The halls to the rehab always smell

The halls to the rehab always smelled the same. Deodorized air shone over motes of dust that hovered in shards of light cutting through the white blinds at the reception desk where she signed in. The staff smiled at her, but otherwise ignored her presence as she made her way to her mother’s room.
She tapped her knuckles on the door, which eased open silently. Pearl was watching television and turned at Evelyn’s presence.
“Scout, what you doing here?”
She hadn’t realized how much balanced on the gamble of her mother’s recognition, but when her mother distinguished her as more than just a stranger, something broke inside of her and she started to cry.
“Oh, baby, what happened?” Her mom stood from the ugly mauve recliner and stepped close. When Pearl’s frail arms drew her in—physical contact—every bit of preservation fled and she sobbed into her mother’s meek form. She hadn’t felt her mother’s touch in years and she needed it so badly.
Tears erupted from Evelyn’s eyes as she drew in stuttering breaths. “I’m so lost, Momma.”
“Here. Sit.” She was drawn over to the bed and collapsed, her shoulders hunching forward in defeat. “What happen?”
The anomaly of her mother’s nurturing touch and sympathetic tone was her undoing. She wept like a child. She wept for all those times there simply wasn’t room for tears. She wept, because sometimes, no matter how old a person was, they simply needed a mother and today she had one.
Pearl waited quietly for her to explain herself. It was a novel form of patience displayed by her mother, and Evelyn wondered if this was the break she had asked for.
She was tired of pretending; pretending she could read and write, pretending the children’s books in her bag belonged to someone else. The unending marathon of her life had exhausted her and the finish line felt just as distant as ever.
And now she was back with Lucian, but not back to the way things had been. There had to be a happy medium, but she didn’t know if he could truly bend the way she needed and she feared losing him again.
All she ever wanted in life was to be normal. Was it even possible to be normal and in love with a billionaire? He was larger than life, and she valued the small things that most took for granted. She didn’t know where she belonged, and her heart was leading her down a very unpractical path she’d never traveled before.
Once her emotions were back under control, she blotted her eyes and looked at her mom. She looked well. In soft cotton pants and an ordinary cotton T-shirt, she looked nothing like the woman who raised her or stood by teaching her to raise herself.
Gaunt fingers, no longer stained with grime, brushed a strand of hair from her face. Muddy brown eyes, once so velvety tan, like chocolate, searched her face. “You okay now, baby?”
What could she say? Pearl’s standard of living was a version of poverty littered with squalor and accepted sacrifice that was never good enough for Evelyn. Pearl merely existed until it was time to clock out.
Evelyn had always been different. She’d wanted to run from the time she could walk. Her hunger had always been for something more than what was immediately available. Maybe she simply wanted too much.
“I’m so confused, Momma.”
“Confused ’bout what, baby?”
“Life.”
There would be no logical advice from her mother’s lips, but her presence of mind in that moment was worth more than any nostalgic diatribe of life’s do’s and don’ts. She shut her eyes and breathed.
“Life’s hard, Scout,” Pearl slowly said. She blinked at her mother’s unexpected comprehension. “I ’member back when I’s met your daddy. We had some good days. Once we even had a place to stay. It was real nice. Had a bed and toilet. We’s had that place ’til just before you came along.”
Her expression shuttered. That was the place her father was murdered. She didn’t know much about the man who created her, only bits of what she’d heard over the years. Pearl had been right next to him when he was shot point-blank to the head.
“He should’a been your real daddy. Not those men that came by. No. Not them.” Pearl’s head shook in slow denial and Evelyn frowned. “Them’s men was evil. They’s come and take everything we had. Took your daddy. Took our stuff. Even took me and left me near for dead.”
Evelyn’s lips parted as she tried to voice her question in the most delicate way possible. “Momma, did those men hurt you?”
Her mother’s stare became vacant, drifting off to blind moments of a past Evelyn hadn’t been present for. “Yes.”
Images flickered through Evelyn’s mind of her mother before life demolished her softness, before a life of drugs and prostitution eradicated all optimism for something better. She struggled to voice her question. There was violence and then there was defilement. “Did they hit you?”
“No. They’s come in shouting and shot your daddy. I was so shocked I cried and screamed. They just held me down and did what men do as I cried. Then they’s left me there to die. But I didn’t die. And then I’s had you.”
How had they gotten on this topic?
Her mother made a sound as if the memories caused her pain. “It was so hot that spring and as I lay there all I could smell was the blood. Smelled like copper pennies.”
Evelyn swallowed as something cold and unwelcome slithered through her insides. These details had always been coveted because they were mostly unknown, but now she wanted to erase them from her mind.
All Evelyn knew about her birth was that it happened in winter. How long were women pregnant for? Her father couldn’t have died in springtime. “Momma, what color eyes did Daddy have?”
“Brown like mine.”
Evelyn glanced at the mirror over the sink in the corner of the room and stared at her light blue eyes. Oh God. She’d never met her father, only held him as a memory of some piece of her she’d never know. But if what Pearl meant was that he had never truly been her father in any sense of the word—oh God—she felt robbed of everything and nothing at all.
“I have to go,” she wheezed.
Pearl turned, coming out of whatever trance she’d fallen into. “I’ll come with you.”
Evelyn stood and smiled sadly. “No, Momma. You have to stay here.”
All softness morphed into cold, hard angles as her mother glared. “No. I’m gonna come with you. We gonna go home. ’Nough of this place and pretendin’ to be people we ain’t.”
Evelyn shut her eyes and waited as Pearl, the mother who just held her the way she so desperately needed to be held, transformed into the selfish woman Evelyn knew too well. Her mom was sick. There were tests they could perform and specialists they could visit, but for what purpose? Beyond her physical ailments was an endless heap of mental issues. Labeling them solved nothing.
She slowly collected her bag as her mother argued. Her voice grew shrill with accusations, too cruel for Evelyn to listen to. As she backed out of the room, shutting away the raving woman on the other side, her mind shut off.
She walked the halls with no recollection of scenery or others passing by. It was all a blur until the moment she pressed the green button on her phone and heard Lucian’s voice on the other end.
“Evelyn?”
“Can you come pick me up?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Are you at work? Is everything all right?”
Thankfully she was out of tears. “I’m at Pearl’s.”
He didn’t ask how she’d gotten there or what had transpired in order for her to leave work early. He only said what she needed to hear. “I’ll be right there.”
Sliding the phone back into her bag, she realized she was outside once more. She walked to the curb and sat on the low lip of yellow-painted pavement and waited. The rehab was closer to Lucian’s estate than her apartment or the hotel. It would take him some time to drive there. As the minutes ticked by she thought of nothing beyond the ache in her back and the invisible weight on her shoulders.
Time passed in increments of devastated hope. The little bit she had in the world had just been cut down by half. The loss of those childhood imaginings, of a heroic father she lost before he ever got to hold her, were stripped down to nothing more than the remnants of a criminal act. She was the leftovers of the monsters who decimated the only home her mother had been able to lay claim to.
The insignificant pieces that amounted to her existence became the flesh and bones that held her together. And for the life of her, she couldn’t find the nerve to go on.
The slight pelting of drops barely registered as the sky gave way to spring showers. Her heated clothing grew damp and clung to her body, another weight to bear.
A delivery truck of some sort pulled into the lane separating her from the courtyard beyond the parked cars, as puddles pulled at her feet and darkened the hem of her gray pants. She wished she could simply wash herself away, float on to an easier place and forget these aches that added up to the sum of her.
The prattling engine of the truck came to life after the slide of a door. It grumbled as the driver pulled away from the curb and, as if the clouds parted to give way to the only spot of hope in her life, there stood Lucian before the sleek length of the black limo.
Separated by wet puddles upon pavement, the thread that tied him to her heart tugged as she met his gaze. There was no pity in those onyx eyes. Only clouded understanding that drew her in faster than gravity takes hold of a falling soul. Her knees flexed as she pressed her weight off the ground.
His expression was blank, an intrepid mask that lured her in. One foot moved in front of the other as she crossed the lot. His arms opened and she fell into his strength, drawing breath from his warmth and solitude from his unshakable stature.
She asked him to come for her and he came. No questions asked. He simply was there because she needed him.
“I love you.”