The padded walls didn’t deafen our screaming. My ears ached from my voice as much as hers.
“I’m your fucking mother!” Jinx howled.
Under the fury, she was as haggard as I’d ever seen her—which was an accomplishment. A bad one, but those were the only kind Jinx lived up to. The circles under her eyes were as dark as her ragged hair, and she couldn’t stop rocking, fidgeting around the room even as we fought. Her lips were pale between the bloody cracks.
“You’re Holly’s mother too!” I screamed back. I wanted to throw the chairs across the room but they were chained to the table nailed to the floor. “For once in your fucking waste of a life, do what’s best for your kids!”
Her gaunt face twisted, pacing like a caged leopard in front of the only door. “And what’s that?”
“Let us go.”
The words crumbled in my mouth and I sank to the chair, head in my hands. The rage was sand through my fingers.
“I can’t do it anymore, Jinx.” I tried to keep the sobs back long enough to finish it. I had nearly three decades of that shit behind me, I just needed to keep it together for a little longer. “I watched you eat yourself alive and I can’t let Holly, too. Not anymore. She’s been through more than any kid should ever have to.”
I dug my hands into a beach.
“You should have been there!” I reared up and screamed in her face. “I was working because someone had to, and all you had to do was sleep off your bender in the bedroom! All you had to do was stay in the apartment, or at least lock the fucking door when you left your ten-year-old by herself! And you couldn’t even do that!”
She didn’t stop pacing, but for the first time in my life, she wouldn’t glare back.
“I . . .” She shook her head, rubbing her thin arms under the hospital gown. “I didn’t know—”
“Bullshit!” I punched the observation mirror. It didn’t shatter, didn’t even crack, but my hand would kill me once the adrenaline ran out. “You. Always. Know.”
I was across the table so fast I wasn’t sure how I got there. I wrenched her around, made her look at me. Her pale, bloodshot eyes were like a corpse’s. Like a mirror. My finger was in her face, the best I could do to keep them from wrapping around her neck.
“You were too high to care.”
Her eyes were hard, but heavy brows pulled together, gave her away. She didn’t deny it.
“If you don’t sign these goddamn papers,” my voice was a razor cutting through my mouth to get to her, “I will take her anyway, and it won’t matter if you sell your soul to find us, I promise you will never see either of us ever again.” I thrust the pen into her hands. “At least this way you’ll know where we are.”
She looked at the pen, at the papers on the table. She looked me dead in the eyes, all the anger and guilt and withdrawal pushed down for a heartbeat.
“You’d be better off anywhere else.”