I hated it.

Trent studied me.

He knew I was lying and his tone became wheedling. “Cheryl, this is the best thing for Ethan.”

“Just sayin’, you’re talkin’ about it when I just told you that I got shit to do.”

He took a step toward me and stopped.

“Think about it,” he urged. “A house in a not-so-great neighborhood, just you and him—and most the time you’re workin’, so he isn’t even with you—when every other week he can be with us at our place. A decent pad that’s bigger. A brother and sister he can watch grow up. A mom and dad to look out for him, there all the time.”

He was right. My neighborhood was not so great.

It didn’t suck either.

Most of my neighbors were old folk whose kids were assholes and forgot they existed. Some of them were new couples or new families trying to make a go at life. Good folk, all of them.

But there were a couple of rentals that had renters who were sketchy. However, outside the occasional loud party (which got shut down real quick because my kid needed his sleep and I knew every cop in the department, so I didn’t hesitate to make a call) or a loud fight, they kept to themselves.

But it wasn’t about me feeling defensive about the home I gave my son.

It was his “mom and dad, there all the time” bullshit.

Ethan had a mom.

Me.

In other words, he was no longer pissing me off.

I was there.

“You need to stop,” I warned.

Stupidly, something they didn’t have a program for, so Trent had not in all his years stopped being, he kept pushing. “You think on this, you’ll know it’s the right thing for Ethan.”

It did not sit great with me that he was not letting this go, mostly because it shared how bad Peg wanted it and I didn’t get good vibes from that. She was an okay woman and she was also a woman made to be a mom. Not just because she had a lot of love to give, which I figured she did, but also so she could have as many people in her life that she could boss around as she could get.

I tried one more time.

“Back off, Trent.”

He pointed at the envelope before looking back at me. “We’re tryin’ to take care of you too.”

“Think I’ve proved over the last ten years I been lookin’ out for Ethan on my own that I don’t need someone takin’ care of me,” I pointed out.

He lifted his chin. “We’re doin’ right by you.”

“Woulda helped, you did right by me when I needed it, not shovin’ it down my throat when I don’t.”

I could see right away that pissed him off.

“Knew you’d throw that in my face,” he bit out.

“Trent, for fuck’s sake,” I snapped. “I’m tellin’ you to back off. I told you I’d think about it. And I told you I got shit to do.”

“Nice mouth, Cheryl. You talk like that to our son?”

That was when I lost it, and, honest to God, it was a wonder I’d held on for so long.

Leaning toward him, I hissed, “I can talk any way I want to my son because I earned that privilege by bein’ there for him every day his whole fucking life.”

“So you do,” he returned.

I leaned back, shaking my head. “Of course I don’t, you moron.”

“Name calling. Nice,” he clipped. “You teach our son that too?”

“I’ll ask again, can we not do this now?” I requested sharply.

His face changed. It was not a good change.

It was a stubborn, nasty change.

That part of Trent I knew.

“I didn’t want it to get to this, but I think it’s fair that you know, you don’t do what’s best for Ethan, Peggy and me are prepared to take you to court. And, just a heads up, she feels Ethan should be with his dad full-time. The shared custody idea was what I talked her into. You push it, she’s gonna get pissed and we’re gonna go for it all.”

At the barest thought of losing my son, I stood in my kitchen while the world collapsed all around me. At the edge of my vision, the walls and cabinets and counters and houses and the town beyond all crumbled to the earth, a cloud of dust rising, obliterating everything but me and Trent staring at each other.

He must have read that on my face because he quieted his voice when he said, “And you know that won’t go too good for you, Cheryl.”

It happened to me then, and I got it. I got how normal folk got pushed into corners, their loved ones threatened, and the urge came to them, overwhelming them, turning them from humans to animals focused solely on their need to protect. I got how they lost control and lost their minds and viciously attacked their attackers with nothing but annihilation in mind to void the threat.

I got it because that happened to me.

But I’d been kicked when I was down so often, I had just enough in me that morning to hold it in check.

“It won’t?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. “It won’t go too good for me?”

Trent looked like he didn’t want to say it.

Still, he said it.

“Dennis Lowe.”

I nodded my head. “Yeah. You’re right. I fucked a serial killer. He told me he was a cop. He told me he loved me. He took care of me. He took care of Ethan. I was taken in by that shit. Then again, so was his boss. His co-workers. His neighbors. His wife of a gazillion years.”

“You were a stripper, Cheryl,” he carried on.

“I was because, you see, my methhead, pothead, crackhead boyfriend bailed on me the second he found out he’d knocked me up, and he left me and my boy to go it alone for seven years before his wife forced him to do the right thing.”

“I’m clean,” he bit back.

“And I’ve never been not clean,” I returned.

“And I’ve never given a lap dance,” he sneered.

I took two steps toward him, edging his space but not getting into it and also not losing eye contact.

“I did,” I said softly. “I gave hundreds of them. And I’d do it again. And again. I’d do it for the rest of my fucking life if that money put food in my kid’s stomach. If it put a roof over his head. Clothes on his back. If it gave me the opportunity to give him what he needed and as much of what he wanted that I could give him. If it made certain he didn’t feel like we were hurting, he was hurting, I was hurting, or him bein’ in this world was hurting me.”

I got closer and gave him my stripper voice, all coy and tempting, giving the impression he was getting something at the same time giving nothing.

“I’d grind my crotch into a guy, shove my tits in his face, baby. I’d do it with a line forming, give it good to one asshole after another. I’d do it with a smile on my face if it gave me what I needed to give my kid what he needed. And I’d come home bein’ proud of that. I’d come home knowin’, even though not one soul would agree with me, that I should be up for ‘Mom of the Year’ every year because I’m willin’ to eat shit so my boy won’t.”

“There were other ways to give that to our son,” he retorted.

“There were?” I asked, stepping back. “You a bitch with a vagina who’s got nothin’ but a high school diploma and a history of waitressin’ who got herself knocked up and her man bailed, stealing four days of tips she had in her wallet and her change jar before he went?”

He flinched, but I didn’t let up.

“You a bitch who’s got no savings, living in a shithole apartment she can’t raise a kid in, desperate to find the cash to set up somethin’ good for her baby in a way she can keep it good? You know,” I threw out a hand and injected my voice with sarcasm, “outside of buyin’ a lottery ticket that hits or turnin’ to another profession that’s looked down on a whole helluva lot more than strippin’?”

“There had to be ways,” he stated.

“Name one,” I shot back.

“There are ways, Cheryl.”

“Name one,” I repeated.

“A secretary,” he threw out.

“I can’t type.”

“Grocery store clerk.”

“No way in fuck either of those earns more than stripping.”