Page 23

Lacey

M y parents got back two days after Rebel’s homecoming. I talked him into coming with me so I could speak to my mom about the letter she was holding for Richie. He was reluctant at first because he was worried that he needed to catch up on the jobs he’d missed. I’d hired an extra electrician and had decided to give Richie a trial period working for the family firm as a trainee, so he was currently paired up with Harvey getting hands-on experience. If he was serious about getting clean, then I wanted to do everything I could to help him. That also included seeing if we could get the police to drop the charges, as there was nothing stolen. I was hoping my mom would agree. The thing was, I wanted to keep my father distracted while I had a heart-to-heart with my mother, and that was why I needed Rebel here.

When my mom opened the door to see both of us standing side by side her face lit up. “Come to welcome us back so soon?” she asked. Holding the door open, she added, “I put on a peach cobbler. Come on in and I’ll make coffee to wash it down with.”

When my father reached for the remote control to turn off the television, Rebel spoke up. “I hope you’re not turning the game off. I’d love to watch it with you.”

My father waved him into the living room with a pleased smile. “You’re welcome to watch with me anytime, Rebel. Who are you putting your money on today?”

Rebel slid into my mother’s rocker, which was beside my dad’s recliner, and they began chatting about the teams. I followed my mother to the kitchen. She started a fresh pot of coffee and told me, “The cobbler has another twelve minutes. Should we add a scoop of ice cream?”

“Sure, but I need to talk to you for a minute about Richie.”

Her expression dimmed. “Did the police finally arrest him?”

“Not yet, and if they do, I’m going to intervene.”

She sat down across the table from me, frowning. “I know he’s family, but he broke into our home, Lacey. I don’t know how we can look the other way on this.”

“He’s got problems, Mom. He didn’t take anything, and I think he needs a chance,” I said.

My mom didn’t say anything, but I could see her lips thin out in a disapproving manner.

“Maybe if you hear what I have to say, you might think differently. I have a question for you. Sometime before Aunt Susan died she gave you an envelope, inside was a letter for Richie. Do you mind if I ask why you never gave it to him?”

She hesitated for a moment before answering. “It was because his stepfather asked me to wait until he was clean. He felt like the letter would cause him to spiral deeper into drugs.”

I dived straight into it, “Were you aware that she had a daughter, that Richie had a sibling?”

My mother’s mouth fell open, and she shook her head. “It must have been a stillbirth, otherwise she would have mentioned it.”

“No, Mom. Aunt Susan had a daughter. She would have been born when Richie was seven. From what he told me, she had problems. She was born with a missing arm and a club foot. They put her in a home and left her to rot there after visiting her every Sunday for years and letting Richie get close and play with her.”

My mother’s expression grew angry. “No, he’s lying. Susan would never abandon her own child that way. You’d do well to stop listening to your cousin. Richie is nothing but trouble.”

“Why would he make up something like that? You’ve admitted that Aunt Susan gave you a letter. Why don’t you get it so we can find out for ourselves what it says? Richie said we could read it as long as I give it to him afterwards. He doesn’t want any more secrets in our family. That’s what he came here to find. He wanted to know what happened to Debbie.”

My mother murmured, “I can’t remember where I put it.”

I quietly redirected her, “It’s got to be in your safe. Richie looked everywhere else but couldn’t get into the safe. It has to be there.”

“Fine, I’ll get the letter, and you can see for yourself that this is all rubbish.”

She stalked out of the kitchen towards the safe in the family room. I hoped she would bring it back without messing about. I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. When she came back, the hand holding the letter was trembling. “I found it. Are you certain we should open it? It’s marked ‘Private and Confidential for Richie.’”

When she put it on the table in front of me, I reached for it without a single reservation. “Yeah, Mom. We should keep whatever is written to ourselves though and give Richie the choice to share the information with whoever he wants to have it.”

She sat down across from me again, and I read the letter out loud. There were profuse apologies along with an explanation that made sense. She talked about her daughter, Richie’s half-sister, with a certain kind of resignation, like she had no choice but to place her in a home. She didn’t lay all the blame on her husband, but the implication was that he insisted on a placement for her. It was heartbreaking to realize that she went through with it to please her husband but lost her son in the process.

Before I realized it, tears were streaming down my face as I continued to read the letter out loud. My aunt, Richie’s mother, apologized to him because she saw how much this hurt him.

My mother’s still-trembling hand came up to cover her mouth. She was shocked, and her emotions were churning. I could tell from looking at her that this was as hard for her as it was for me, and our emotions didn’t even cover half of everything Richie had been through.

When I finished reading the letter, I told her, “This is why Richie started acting out when he was twelve. He was worried that she got stuck somewhere really bad. He said that with no family checking on her, they might not be taking care of her.”

“But his stepfather knew,” she stammered. “He knew and let us all think Richie was just a bad person. He painted his stepson as troubled and made us all believe it.”

“Yeah, I also think his stepdad convinced him that he was a bad apple and deserved for all of us to turn our backs on him.”

She got to her feet and started pacing back and forth in front of the kitchen table. “You’re right, Lacey. We’ve got to find him and make this right. I’m going to call the police and say it was all a misunderstanding. Richie needs our support.”

“I already found him, and he’s been clean for a few days after an accidental overdose. I put him with Harvey to train, and he’s going to a local support group for addicts. We’re trying to get him into a treatment program.”

She stopped pacing, and I could see tears in her eyes. “We’ve got to find that sister of hers. What did you say her name was?”

“Debbie.”

My mother broke down, crying big, ugly tears. I ran and got her some tissues and put my arm around her. “Don’t worry, we’re fixing this. Rebel and his club are going to help Richie track her down.”

“And then what?” she asked while wiping her eyes. “If her father is still the guardian, he’s not going to let any of us take her out of that placement where she’s been living for years.”

I gave her a big hug. “Richie thought she might have learning difficulties, though he said she seemed okay when he visited her. Maybe she aged out of the system at eighteen and is living independently? Anyway, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I assured her.

When I let my mom go, she kept wiping at her eyes and trying to blink away the tears. “I don’t know how something like this happened in our family.”

“Me neither, Mom. All I know is now that we know the truth, we can fix it.”

“Yes, we’ll do our best to fix it. You take this letter to Richie and you tell him he can come here and live if he wants to. Your father and I will welcome him with open arms. Tell him that whatever he needs, we’ll help him get it.”

“That’s really generous, but I think he’s been taken in by Rebel’s club. He’s in a good place right now, what with going to treatment and working a real job. His mother would be proud of him.”

“I’m really proud of him too, Lacey. Just tell him we’re here for him if he needs anything.”

Just then, the buzzer went off, alerting us that the cobbler was finished cooking. I pulled it out of the oven and placed it on a wire rack on the counter to cool. My mother and I kept talking, and at some point I realized that I had forgotten about how Richie had said he didn’t break into the office. I remembered when I first mentioned it Rebel thought that maybe he was just playing it safe—admitting to what we already knew—but I wasn’t so sure. Either way, this whole nightmare looked like it was about to go into our rearview mirror.

I had been expecting some raised eyebrows when I told my parents that I was going to live with Rebel, but they were remarkably okay about the whole thing. Normally, they might be cautious about their only daughter moving in with a big biker, but Rebel had proven himself to be a wonderful person in their eyes several times over already. Plus, they were seeing me as a fully functional adult, rather than their little girl, and they were better about trusting my judgment. Still, it was nice not to get any pushback from them on us living together.