HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1) (111 page)

“I kissed him first. The alcohol went right to my head. I wanted him, even if I didn’t understand what that meant then. I was a virgin. The most I’d ever done was kiss an awkward boy good night on my front porch. When he touched me, it felt wrong and right, all wrapped into one. I wanted him and I didn’t want to want him. The booze didn’t help my confusion. It just made things easier to plunge into.

“When he took our clothes off, I was too drunk to help. I’d been sucking down the booze out of nervousness, and I was very far gone. Still, I realized that this was the real deal, especially as he pushed his boner into my hip. That was enough of a shock for me to tell him no, that I didn’t want to sleep with him, reputation be damned. I wanted to go home, to sleep it off, to talk to my girlfriends the next day about it. I just wanted him to leave me alone. I was uncomfortable and shy and just not ready for all of this.

“I might’ve not been ready, but he was. Turns out he’d been planning this, and looking forward to it. I’d tumbled right into his trap, drinking more than enough for him to easily control me, practically giving him the go ahead to do whatever he wanted. I made myself the victim.”

Marlee’s face twisted. Karla raised her hand, but Marlee shook her head at her.

“No,” Marlee said. “I know that we’ve talked about this. I know that it was this boy who made me the victim, who plied me with alcohol and didn’t listen when I told him no.”

Karla nodded emphatically, and Marlee continued.

“He raped me,” she said. “He raped me that night, held me down, had his way with me. Looking back, it stuns me that I wouldn’t have steered clear of alcohol from that incident forward, but it became the only thing that numbed the pain. My reputation at school turned from good girl into drunken slut, and all the boys tried to convince me to go out with them. If they knew how to get booze, I did it. Even back then I started taking advantage of guys, just like I’d been taken advantage of. If they had something I needed, I’d get them to give it to me. It was just a simple thing to do. I used my body as currency.”

I jumped a little in my seat. I’d just thrown that at Marlee the day before. I’d had no idea at the time that it’d ring so true for her. I felt a stab of guilt. I hoped I hadn’t made her feel bad when I’d said it. It was simply my reality.

The more I listened, the more I realized that all these women were the same. None of them were unique. They all shared the same problems. Maybe that was what gave them power—the knowledge that they weren’t alone.

“And, of course, taking advantage of the men I didn’t respect landed me here,” Marlee said. “I’ve been sober for a year. I’m still working through the steps, of course, and I think I always will be. There were a lot of amends to make. I don’t mind. I can do that now. Everyone deserves a chance. You can’t just write someone off for something as silly as gender.

“I’m like all of you,” Marlee said. “I’ve been right there in that same bottle, drinking from the same glass, throwing back the same shot. I’m so thankful for this group of strong women. We can all get through this. We can all do this. We can all be sober.”

Everyone was on their feet, applauding Marlee as she left the podium. Inmates pounded her back and gave her hugs as she made her way back to the seat. I wanted to stare at her as she approached, but I stared at my lap instead. Who were these people? What was this program?

“Let’s end this meeting by standing up and reciting the Serenity Prayer together,” Karla said as Marlee returned to her place beside me. I stood numbly, not sure what the Serenity Prayer was, not sure what I’d just witnessed, not sure of myself anymore.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference,” the inmates all said together, many of them closing their eyes prayerfully.

When it was over, they all opened their eyes and cheered. Some were weeping openly. Others broke off in twos and threes, talking quietly.

“Well, what did you think?” Marlee asked, taking my hands and turning me toward her.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “It was—powerful. I’ll give you that.”

“Would you like to come back next week?” she asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “But sugar, I just don’t know about myself.”

“Talk to me,” Marlee said. “Tell me about it. I’m listening.”

“You have to want to stop drinking to be a part of this,” I said.

“That’s right.”

“I don’t want to stop drinking,” I said, biting my lip. “I crave it even now. When everyone was up there, singing their guts out, all I wanted to do was drink all those cocktails they were talking about.”

Marlee laughed. Of all the reactions I thought she might have to this bit of news, laughter was the most unexpected.

“None of us thinks she wants to quit at the beginning,” she said. “And there are always urges—there will always be urges. That’s where the program helps. It provides support and accountability.”

“I just find it hard to believe that I’m an alcoholic,” I said. “It doesn’t seem like a problem for me.”

“Let me ask you some questions,” Marlee said. “I want you to answer them honestly.”

“All right.”

“Do you honestly think you could stop drinking?” she asked. “Like if you didn’t have money or access to alcohol, or if you just ran out of it and the stores were all closed. Could you stop?”

I thought about the possible scenarios. If I didn’t have money, I’d whore until I had enough to buy what I needed. If I didn’t have access to alcohol, I’d ingratiate myself to someone who did—which I’d done all throughout my teens. Once, when I’d drank the nightclub dry and we were waiting on the morning to get a new shipment, I’d sent one of the girls out to buy me a bottle to tide me over. I always had a contingency plan if something went wrong with my liquor supply. If I really thought about it, I’d probably roll a bum to get a drink.

But if I just didn’t have any? The possibility was as terrifying as it was unfathomable.

Wait—terrifying? I didn’t know how to react to that. Why would I be scared without alcohol?

The DTs—whatever they were—was one answer. My time in that holding cell had been terrifying, shaking and hallucinating and everything else. If I had to stop drinking, I’d be faced with the DTs.

Then again, I’d had vivid, horrifying hallucinations that night with the hooch. The sex with Johnny French—well, the idea of sex with him—had been all right, but it was still disconcerting to have multiple orgasms in the presence of a figment of my imagination. Mortified, I wondered what I’d been doing in the real world while that was happening.

“Wanda?”

I lifted my eyes to meet Marlee’s—inmates were filtering out of the room, heading back to their cells, and a couple were staying to put away chairs. They were nearing our row.

“I don’t know what I am,” I said. “And I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong. But I don’t think I could stop drinking. And that could be a problem. I don’t know.”

I didn’t want to pimp myself out to Tama. Women weren’t my thing. But I’d been so ready to just to score a few sips of moldy, disgusting hooch.

That was a problem. Before, in the first days of the nightclub, I made clear, calm, calculating decisions. But the more I drank, the fuzzier those decisions became. And those strange half-memories. What were those? Maybe I’d done bad things while I was drinking and not realized it.

Maybe I was—maybe I was —

“Would you like to come to next week’s meeting?” Marlee asked, putting her hand on my shoulder.

I looked at her for what felt like the first time. AA wasn’t a weird sisterhood. It was a lifeline thrown to those who were tired of drowning. The people who took part in it were just like me and understood the problems I was facing. I was one of them.

“Yes.”

Getting into the prison routine had been hard, at first, but once I understood the rules—and all the little sub-currents to those rules—I started to fit right in. It had taken months, sure, but I’d instituted rules once, too, and I knew how to follow them.

I continued with the plan of having escorts all the time, especially now that I’d realized I really didn’t want to sleep with Tama—certainly not for the trade of hooch. Even that admission was tricky, as I still actually wanted the hooch, but Marlee was there every step of the way.

“It’s the first step,” she told me as we walked to breakfast one day. “You’re powerless over alcohol. It doesn’t have to mean that you never want alcohol again; in fact, it means just the opposite. You want even though you don’t want to want it. You can’t manage your life anymore. Do you agree?”

“I suppose so,” I said.

“Then what are you?”

“Powerless,” I said.

“We’re getting there,” she said, smiling.

I’d been going to the meetings, hearing everyone’s stories, listening to the discussions of different ideas and multiple interpretations of the steps, but I still had yet to participate. Marlee, Karla, Desiree, and all the rest were understanding. It seemed like alcoholics were full of patience for one another. They knew that I would come around in my own time.

Work at the commissary was going well. Cheryl was becoming something of a friend, and GED class was becoming better and better. I had even marched my way all the way through
A Message to Jasmine
and returned it to the library.

“How was it?” the library inmate asked. “Totally worth it, right?”

“Renewed my faith in books,” I said.

“Just books?” she scoffed. “Renewed my faith in life.”

I smiled as I thought back on the end of the book.

Jasmine looked down at the swirl of marks on her body. They had covered her since she was born, evidence that she was to die. They were physical evidence of the curse.

"I always thought they were from the curse," she said, voicing her thoughts.

"Wrong," the stranger said. "They were the answer to lift the curse this whole time."

"I don't understand," she said. "How are they the answer?"

"Only you can read their message," the stranger said. He began to walk away.

"Wait!" she called after him. "Who are you? How do you know all this?"

"I am the Messenger," he said over his shoulder, continuing to walk away. "My purpose was to help you realize that you didn't have to remain cursed. Now that you know, my task is over."

"But I don't know how to read the marks!" Jasmine cried, but he was too far away to hear her.

She looked down at the marks covering her body and found that, suddenly, their shapes and language made sense to her. All she had to know was that she could read them, and they made their message clear to her.

"Let go," they said simply. "Let go."

Jasmine understood. "I am not cursed," she said, closing her eyes.

When she opened them, the marks were gone.

I talked excitedly about it to anyone who’d listen.

“So at the end, the only reason she was cursed was because she thought she was,” I said.

The library inmate smiled. “That’s one interpretation,” she said. “Other girls think that the curse wasn’t that bad after all, and until Jasmine could see that, she was doomed. Remember the part about the shadows of the light and all that?”

“And light in the shadows,” I said quickly. Of course I remembered that part.

“The running debate was whether or not this was a true story,” she said. “What do you think?”

“A true story?” That made me frown. “In true stories, people have names. Someone can’t just be called the Messenger.”

“But people can be messengers,” the library inmate said.

I remembered the dedication page. “To the real Jasmine,” it had read. The photo there was grainy—it was black and white and printed in a book, after all—so I couldn’t be sure. There had to be more than just the Jasmine who had started my downward spiral at the nightclub. Plus, the Jasmine I’d known had never smiled like the Jasmine in the picture.

I met with Pitt regularly to talk about my progress in everything I was involved with.

“I’m really happy for you,” he said, going over my file. “We haven’t had a problem since you first got here. Cheryl sings your praises in the commissary. Marlee talks about you all the time. And the GED classes are going well?”

“They’re going very well,” I said, nodding and smiling.

“Good,” he said. “I’ve been having a couple of concerns lately, though.”

That was news to me. I’d thought everything was going amazingly well.

“I’ve heard rumors that Tama is pursuing you,” Pitt said, looking up at me.

“Word gets around, I’m guessing,” I said sheepishly.

“I don’t think anyone realizes how much of a gossip mill prisons are,” he said. “We’re all in here together, corrections officers and inmates, and everyone tends to hear everything. What a mess it was when I first started going to AA meetings. Somehow, all of the AA inmates found out and then the whole prison did. You should’ve heard the obscene offers I got in exchange for hooch.”

I flushed. “Well, that’s kind of what Tama has been dangling in front of me,” I said. “But I’ve been going to meetings every week.”

“But you haven’t shared.”

“No,” I said, swallowing and cursing the idea that AA was anything near anonymous here in prison. “But I’m feeling like I might soon.”

“Very good,” Pitt said. “And Tama?”

“I don’t want to be with her. I’m not into women.”

“I don’t know that she is, either,” he mused. “But she has specific tastes, and I must say—”

“I fit the bill,” I said. “I’ve heard that, too. Any recommendations?”

“Don’t be alone,” Pitt said. “Ever.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing,” I said. “Is that the only option to deal with this?”

Pit shrugged. “Let me say up front that I never advocate violence in any situation,” he said. “But life in prison can be a bit of a food chain. If there’s a way to turn the tables on her, assert your dominance in some way, then you might be able to cow her into backing down.”

Dominance? Tama was just as big as I was—and probably just as mean, too—plus she had been inside longer than I had. There was hardly anything I could dominate her in except that I was older. I narrowed my eyes. I was older. That was one thing. I’d have to think about it.

“I can see those wheels turning,” Pitt said. “I better not see that you’ve been thrown into solitary because of something stupid, though, Wanda. Not when it’s been going so well for you lately.”

“No more solitary for me,” I said, smiling.

“One last thing,” he said as I began to stand to go.

“What is it?”

“You have a son,” he said, “who has a wife.”

I swallowed and plopped back down in the chair. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

“But you’ve never made a call out of the prison,” he said.

“That’s correct.”

“Do you want your son’s number?” Pitt asked. “It can be good to have some support on the outside. I know you’re earning money for commissary items right now, but a little extra help is always useful.”

Did I want to talk to my son and his wife? It seemed to me that I had, recently, even though it was only a hallucination. I’d talked to my baby boy, but I was aware that Marshall was far from a baby now. He was married, and a man grown.

The more pertinent question was whether Marshall would want to talk to me. The last time I’d spoken with him—really spoken with him, not with the figments in my alcohol-addled imagination—hadn’t gone so well.

“If you have his number, I’ll take it,” I said. “Thank you.”

The piece of paper that Pitt gave me left me somewhere between hope and despair. I was in prison, but maybe I could reignite a relationship with my son and his lovely wife. I thought about the first time I’d try to talk with him. I’d still been at the nightclub, and had received a wedding invitation there. I was transported back to that call as I held the piece of paper with the phone number on it.

“Hello?”

I’d dialed the phone number that had been scrawled on the invitation in pen, wondering if it was an invitation to call.

“Hi,” I said, wondering at the female voice. “My name is Wanda Dupree.”

“Mrs. Dupree!” the woman exclaimed. “Oh my God! I’m so happy you called! Does this mean you got the invitation?”

“I did,” I said, examining the thick, cream-colored cardstock. Marshall Dupree and Jules Macy invite you to share their special day with them.

“This is Jules Macy,” the woman said. “I—I’m going to marry your son, it seems.”

Her laughter was silvery and contagious. I found myself laughing, as well.

“I know that it’s been a while since Marshall has spoken with you,” Jules said a little hesitantly. “But family’s important, in my opinion, and I think he’d want you here, on his big day.”

My immediate thought was of the nightclub—if it could spare me for the wedding. I was devoted to it. Perhaps I could just go to the ceremony and skip the reception. Depending on where they lived, I could even make it back to the nightclub in time for opening.

“I would want to be there,” I said. “I’ll have to arrange some things with my work, of course.”

“Of course,” Jules agreed smoothly. “I just think—Marshall hardly talks about you. My parents aren’t in my life anymore, but it’s because they both died during my teens. I would hate for him to miss out on knowing his mother, especially when we don’t live but two hours away from each other.”

Two hours. That might be a push, but as long as the ceremony was early in the day, I could still probably make it back to the nightclub.

“Hell,” Jules said mildly, laughing. “This is probably pure selfishness on my part. I miss my parents. I miss having that rock in my life, knowing that my parents are there for me. I want to know you, Mrs. Dupree. I want you in our lives.”

“Well, the first thing you need to do is stop calling me Mrs. Dupree,” I said, smiling. “It’s Mama.”

“Mama,” Jules said, seeming to try it out. “I think I can do that, Mama. That feels good.”

I smiled. My son had found a sweet girl to share his life with.

I heard a quiet commotion on the other end of the line.

“Marshall, I think you should—”

“Is that her? Are you talking to her? I thought we’d agreed —”

“I think it’s important, honey. It’s your mother—”

“She hasn’t been, not for a long time. Let me—”

“No, Marshall, please—”

“Hello?”

My breath hitched. My son, a man grown. His voice was deep, rich, but suspicious. It cut me.

“Hey, sugar,” I said, my lips trembling. “It’s Mama.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “You haven’t been my Mama for a very long time.”

I heard Jules say something in a horrified tone in the background, but I only had ears for my son. I deserved to be punished. He was right. I hadn’t been his Mama in a long time.

“I would like to be there for you again, sugar,” I said. “I would like to go to your wedding. I would like to meet your wife.”

“I can’t even remember what you look like,” Marshall said. “The woman I’m preparing to spend the rest of my life with sent you that invitation. Consider it null and void. She doesn’t understand what you are.”

I choked back a sob. “Marshall, baby, please….”

“I begged you like this,” he said. “Remember? When you were leaving me? That’s my earliest fucking memory.”

“Watch your mouth, son,” I said automatically, a kneejerk reaction.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” he said. “And you never get to call me son.”

The call cut off and I was certain that he’d hung up on me. I let the wedding invitation drop into the trash and poured myself a drink. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about leaving the nightclub now. That was one thing.

Whiskey and salt tears. That was my cocktail of choice in the days that followed that phone call.

“Wanda?”

Pitt’s concerned voice dragged me back to the present.

“I was just thinking about calling my son,” I said, smiling and holding the paper up. My hand was shaking, so I lowered it again. “Thank you for this opportunity.”

“You have the time,” Pitt said. “Think about spending some of it knitting your family back together.”

“I will,” I vowed.

Marlee was waiting for me outside. “Ready?” she asked me.

“As I can be,” I said.

We walked to the common room for our weekly AA meeting. We helped set up the last of the chairs as everyone converged. Desiree sat on one side of me and Marlee on the other. They’d been doing that ever since the first meeting.