Page 28 of Unbreakable Thread

Rainey nods, the color draining from her face as she picks invisible lint off her shirt. This conversation is heavy for her. I probably should have waited for her to be far from earshot when I filled Drake in. I avert the conversation by asking a question I had wondered about for so many years. “What happened to you that night?”

Drake sets the paper plate on the coffee table. “I lived on the streets for a couple of months. I showered at truck stops and washed my clothes at laundromats. I had saved enough money for food. The streets are a tough place for anyone, especially kids. There were a couple of times I almost got robbed.” He laughs. “I beat the shit out of them. Then some guy came up to me and said every Saturday night around eleven, they have fights at the park. It’s low-key. I started fighting for money. Until I got a job at a restaurant. I worked there until I turned eighteen, then enlisted in the military.”

I wonder if this was the Underground fights or something else? I’ll leave that question for next time. “What happened to the girl you were dating?” Drake was so fucking in love with her. Every time she was around, he had hearts in his eyes.

He runs his fingers through his hair. A broken laugh vibrates in the room. “We stayed together for a long time. I lived in a small apartment shack that a woman rented to me. It was home, and I would take Lyn to my place. It was a dump, but she was fine with it. We talked about a future together.”

I remember now her name was Lindsey, but he called her Lyn.

Drake’s jaw tightens. “When I enlisted, I told her when I’d get back, I wanted to marry her. I was gone for a year. I called her when I could. I would write to her all the damn time. Not once did I receive a letter from her. When I had two months off, I went looking for her. I thought something had happened to her, but no, I found her in the arms of another man.” He laughs again. “Engaged. Fucking engaged to another man. We had been together for three years, and that’s all it took—me being gone for a year for her to fall in love and marry.”

Rainey gasps. “I’m so sorry, Drake. God, what a bitch.”

I’m speechless myself.

We change the topic. He keeps telling us military stories with his buddies, which makes us laugh.

It’s past midnight. Rainey yawns and takes her leave for bed. Drake and I stay up talking and drinking.

“You know, when I got my shit together, I came looking for you to take you with me,” Drake admits.

The thought of him even thinking of looking for me to take me with him makes my heart expand. Not even my dad came to get me out of the mess he made.

“I didn’t remember your last name. I went to Mrs. Sara’s house to see if she could give me your last name, but she was gone. Someone else lived there.”

“I appreciate it. It means a lot, brother.”

“Hell, I even went to find a social worker who could give me information about you.” He takes a Corona, twists the top, then squeezes a slice of lime into it with a dash of salt. He shakes his head. “Fucking dumbasses wouldn’t give me any info about your whereabouts.”

I mirror him, twisting the cap off my Corona before squeezing a wedge of lime into the bottle’s neck and rimming it with salt. “Don’t work yourself up about it. Shit was supposed to happen this way.”

“Maybe, man.” His shoulder relaxes as if the weight he’s carried dissolves.

Our conversation meanders through the years we’ve missed. We laugh and joke about the hard times that glued and shaped our lives into what they are now. Drake’s stories paint a picture of a life of struggle and hardship. He’s never told me why he ended up in foster care. I do remember asking when I told him small snippets of why I was abandoned, but he’s never shared his past, and I never asked again. I always figured he would tell me when he was ready.

Rainey

“Hello?” I hold the phone to my shoulder while packing my shit in plastic containers at Max’s. I plan to take all my old belongings home, the ones he has carried with him all these years when I was in the foster home.

“Hello, is this Mrs. Collins?” a husky voice asks.

“Yes.”

“I’m Fred Simpson with Simpson’s Law Firm.”

I scrunch my nose. What the fuck?

“Umm, okay?”

“Your mother, Jenna Collins, left a letter for you. She was very specific about the terms of when to deliver this envelope to you and only to you. I was not allowed to share this with Mr. Collins.”

Wait. What?

“She left a letter for me? Rainey or my sister?”

“Yes, ma’am, it’s for you. Rainey.”

“When did she give this to you?”