot together, like a broken vase that we can’t put back together properly. It would have been the time her dad assaulted her in the backseat of the car when she wanted to go to the roller derby with her sister. She saved Aunt Kerry that night, and when the bracelet burns my wrist, and I know it’s mum’s way of telling me.

But why was the bracelet so precious to her?

I mull over it for a few moments and when Damon shakes me softly, I glance up. I can see the sadness in the corner of his eyes, and I know he’s waiting for my next move, anchoring me.

“Did you ever see her wearing it again?”

“Never. Why?”

Removing myself from Damon’s arms, I start pacing, my mind whirling with the information. The bracelet burns around my wrist as I make sense of what Damon has told me, and what I failed to realise until right now.

“My mother gave the police a statement on her sexual assault when she was seventeen, and I think it was the night after the roller derby. I have no way to really know because I can’t ask her, and my dad is brain dead when it comes to my mother and her life. He hated my granddad, and rightfully so, but he was a cunt to her about it as well.”

“You think this was a promise to herself?”

“I−I think so. When she first found me wearingit, she lost her shit. I found it in her closet hiding in one of her jacket pockets when I was playing with her high heels. After she calmed down, I remember her crouching down and telling me that I needed to ask her in future, and she’d let me wear it. I think it served as a reminder that she broke loose.”

Damon turns me around, places his hands on my shoulders and offers me a small smile.

“Maybe it was, and like you said, we will never know, but I think we should believe it because your mum was a strong woman. She may have been riddled with demons and ghosts from her past, but she was tenacious.”

I smile back, feeling the heat prickle the back of my eyes. Drawing in a deep breath, I hold it for five seconds and release it, my eyes staying on Damon until I release it completely.

“I think you’re right, but most of all, Damon, I’m ready to say goodbye.”

The cemetery is packed filledwith people who haven’t or didn’t give my mum the time of day for years. It annoys me, but most of all, it pisses me off that these fuckers think that now she’s gone, they can free up five minutes of their day to make themselves feel better about their shitty choices, and not at all for the woman lying cold in the dark stained timber coffin at the front of the alter.