Page 106 of A Forgotten Mistake

“Why?” I ask with a laugh. “Shouldn’t you just be smug that they were a stepping stone to meeting you?”

He rubs his chin as he contemplates that. “I like the sound of them being stepping stones. Like brittle ones… damaged ones that no one wants. And you just graced them with your presence by stepping on them.”

“You…my darling… are ridiculous.”

Liam just laughs as he gets into the driver’s seat. “Oh, I forgot to tell you what Jesse said about the tattoo.”

I look over at him while he starts the car and turns onto the road. “Did you? Did I not ask earlier and you said, and I quote, ‘Don’t worry about Jesse, Jesse is boring’?”

“I am a weak man who simply got distracted by your lovely body. You can’t blame me for thinking that Jesse was useless in my time of need when he actually identified that multiple people who had that tattoo died around the time I was, say… eighteen or so.”

“Oh? That sure does sound like ‘Jesse is boring’ material. Now please, go ahead and explain what he said,” I demand, so he gives me a rundown of what Jesse was talking about before finally getting to what he was going to tell me about the past.

TWENTY-FIVE

Liam

Twenty-two years ago—age sixteen

“What thehellis this?” Lisa growls as she snatches up Abby’s wrist.

I’m sitting at the table when she pulls up Abby’s arm to look at a tattoo Abby seems to have gotten when she skipped school today. Since the service worker informed her that she’d be going back with her father after they get things ironed out with the custody between her mother and father, Abby has chosen to do something in defiance each day.

Yesterday she screamed and chucked her cereal bowl at the window.

Today she got a tattoo.

And every single day she’s come into my room and asked if it’s time for her father to die.

And every single day, I’ve told her it isn’t time yet. She’s grown more antsy, but I need time. Her father, Ted, is nothing like Jonah. He’s an officer who is currently in the limelight on two fronts. One for being right in the middle of tackling a ringof drug dealers and the other for fighting for custody of his child. From the outside he looks like the loving and doting father he claims to be, but the more I’ve watched him, the more I’ve realized that he has an obsession with vulnerable young women. He likes to meet them at the bar, and once they’re drunk enough, he coerces them into his car.

Her mother, on the other hand, is a drug user and alcoholic who is fighting her hardest to keep Abby. The issue is that while Abby wants to stay with her mother and has been quite vocal about it, her mother is being sent to rehab for the third time for a cocaine addiction that rules her life.

And I’m stuck watching her father during my free time.

I was right that the death of Jonah has freed me. I’m finally able to see the people around me and realize that for months, I’d damn near lost my mind. It was bad enough that when I finished my math test earlier today with absolutely no errors and no work shown and handed it in first, the teacher was so confident I cheated that he made me retake it as he watched.

I didn’t even have to reread the questions; I was able to remember the answers I’d slapped down the first time and handed it in even quicker, which made him think I’d memorized the answers from an earlier class. This led to him forcing me to take a different test as the principal watched.

I guess I really had done a good job making myself look like a delinquent these past months. When I pointed out that the teacher had fucked up a problem on the test and did it wrong himself, I’m confident he was prepared to kick me out of his class for good if the principal hadn’t been present.

But don’t they know I have better things to do than stare at math problems all day? I have a whole different problem to solve: how to kill Ted.

“You cannot tell me what I can or can’t do,” Abby snaps as she jerks her arm away.

“I sure can,” Lisa says. “You’re grounded. You’re not leaving your room. No electronics. Nothing until I say so.”

Abby flips her off and rushes up the stairs as Lisa sighs.

“She’s mad about her father,” Dale says.

“Doesn’t mean she can goget a tattoo! How are we going to explain this? Now we’re going to look like shitty parents!” she complains before whirling on me. “And I got a call from the principal about you.”

“For doing my math test well?”

“That you cheated on.”

“Ah. Yes. After showing two times that Ididn’tcheat on it and then retaking a different test, you were called to be told Ididcheat on it?” I ask in confusion. “I wouldn’t have wasted my time redoing the test if I knew he was going to lie anyway. Can I go out?”

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