Page 115 of I Am Salvation

She looks me up and down. “Your hair is so long.”

“I like it that way. I’m a drummer in a rock band.”

She nods. “My mom told me about your drum. She didn’t remember much. She remembered that you made her happy. That you were always playing a drum. And that what you like best in the world were oatmeal cookies and making Griffin happy.”

Mrs. Ortiz’s oatmeal cookies. Yes. Griffin would remember those.

And the Osbornes.

My best friend Ricky.

And his big brother, Malcolm, who left home at eighteen. Who we never saw again. A couple of months later, Griffin was attacked in her bedroom.

Malcolm. He knew our house as well as anyone. He always made a fuss over Griffin. Told her what a beautiful girl she was. Called her Angel.

I didn’t think anything of it.

Stop it, Dragon. I hear the words in Diana’s voice. You were a child. You couldn’t have known. There was nothing you could’ve done.

And for the first time, I actually believe the words. I thought I believed them before. In therapy. When I talked to Jesse.

But I never did. That’s why I couldn’t lay off the sauce.

I believe them now.

There isn’t anything I could have done. I was a kid.

It feels like a weight off my chest, as if I’m breathing freely for the first time since I was eight years old.

“So where’s my mom?” Bridget asks again.

“I’m not sure. But Bridget…”

“What?”

“I have to call the police. You’ve been abandoned.”

She holds her hands out in front of her. “Please, no. I don’t want to go with strangers.”

“I may be your uncle, but you don’t know me.”

“Please…” She wipes a tear from her cheek. “Please don’t call them.”

My heart breaks. This girl is thirteen, and I heard just as many horror stories from the group homes for girls. I can’t put this little girl through that.

Unfortunately, though, I don’t have a choice.

I can get a DNA test, show the courts that I’m this little girl’s uncle. Petition for custody.

Yeah, as if the state will give custody to a recovering addict who was recently arrested for solicitation…

And the hooker looked like Griffin. Like the child in front of me.

Not great optics.

With every bone in my body, I want to take her with me. Tell her that I will keep her safe forever. But we’d be on the run.

And more importantly?

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