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Rook - 3 days

“A deer?” Nancy asked, squinting her eyes at my face.

“Yeah, it was awful. It ran out right in front of the car,” Tessa lied effortlessly. “I tried to brake, but there was no avoiding it.”

“Then why are your knuckles all torn up?” Nancy was as observant as ever.

“It was so horrible. It kind of… got trapped, you know, under the car. And Rook just… he felt so bad for it.”

“It was still alive?”

“I wasn’t going that fast. The speed limits around here are pretty low. And, yeah, it was hurt, but still alive and trying to get itself free. And Rook jumped out and kind of helped pull him free. It worked. He got up and ran away. But Rook’s knuckles got all chewed up from the pavement.”

Nancy’s lips pursed.

She wasn’t quite buying the story. But she had no way of proving anything else but what we said happened.

“Where’s the car?”

“I had to junk it,” Tessa said, sighing. “It was kind of… temperamental already. But after the accident, it was all jerky and weird. The mechanic said it could be fixed. But it was going to pretty much cost more than the car was worth. It just made the most sense to get rid of it.”

“Hmm,” Nancy said, looking between us. “How are you going to visit Lorna then?”

So she had found out.

It was inevitable.

Tessa’s chin lifted ever so slightly. “I’m sure there are busses that go out that way. I’m sorry, but is that a problem?” she asked. I had to admit, the slight hint of attitude in her voice was kind of hot. “It was my understanding that only Rook couldn’t visit Lorna.”

Nancy bit the inside of her cheek, knowing Tessa was right, but wanting to be able to do something to stop her from going.

“Lorna is the reason Rook ruthlessly beat a man within an inch of his life.”

“A conman,” Tessa reminded her. “And I think we can both agree that men who lie to and screw over women for weeks, months, years, or even decades ,” she went on, digging in, and I had to say, the way Nancy paled was fucking priceless, “shouldn’t be able to just… get to go on and live their lives happily, leaving damaged women in their wake.”

“Violence is never the answer.” The conviction had gone out of Nancy’s voice, though.

“There’s something poetic about vengeance. Like, when a man leaves his devoted wife for his assistant. Only to be secretly screwing around with said assistant… don’t you think it would be… justified for that assistant to know what it feels like to have her life implode after what she did to the wife for years?”

I could see the wheels turning behind Nancy’s eyes.

“I mean, just hypothetically, of course,” Tessa said, shrugging. “Oh, I do have a receipt from the place that crushed my car, though,” Tessa effortlessly changed topics. “Let me scrounge that up for you…”

“That won’t be necessary,” Nancy said, seeming distracted. “I, uh, I have to get going,” she said.

Then, I shit you not, she left.

Without doing a search.

“You were right,” I said, shaking my head as I looked at the closed door.

“I think she just needed to be reminded that she has a lot in common with Lorna. The only difference being Lorna had someone to stand up for her, when Nancy didn’t.

“She’s been blaming the guy who beat her husband for bringing his dirty laundry out into the light instead of blaming her husband for getting them all stained in the first place.”

“Do you really think she will tell the assistant?”

“I don’t know. But it got her off our asses about the ‘accident’ and me visiting your mom. So this was a win-win, regardless of whether she does anything about it.”

“True,” I agreed, reaching for her hips and pulling her close. “I think we should celebrate. Naked. For about two hours.”

“Why two hours?”

“Because that’s when Detroit should be done making dinner.”

Her smile was huge.

“Two hours it is, then,” she said, taking my hand and pulling me to the bed.

Tessa - 4 months

“I wish Rook were here,” Lorna said from the passenger side of my new car.

I mean, it wasn’t mine on paper. Yet. Since we didn’t want to give Nancy any reason to think money was coming in that didn’t come to us in a legitimate way.

To be fair, she wasn’t as awful as usual.

As much as I’d like to think that there was some correlation to telling her that her ex was screwing around again, I was pretty sure it was simply because Rook was coming to the last six months of his parole. And she’d never been able to pin anything on him. Not even some small infraction.

She was probably focusing on newer releases whom she could really dig her heels in with and terrorize.

I felt bad for those men, but I was glad for us that we weren’t constantly subjected to endless searches and scrutiny.

I often comforted myself when she was being her usual nasty self with the fact that—despite her tyrannical ways—she truly had the wool over her eyes.

Because not only was Rook using a computer whenever he wanted, but he was a damn outlaw gun-running biker.

And now, so long as we continued to be careful, Rook would be completely free in the new year.

But today, it was about his mother’s freedom.

The doctors had been fiddling with her meds little by little for the past few months until, finally, she was not only out of psychosis and mania, and no longer rapid-cycling, but up, participating in therapy and classes, keeping up her appearance, and asking when she would be able to leave.

While she had some gaps in her memory from the periods when she was in psychosis or delusion, and even some fuzzy bits when she was horribly overmedicated, she was aware of the passing of time, about how her life as she knew it before was gone. She was going to need to rebuild.

She was excited, if a bit nervous, about it.

I think the same could be said about Rook and me.

We wanted Lorna free and rebuilding her life. But we were a bit scared of there not being someone to keep an eye on her all the time.

We, and the club, would be doing everything we could to be there daily, checking in, making sure she was taking her meds—that would be distributed via a handy machine we’d found online—eating, drinking, bathing, and participating in a little socializing.

Temporarily, we had her in a rental duplex next to an older lady who said she would be happy to report back to us if she saw anything strange going on.

We figured you couldn’t get better intel than that from a nosy neighbor. And a duplex meant Lorna would get her own little backyard to decorate, work on a garden, and feed the birds.

The hope was to eventually be able to get our own house that either had a little in-law quarters or maybe even a small guest house.

This was a stepping stone in that direction.

“I know you do,” I said, giving Lorna a small smile. It was killing me not to tell her that she was about to see her son for the first time in years.

But the surprise was going to be worth it.

“Here it is,” I said, adding some pep to my voice as we pulled up beside the immaculate white colonial with its large front porch. “You’re on the left side, obviously,” I told her.

The other side of the duplex featured colorful pots full of flowers that stood proudly or poured down the sides, rocking chairs, and several wind chimes.

“It’s lovely,” Lorna said, eyes a little dreamy as we climbed out and made our way to the front door.

“This is yours,” I told her, producing the key. “There is also one under the railing. And we, of course, have one too. Just in case. Go on.”

I waved to the door and Lorna moved to unlock it.

We’d spent a week cleaning up the place and putting a few basic pieces of furniture in, but left the details for Lorna to work on, so she could make the place her own.

So she walked into a living room with a TV mounted on the wall, a coffee table made by Coach, and a little sectional sofa.

And on that sofa, Rook.

“Oh!” Lorna gasped.

Then they flew at each other, hugging tight as the emotions overwhelmed them.

They held onto each other for what seemed like forever, occasionally saying things, but mostly just enjoying the closeness that prison and institutionalization had deprived them of.

Eventually, though, Rook held out an arm, inviting me in.

His and Lorna’s arms went around me too, pulling me in, offering me the family I’d been deprived of and longing for my entire life.

For the two of them, and for me, wounds that had been aching for years healed.

Rook - 2 years

I was free.

My mom was free.

Tessa was free.

Everything was coming together.

Tessa and I were a few weeks away from moving into our first home together. My mom would follow within the next six months. None of the houses we’d found had any in-law quarters, so we’d lined up a company to add one onto the sweet little ranch-style home we’d found over in the suburbs, just a five-minute walk to the schools.

Perfect for kids we’d been told over and over again.

Tessa and I still hadn’t made decisions on kids yet. I had more than a few concerns about passing on potentially severe, rapid-cycling bipolar to the next generation. On top of that, Tessa worried about the addiction in her own bloodline. Her mother wasn’t the first to struggle with addiction. As far as she knew, it went back four generations.

We’d actually been to a few geneticists and shrinks, sharing our concerns and asking for their opinions.

The stats were there.

If both parents have bipolar, the child’s chances are sixty to eighty-five percent of inheriting it. If it is one parent, the chances drop to around thirty percent. When a parent doesn’t but a grandparent does, the chances are lower, but there are some statistics about it “skipping a generation.”

As for addiction, the chances are four to ten times more likely if you have a parent with addiction.

But all the experts were quick to remind us that both alcoholism and even bipolar are often influenced by environment. Traumatic events can not only trigger an addiction but also bipolar disorder.

So if our child was raised in a loving and stable environment, there would be a good chance we could have a perfectly healthy and happy kid.

We took all that in and were still sitting with it. We were young. There was time. We had plenty to keep ourselves busy until we made a decision.

“Ma, what are you doing?” I asked as I climbed off my bike to find her walking around with no fewer than eight hummingbird feeders in her hands.

I felt it then—that little tightening in my stomach, long-buried but familiar. The fear that this was it, the moment I’d been bracing myself for. A manic episode.

“Washing the feeders?” she said, brows furrowed.

“Why?”

“Because mold and mildew grow on them in the hot weather, and it can hurt or even kill the hummingbirds…”

“Oh, okay,” I said, feeling the tension leave my shoulders.

“Worried about me?” she asked, giving me a soft smile. “I’m doing just fine.”

She was, too.

There was a time when I was very young when I remembered her being balanced for this long. But this was the first time since then that I wasn’t constantly anxious about another bad cycle.

Yes, there had been a few times when she’d been a little down, or maybe a bit up, here and there. But the medications had been keeping her almost perfectly even since she’d left the state health facility.

She was gardening, working, going to art classes and book club, exercising, keeping house, and going to therapy.

This was the woman she’d always been capable of being. If only they’d found the right meds earlier on.

Tessa asked me once, cuddled close at my side, if I was upset or resentful that I hadn’t gotten to have this version of my mother growing up.

And, sure, life would have been a hell of a lot easier.

But everything that had happened in my childhood made me the man I was, had pushed me onto the path to meet my club brothers, and, of course, Tessa.

It was hard to wish for a different life when it led to such a beautiful one eventually.

“I can see that,” I agreed. “Need any help with that?”

“Both our hands don’t need to get sticky. What are you doing here? Don’t you have a wife you should be celebrating right now?”

“I’m on my way there. I had to stop in a town out this way to pick up part of her gift. Figured I’d stop by and see you.”

“While I love it here, and will miss nosey Mrs. Winters, I am really looking forward to being closer to you all.”

It would mean a lot of change for her again. New work, new places, new people. But if she was excited about it, I was going to be too.

“We’re looking forward to that too. Are you still coming by later?”

“There’s no way I am missing out on that cake that I’ve been hearing Tessa rave about for months.”

“It really is that good. Alright, I gotta go pick up some pizza dough before heading back.”

That’s right.

Tessa was getting her own long-overdue personal pan pizza and her pin.

But because she was now a grown-ass woman, not a little girl, she was going to get several little personal pan pizzas with all her favorite toppings.

The girls were helping me out by taking her shopping for the day, so I could get everything all cooked up.

I’d just pulled the last little pizza out of the oven when I heard rushed footsteps outside.

“I got the coolest—” Tessa said, her voice excited, but trailing off when she saw the whole setup. Which was a mix of bookish and birthday decor.

“What is this?” she asked, eyes wide.

“Your personal pan pizza birthday party,” I told her, moving close to put the pin I’d ordered online—that she’d claimed she’d always wanted—on her shirt.

“Oh my God. You didn’t,” she said, shooting me a wonder-filled smile.

“According to my records,” I said, going back to grab the record sheet printout I’d found online, then spent months diligently filling out anytime I saw her reading a book. “You have read fifteen books. Which qualifies you for five personal pan pizzas,” I said, waving toward the selections.

Tessa’s eyes went watery for a second. They always did when I—or anyone else—did or bought her something that she’d mentioned she liked. She did it on our first Christmas morning when she had wrapped boxes under the tree with her name on them. She did it on her last birthday, when everyone had gifts for her, despite only knowing her for a few months at that point. Even on Valentine’s Day when I got her her favorite flowers and candy.

As much as I loved her wonder, I hoped for one day when she wasn’t still so surprised by love and kindness.

She walked toward me, pressing her forehead to my chest, then wrapping her arms around me.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

And I did. More than I even knew was possible.

“But I hope you’re not hungry. Because I am going to eat every bit of those pizzas.”