Page 109 of Pieces of Me

He said they had guns.

He said they used my name when threatening me, but never his.

He said one of them went through the car, searching through my bag.

It was impossible that he could know all that,see or hearall that, becausehewas beaten worse than I was.

Wasn’t he?

It didn’t make sense.

They left our phones, our wallets, anything of value we had on us—and the only thing they took was my driver’s license.

I poured over the police report, again and again, and I don’t know when it was that itclicked.

All that time, I think I forced myself to believe that it was a random attack. And even though I’d blocked out certain parts, it should’ve been so obvious they were looking forme.

And when I realized that, I grabbed the keys to the diner’s old delivery car that Zeke had given Holden and me, and I got behind the wheel and started the four-hour journey toward my house of horrors.

I wanted to know why.

As I stood in front of a door I hadn’t seen since Mom and I fled, that was the one and only thought going through my head.

I wanted to know why.

Before I raised my fist to knock, I checked in my bag one last time. My phone was there, fully charged and unlocked if I needed to call 911. Beneath my phone was the gun that Mom had kept in her bedside drawer. After she passed and I burned all her things in the field behind the trailer park, I kept the gun in the same place she did. I’d never used it. And I hoped I never would.

I knocked on the door, and within seconds, the man who haunts my nightmares answered.

It was strange—coming face to face with evil. Only he didn’t look as scary as I’d remembered. Maybe my age and size had me so fearful of him in the past. I guess I always remembered him as this giant, scary monster, but the man standing in front of me was just like any other guy who came into the diner and orderedtoastfor dinner. It was clear I’d woken him up, his dark, disheveled hair going with his dark persona and eyes the color of slate.

He was tall, but he wasn’t built, as I recalled. He was scrawny… or maybe that’s what years and years of drug addiction can do to someone.

He squinted against the morning sun as he stared down at me. I stared right back. Right into his eyes—these dark pools of venomous rage, and I could tell the moment he recognized me. His eyes widened, and he sucked in a breath, and then... then the weirdest thing... he seemed tosoften. “Jamie?”

Even though I’d spent the entire drive rehearsing those few words—I want to know why—I couldn’t get them out. I could barely even breathe. All I could do was nod.

He opened the door wider, and I stepped inside.

I shouldn’t have.

Unlike the man welcoming me into my hell, the house wasexactlyas I remembered it. From the broken vase on the side table that Mom somehow pieced back together, even though it was herheadthat broke it courtesy of Beaker, to the framed pictures on the wall.

They were still there all these years later…

A perfect little family for all to see.

A Straight-Laced Beaker, Sober Mom, andYounger Me.

At a certain point in our lives, the pictures stop. It’s as if I stopped growing, or maybe they stopped caring, stopped wanting to show me off. I looked up at a particular photo of all three of us in front of the house with the Christmas lights lit up. I couldn’t have been older than four years old. Suddenly, I found myself drowning in this… thiswarmth.It clouded my chest and held my breath hostage, and I… I didn’t know why.

“That was the Christmas before… everything,” Beaker said from behind me.

I turned to him slowly, carefully. “Beforewhat?”

His eyes narrowed. “You don’t remember, do you?”

I shook my head.

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