Page 82 of Wildflowers & Whiskey

And he is right.

“At first, it was weed. Mushrooms. Things she said helped her creativity. I didn't like it, but I left it alone. Then it got worse.”

All I can do is blankly stare at him. Waiting for the punchline.

For him to tell me this is some sick joke.

Anything.

“’Round the time you were a toddler, she moved onto hard things.”

“No,” I repeat. It’s all my brain can bring me to say.

That’s not Mom. Not the woman who painted landscapes while playing music too loudly and singing into paint brushes.

Not the woman who had been there for me when he wasn’t. Only leaving me for her gallery trips for a few weekends, not months, like he did. She came back, and she was—

She was good. Happy. Bubbly. Until she wasn’t. Until I was tugging on her hand for attention. When she slept most of the day. When she looked like a ghost of herself. She was slow, not fully there.

Common signs of drug withdrawals…

The possibility crashes into me so hard it makes my body feel like a tonne of bricks have just landed on top of it.

“The night she left…” Wade exhales slowly. “I came home expecting to find you both inside.”

The mention of that night has my chest tightening and my throat closing, making every breath painful.

“The night she left…” I whisper, eyes fixed on a tiny chip in the table. Fingers digging into my thighs even harder.

“She was in the barn.”

He stops, longer than the times before. My eyes quickly shoot up again, and for the first time since this conversation started, he looks genuinely hurt. His jaw is working like he’s trying to force the words out.

“She wasn’t alone. There was a man with her.” Wade swallows, “They were using.”

I can’t breathe.

“You’d been left in the house by yourself. Asleep on the couch, cartoons still playing.”

This can’t be the truth, but deep down, when I really try to think about it, I remember being carried to my room, actually happy that he was back. He put me to bed not long before I heard the shouting.

“I knew right then it had to stop. Wasn’t having you grow up around that. No child should, so I gave her a choice. Rehab and she could come home when she got well. Or she could leave.”

He moves his chair into the table, like he needed to be closer to me for the next bit.

“I wasn’t punishing her, Colt.”

For the first time in the conversation, his voice cracks.

“I was trying to keep you safe.”

Heat creeps up my neck as the truth settles in, heavy and unmoving, because I no longer hear a man who is closed off. I hear a scared parent.

All these years I carried so much anger; all directed at him.

Every argument. Every intense silence. Every blunt comment.

All these years, he let me believe it was him. Never once telling me the ugly version of my mother’s past.