“I thought you were dead,” I countered, stating the obvious.

She nodded. “I thought I was, too. Turns out, I was wrong.”

“What does that mean?” I was already over the vague answers, especially when all it caused were more fucking questions.

“It means when your father pulled the trigger I thought I was dead, but I woke up and was surprised then that I was alive as you are now, but I wasn’t free. I was locked somewhere.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, “but the details are fuzzy. I escaped, but honestly I don’t even remember how. As soon as my mind started to clear, I sought you out.”

“You think Chop kept you somewhere all this time?”

Sadie nodded. “Yes, but I don’t know where.”

“How the fuck didn’t you know where you were for twenty fucking years? You don’t think that sounds a little fucking crazy?”

Sadie lifted an arm onto the table, palm up, and pushed up her long sleeve. Her forearm was littered with pockmarks in varying stages of scarring from pink to white. “I do know it sounds crazy,” she said, her eyes finally meeting mine, “but that’s the truth.”

“Say it is the truth, there is still the little matter of why the fuck he would do that,” I pointed out. “Chop has a reason for everything, even the fucked up shit had a fucked up reason. This?” I said, using my hand to gesture to her arm. She pulled her sleeve back down. “I can’t think of any reason for this.”

Sadie continued to tug her sleeve over her hand. “The why doesn’t matter now, Abel. It’s not important anymore. The why doesn’t let me move forward.”

“So why aren’t you already moving forward then? Why come? You don’t think Chop will know you were here? He’s got eyes everywhere, or did twenty-five years of being drugged and locked up make you forget all that?” I said sarcastically, throwing her ridiculous story back in her face. Bitch could have been a junkie who’d recently found sobriety and just wanted to make excuses for her absence in my life for the last three fucking decades.

Ding-dong motherfucker. Chop shot her. Came back out. Told everyone she was dead. Bitch looks alive to me so even if her story isn’t the truth your old man is balls deep in whatever did happen. Ghost Preppy chimed in. I’d been hearing him a lot less since I met Ti and was glad the little fucker was still around. I placed my elbows on the table and covered my mouth with my hands to cover my smile.

Preppy was right, but there was no way I would ever know if she was telling the truth. I wouldn’t put long and prolonged torture past Chop, but why would he lie to everyone about it? There was more to the story, and I didn’t know if Sadie was lying, or if she truly didn’t remember.

She cleared her throat and my eyes fell to her long hair which she was twisting in her hand. It was a lot longer than it was in my memory, touching her waist, and the almost black was now streaked with white. The wrinkles around her eyes were more prominent, her signature red lipstick was gone, her lips bare as well as the rest of her face.

“I signed in with a different name. Plus, after I leave here today, I’m disappearing. For good. I just…I just needed to come, I guess. I had to see you first before I was really gone for good this time.” She picked at her nails.

I no longer had to hide my smile because it had disappeared as quick as it had come. “What do you expect from me? A big hug and an ‘I missed you, Mommy’?” I leaned back and crossed my arms over my chest.

She ran her fingers over a long faded scar on her forehead that ran into her hairline. She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I was looking for by coming here. It was selfish of me to come, but I had to. I had to tell you what he’d done do me. You needed to hear what kind of man your father is.”

“I know all to well what kind of man he is.” I said, leaning forward.

Sadie shuffled in her seat. “I think he did it. Kept me alive I mean because he thought I told on the club, but I didn’t. Maybe he thought death wasn’t good enough a punishment. It wasn’t good enough to end my life, he wanted to take it and make me suffer more instead of putting me out of my misery.” Sadie sniffled and that’s when I noticed her glassy eyes. “You know? I hope to Christ I never do remember what really happened. I pray that it always stays a mystery.” She pushed her chair back from the table, scraping it along the linoleum, but remained seated. “Because something tells me there is nothing he did to me I’d want to remember.” She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and suddenly the void look from earlier was back. The sniffling stopped.

“Why the getup?” I asked, gesturing to the light blue scrubs she was wearing.

She glanced down and pinched the hem of the top. “If anyone questions who your visitor was, or if Chop gets wind, hopefully they will be looking for a nurse.”

“Why even risk it at all?”

Sadie ignored my question. She sighed and looked up at my face like she was observing me. “You have his eyes,” she said, staring right into my eyes. I shifted uncomfortably on the hard plastic chair. “You look so much like him, when you first came out I thought you were him.”

“I’m nothing like him,” I barked.

“You’re in here,” she argued.

“I’m here because I chose to be here. Don’t get it twisted in that doped-up mind of yours. You don’t know me. You don’t know the shit I’ve done that’s bad, and it’s worse than you could ever imagine. You don’t know the shit I’ve done that’s good either, and it’s better than you could ever know.”

“It’s for a girl,” she said. It wasn’t a question. The corner of her lip turned up in a half smile.

“So what if it is?”

“It means you might just be human after all.” She pointed out. She seemed to relax, satisfied with her new discovery. “You got that from my side of the family, no doubt.”

“Family?” I asked, scoffing at her casual use of a word she knew nothing about.

“I AM your family,” she argued, “I just wanted to be—”

“I’ve got family,” I interrupted. “You don’t gotta be nothing.”

“Andria? Is that who you’re talking about?” she asked, I hated the way she said my half-sister’s name, like it disgusted her. Andria was family, even though I hadn’t seen her in many years. She was the product of a brief affair Chop had with a waitress in Georgia. Andria should thank her lucky fucking stars she wasn’t born a boy because I had a feeling that if she would have been born with a dick she would’ve been wearing a cut just like me. “Yeah, but she’s not who I was talking about.”