She nodded. “Yeah. It was easy, didn’t take much time and the money was more than enough to live on. Evan was pissed I left him, but he was fair. Maybe it was his way of being a father. I don’t know. But he paid me fairly.”

Bella sighed and rubbed her arms. “But then…I just didn’t want to. I'd been doing it for a few years and I just got scared, afraid something would happen or go wrong. And I didn’t want Jackson growing up in that world. Didn’t want him exposed to all of that. So I told Evan no again. This time for good. He just kind of shrugged and said whatever. He was killed a couple nights later.”

I looked for something in her demeanor or expression that indicated that she was sad about Evan’s death, but saw nothing.

“My parents wrote me off years ago. When I got pregnant.” Her voice stayed steady  as she said this, indicating nothing.  “So when Evan died, I had no one to turn to.  I eventually moved out here, scrounging for money here and there, waiting tables, a bunch of other crappy jobs,” she said. “But I was getting it done.”

Her expression clouded over, a mixture of anger, fear and a few other things I wasn’t sure of.

“Then, about six months ago, David showed up,” she said. “Out of the blue. No idea how he found me. Showed up at the restaurant. Just sitting there with that obnoxious smile.”

“And he wanted you to go work for him,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Not hard,” I said. “Not many reasons for him to come find you. You said he wanted to expand here. And when you had me watch Jackson the other day, you left with a backpack, but didn’t come back with one.”

Her cheeks reddened.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“No, it’s really not,” she said. “It’s ridiculous. And I don’t wanna do it anymore.”

“Wait. Go back. Why were you doing it in the first place?  When David came here, why didn’t you just tell him no?”

“I did,” Bella said. “I did. But he…wasn’t interested in that response.”

I shifted under the sheets, my back aching. “How did he leverage you?”

She looked away from me, her eyes staring at something I couldn’t see. “Jackson.”

TWENTY-TWO

Bella slipped off the bed and turned on the small lamp on the nightstand. I squinted into the light for a few seconds, letting my eyes adjust. The pain in the side of my face didn’t grow and I took that as a good sign.

She resumed her place at the foot of the bed. “At first, it was kind of a soft sell, I guess you’d call it. I dunno. He’d show up, ask me to do a favor, I’d say no. He’d leave. No problems.”  Her eyes narrowed and her mouth twisted. “Then he started showing up more regularly. Or he’d send Colin. The sell went from soft to medium. But I still said no.”

She crossed her legs Indian-style again and rested her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand. “Then David started making noise about Evan’s parents wanting custody of Jackson, that they wanted to see their grandson. He’d been in touch with them and they were asking questions. David hinted at letting them know where I was if I didn’t help him out.”

“So you said yes.”

“Not then,” she said, shaking her head. “I had no issue with Jackson having a relationship with his grandparents and I knew the law well enough to know that my custody was rock solid. So I found them. We drove over to Jacksonville for a weekend. Had a nice visit.”  She smiled. “They’ve started a college fund for him. They’re good people who just wanted to know their grandson. We’re talking about visiting them at Christmas this year.”

I admired her guts. A lot of people in her situation would’ve panicked and caved immediately. She believed enough in herself and in her ability to provide for her son to put her son’s needs first. Not always an easy task.

“So then?” I asked.

She shook her head. “So then I opened my big mouth. I told David I’d gone over his head, that I knew his story was bullshit. Stupid mistake.”

“Why?”

“Because David is arrogant,” she said. “A lot like Evan in that way. And he didn’t like that I’d shown him up. So he decided to go a more direct route.”

“Which was?”

Her mouth twitched and her shoulders rose with tension. “Threatened to hurt Jackson. Or worse. Told me I better not leave him alone, something might happen. That kind of crap. Scared me at first, then figured he was bluffing. Told him to go to hell.”

She lifted her chin out of her hand and folded her hands together. Tightly.

“But he wasn’t bluffing,” she said, her voice cracking. “He’d show up at the restaurant and be sitting in the booth with him. Jackson would be outside, riding up and down on his Big Wheel and David would be sitting on the curb, talking to him.”  She swallowed hard. “But that was just a teaser.”

“How so?”

“Jackson was outside one afternoon and David showed up,” she said, tapping her fingers against her leg. “He was sitting in the driveway, just showing me he could be here. Or so I thought. I went out to tell him to leave. And he’s just being David, chatting with Jackson, smiling at me, ignoring me. Basically showing me he could do whatever he wanted.”

Her fingers stopped tapping and she shook her head. “I was flustered, frustrated, pissed off. I couldn’t make him leave. I wasn’t thinking right. And my cell rang. I’d left it in the house. So I went back in to get it, just totally pissed off and trying to figure out how to get him to leave.”

The fingers started again and anger filled her eyes. “It was work. On the phone. They wanted me to cover a shift. And I thought that was actually perfect. Gave me an excuse to take Jackson and leave. So I said yeah, I’d be there in half an hour.”

Her fingers stopped again and dug into her thigh. “I walked outside and they were gone.”

The anger on her face morphed into a cocktail of pain and fear and anxiety.

“I freaked,” she said. “I started yelling for Jax, crying my eyes out, running around, just completely insane. Neighbors came out, trying to calm me down, helped me walk up and down the streets. His Big Wheel was gone so someone convinced me that maybe they’d just gone for a walk.”

She hung her head for a moment and stared down at her lap. Her shoulders sat high, her muscles rigid with tension as she relived it.

“After about twenty minutes we still couldn’t find them, so we went back to the house to call the police,” she said, looking at me again, tears huddling in the corners of her eyes. “I was hyperventilating and out of my mind. Literally, as I got the police on the phone, they come up the street in David’s car. With ice cream cones.”

The anger came back in a flash. “They got out of the car. Jackson was excited. Because he had ice cream. And David was apologetic, saying he thought Jackson had gone inside to tell me they were going to run for ice cream and be right back. He apologized profusely to me and the neighbors, made sure everyone knew it was just an honest mistake.”

She shifted on the bed and blinked several times, trying to clear the memory. “But I knew it wasn’t. I knew exactly what he was telling me. That he could take him anytime he wanted. Even if it was just to scare the shit out of me.”  She shrugged. “That was enough for me. I finally said yes.”

I didn’t blame her. I didn’t have a child, but I could imagine the fear of losing one. It probably paled in comparison to what it really felt like.

“So it was only supposed to be a couple of times, which I knew was a joke,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But I figured it would buy me some time to figure out how to get out from under him. And I’m no angel. He paid me and I needed the money. I still do. I just don’t like doing it and I don’t like being controlled. But short of moving, I haven’t come up with anything. So I’ve just started being a real bitch about it.”