Page 74 of I Am Salvation

I cock my head. “It wasn’t your idea?”

“No, it wasn’t. But after we had a few days to think about it, we agreed with her.”

“Do you remember that person’s name?”

“No. I barely remember her face.” She frowns, gazing out the window of the mobile home. “That time of my life is such a blur.”

I can’t help wondering if Dragon’s parents were on drugs at that point. The mother is obviously a chain smoker—I can tell from the yellow tint on every surface of the trailer, as well as from the crackly tone of her voice. Perhaps she and Dragon’s father were taking something harder during this time in their lives—something that would have impaired their judgment. Make them think that their sweet little boy who had done nothing but love his baby sister could do something so terrible to her. And then be so easily swayed by a single social worker’s suggestion to remove their son from their lives entirely, despite mountains of evidence that it was someone else’s doing.

But I don’t have all the details, so my feelings for this woman are ambivalent. Part of me wants to offer comfort—comfort for the loss of not one but two children.

The bigger part of me wants to punch her into next week. Take out a gun and shoot her even.

“All right.”

“You could find all these records,” she says. “About Dragon. About Griffin.”

“Juvenile records are usually sealed,” I say. “Don’t you think Dragon would’ve found them before now if he could have?”

“I don’t know what Dragon would do.” She sighs. “I don’t even know the man.”

I shake my head. “The man? You mean your son.”

“Only biologically. I gave up my rights as his mother. Felix gave up his rights as his father.” Her face twists slightly, but she doesn’t shed a tear. “At the time, we thought it was the best thing.”

“Let me ask you this, Mrs. Locke. If a social worker had not suggested that Dragon be removed from your home, would you have given him up?”

She doesn’t answer.

At this point, I’m not sure I would trust anything she says anyway. I believe her when she says that time in her life was a blur. Especially if she and her husband were on drugs. It couldn’t have been easy to give up her son. But she did it. I suppose the question is whether she and Dragon’s father gave him up willingly or if they were coerced into doing so by a social worker.

But at this point? None of that even matters. It won’t change anything about Dragon’s past. It won’t bring Griffin back.

But it might help Dragon to know it.

“Can you answer that question for me?”

“I don’t really remember, and that’s the God’s honest truth.”

“Did you ever have any regrets about giving Dragon away?”

She closes her eyes, breathing in deeply. “After Griffin was taken, Felix had a lot of regrets. He wanted to go back and get Dragon.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I just couldn’t. What kind of mother gives up her child and then changes her mind?” She folds her arms across her chest. “I didn’t really miss him. He was never my baby after Griffin came along. He would have just reminded me of her.”

I jump to my feet then, my hands curling into fists. I walk toward her, stand right in front of her as she sits on the sofa. “Look at me, Mrs. Locke.”

Reluctantly, she tilts her chin upward and meets my gaze.

“You are the worst kind of human being on the planet,” I say to her. “And you deserve to live in this hellhole. You deserve everything you fucking get.”

I leave the trailer, slamming the door. I walk down the rickety wooden steps and?—

“Oh!”

I cry out as the wood splinters beneath me fall. My ankle hits the hard ground, and a sharp pain shoots up my leg. I reach my hand out instinctively and cut it on the wood.

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