Page 75 of Cannon
“So what about you?” I asked, leaning back against the bathroom wall. “You know all my trauma now. Fair’s fair.”
Queen laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You want my sad story? Trust me, it’s not as interesting as finding out you’re related to the King dynasty.”
“Try me,” I pressed, watching her face carefully. “You’ve seen my scars. Show me yours.”
She stood up, smoothing down her leggings in that nervous way women do when they’re stalling. For a second I thought she might shut me down, tell me to mind my business. Instead, she leaned against the sink, arms crossed over her chest like armor.
“My mother,” she began, her voice steady but distant, “was what the doctors now call bipolar with borderline personality disorder. Back then, we just called her crazy.”
I nodded, encouraging her to continue.
“She was…and still is, emotionally unstable. We moved constantly. Every few months, a new city, a new apartment, new names sometimes. She was always running from something; debt collectors, people she scammed, her own demons.” Queen’s eyes had that faraway look, seeing ghosts from her past. “By the time I was twelve, I’d lived in fifteen different cities.”
“That’s rough,” I said, understanding the constant uprooting better than most. After my dad died, we’d bounced around too, eviction to eviction.
Queen laughed again, that same hollow sound. “That wasn’t even the worst part. My mother was a con artist, and I was her favorite prop.”
She paused, seeming to weigh how much to tell me. I stayed quiet, giving her space to find the words.
“Her most profitable con was the cancer scam,” she finally continued. “She’d move us to a new town, join a church or community group, and introduce me as her daughter who was battling leukemia.”
My stomach turned as I began to understand what she was saying.
“She kept my head shaved, my eyebrows too. Wouldn’t feed me properly so I’d stay thin and sickly-looking. She’d put dark makeup under my eyes, teach me to walk slow, to look weak.” Queen’s voice remained steady, but her fingers dug into her arms. “I’d have to pretend to be exhausted all the time, to throw up after meals sometimes. If I broke character, even for a minute, she’d punish me later.”
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, anger building in my chest for the little girl she’d been. “How long did that go on?”
“Until I was sixteen. By then I’d gotten too tall, started developing. Couldn’t pass for a sick child anymore. Younger kids are more sympathetic and by sixteen I was able to rebel. I wouldn’t allow her to use me in that way.” She shrugged like it was nothing, but I could see the pain she was trying to hide. “So she switched to other cons. Fake accidents, insurance scams, whatever worked.”
I stood up, moving closer to her, drawn by some need to erase the distance between us. “What about when she wasn’t running cons? What was she like then?”
Queen’s mask slipped just a little, showing a flash of the hurt beneath. “When she wasn’t on a high, planning and executing her schemes, she’d crash. Hard. She’d stay in bed for weeks, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t bathe, wouldn’t speak sometimes.”
“And you took care of her,” I said, not a question but a certainty. I could see it in her eyes, the responsibility that had been forced on her too young.
“Someone had to,” she replied simply. “I’d bathe her when she couldn’t move, feed her when she wouldn’t eat, pay the bills with whatever money I could find or make. By thirteen, I could forge her signature perfectly. Had to, to keep the lights on.”
The image hit me hard, Queen as a child, bathing her grown mother, feeding her, carrying a burden no kid should have to carry. It explained so much about her now, the need for control, the fierce independence, the way she mothered everyone around her, even me sometimes.
“Sounds like we both had some crazy-ass mothers,” I said, trying to lighten the heaviness that had settled between us.
She smiled then, a real one that reached her eyes. “Yeah, just different flavors of crazy.”
“Mine drank herself to death by the time I was seventeen,” I offered. “Reese and I came home one day and found her face-down in her own vomit.”
“Mine’s still alive,” Queen said with a sigh. “Still running the same old scams when she can. Still calling me when she needs bailing out.”
I reached for her hand without thinking, my bandaged fingers wrapping around hers. “That’s why you’re so good with ZaZa? You’ve had practice taking care of someone with mental health issues.”
She looked down at our joined hands, then back up at me. “Maybe. Or maybe I’m just trying not to repeat my mother’s mistakes. ZaZa deserves better than what I had.”
“She’s lucky to have you,” I said, meaning it. Queen was a fighter, a survivor. Like me.
“Sometimes I think I’m not enough,” she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper. “Sometimes I’m terrified I’ll fail her the way my mother failed me.”
I stepped closer, lifting her chin with my free hand. “You won’t. You’re nothing like your mother.”
She leaned into my touch, her eyes searching mine. “How can you be so sure?”
