Baxter, always happy to lounge, slumped onto the floor—his short, stumpy legs meant it wasn’t much of an effort—and Billie pulled a seat from under the table. As she sat, she noticed a few old Polaroid photos on the table. Without thinking, she reached out to pick one up and glanced down at the bright-eyed, cheeky-grinned, blond baby. Was this Travis? Hard to reconcile the baby with the dark-haired, dark-souled man he was today, but both her brothers had been fair-haired as babies and now boasted near-black mops of hair.
Lorna crossed to the table with two big mugs of steaming coffee. She gave Billie one shaped like a unicorn, with an actual horn sticking out the side, and despite the situation, it made Billie smile.
“He was a cutie,” Lorna said, and Billie realized she’d been caught with the photos.
“Travis?” Billie clarified, looking up to meet her gaze.
Lorna nodded, a sad smile haunting her lips. She wrapped her hands around her mug—it had hand-painted tiny cats all over—but didn’t lift it to drink. “I’m sorry to bring that bad feeling into your beautiful gallery today. If I’d known, I’d never…”
Billie cut her off and without thinking, reached across the table to take her hand. “Hey, you don’t need to apologize. Travis was out of line.” No matter how her hormones felt about him, the ruckus he’d caused in her gallery was unacceptable. “He had no right.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Lorna looked into Billie’s eyes, her own welling with tears. “He had every right.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t talk about this ever because I’m so ashamed, so sad, and I worry that if I start dwelling on it I’ll need something to get me through the pain, and I’m done with those addictions. At least I hope I am. It’s an ongoing uphill battle, but I don’t want to be that woman ever again.”
Billie nodded, letting Lorna know she understood.
“But that woman is the one Travis knows, and I’m going to tell you what happened because I don’t want you to think badly of my boy. He’s always meant well, was always a good son, despite his temper, despite what you saw today.”
Thinking of the way he’d waltzed into her home and threatened to kick her out, of the undesirables he associated with, of the way he’d first treated her, Billie bit her tongue and tried not to raise her eyebrows. He was definitely “good” in bed, but after today, once again she wasn’t sure about the rest.
“Whereas me?” Lorna continued. “I’m not a good person. And I was a terrible mother.”
Billie fought the urge to argue this point. The Lorna she knew had been nothing but kind and generous and good, even though she’d admitted to a difficult past.
Lorna rubbed her lips one over the other and then sighed. “I had Travis at seventeen, and by then I was already on a path of self-destruction. His dad could have been one of about ten guys I was sleeping with at the time and none of them were father material, so I decided to go it alone. Truthfully I probably would have had an abortion, but I thought my lifestyle would do it for me and by the time I realized that wasn’t going to happen, it was too late. And I was strangely attached. The baby kind of symbolized hope for me. Every night I’d promise myself that the next day I’d clean up my act, get help and become the kind of woman who’d be a really good mom.”
Baxter stirred on the floor and Billie put her foot out to stroke him, not wanting him to distract Lorna from her story.
“But I never seemed to manage it. I had Travis and fell immediately in love with him, but it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. I had no support and although I’m not using that as an excuse, it was a factor. He was an unsettled baby, would scream and cry all night, and drugs or alcohol helped me through. I convinced myself I was better for Travis when I was using, because I felt better.” Lorna paused and sniffed as if this confession was taking a lot out of her. “I tried to do the good mom thing; we went to parks and I’d tell him stories of the local folklore. He especially loved tales about witches and zombies and ghosts. We got by until he went to school, and then things started to get more intense. I needed more money to look after him, and I’ll admit, to feed my habit. I started sleeping with men for cash or drugs. After a while I wasn’t buying food for my son, because I needed that money for my habit.”
Billie felt her throat choking up at Lorna’s sad words. She was both angry and heartsick at the situation.
“Often I had to take Travis with me, and he’d sit in one room drawing or doing math games—he always loved numbers—while I did what needed to be done in the room next door.” Lorna had been staring into her coffee while she told this story, but she looked up at Billie now. “See? I haven’t even told you everything and already you’ve probably changed your opinion of me.”
“No.” Billie tried to shake her head, but she feared her answer didn’t sound convincing. Truth was, she was looking at Lorna a little differently. It was hard to reconcile the woman sitting in front of her with the woman she spoke about, and her story did make Travis’s actions this morning a whole lot more understandable. However Billie felt about her own parents, at least they’d always tried their best.
“Well, I wouldn’t blame you if you had,” Lorna said with a sad sigh. “Somehow, despite my downfalls, and there were many, Travis did well at school. And he looked out for me. When I was really high or passed out, he’d watch over me and try and cook for me when I was alert again. He saw so much more than a little boy and then a teenager ever should, but he never stopped being there for me. Until the worst came when he was seventeen.”
Billie was on the edge of her seat, wondering what could be worse than a little boy having to look after his drug-fucked mother.
“Travis came home one night…” Lorna’s voice drifted off and she turned pale. Finally, she spoke again. “He found my dealer trying to rape me and he lost it. He beat that loser to a pulp, ignoring my pleas and screams for him to stop. If Danny was dead, where would I get my drugs? And then when the police came after him, I didn’t defend Travis. I didn’t corroborate his story of why he did it because Danny hadn’t died, so I was scared.”
Silent tears were streaming down Lorna’s face now and Billie was only just containing her own. She felt for Lorna, but everything inside her ached for Travis. “What happened to him? To Travis?”
Lorna’s chest rose up and down slowly as she took deep breaths. “He went to jail.”
Billie gasped, her hand rushing to cover her mouth.
“And that was the last time I saw him. I didn’t have the funds to bail him out, and so I just left him there and went on with my self-destruction. What kind of mother doesn’t stand up for her child?” Lorna asked rhetorically. “It got worse after that, though. I tried to kill myself a number of times and that last time was when I met Felicity. She found me. As you know, I’ve turned a corner since then. I’ve achieved what I thought was impossible and rebirthed myself into a better person, someone I actually like, someone who gets high on life and art rather than things that will destroy me. But there’s one thing I can’t fix, and that is my relationship with my son. For that I’ll always hate myself.”
Billie didn’t know what to say. Her thoughts were still on Travis being thrown into jail for protecting his mother.
“How’s he doing now?” Lorna finally asked. “I could barely believe my eyes when I saw him this morning. Last I heard he was riding with the Deacons—Lord knows I blamed myself for him getting in with that crowd—but then Katrina happened and I never heard of him again. I thought the worst, but I never stopped wondering.”
“He seems to be doing well for himself,” Billie said, her heart aching with sadness for Travis. So many things suddenly made sense—not the least his explosion when he’d first laid eyes on Lorna. “He’s a security analyst now, he has his own business in…” She was about to say Tallahassee, but realized it wasn’t her place to share such details. She felt torn—half of her wanted to help this poor woman, to give her something to hold onto, to let her know that despite his past, her son had turned out okay, but she found her loyalties had well and truly switched back to Travis. She didn’t hate Lorna, and she still admired the woman’s transformation and commitment to fight her addictions, but she also understood where Travis was coming from.