Night Road - Kristin Hannah [101]
Lexi knew who this woman was. Everyone did. Her nickname, Smack, said it all.
Lexi got slowly to her feet. In all the time she’d been here, she’d never spoken to Smack. There was only one reason women befriended Smack, and once you started talking to her, you never stopped.
“I can make your pain go away,” Smack said.
Lexi knew it was wrong, dangerous to listen to that promise, but she couldn’t help herself. This pain of hers was unbearable, especially today. “How much?”
Smack smiled slowly, revealing black, ugly teeth. Meth. Mouths like that were a dime a dozen in here. “For the first time? A sweet thing like you? I think—”
“You get the hell away from her, Smack.”
Lexi saw Tamica barreling this way like a mama grizzly bear. She put a paw-sized hand on Lexi’s chest and pushed her aside hard. Lexi stumbled, almost fell. She regained her balance quickly and surged forward. “This is my business, Tamica. You can’t tell me what to do.”
Tamica went toe-to-toe with Smack. “Back off or I’ll take you apart like cheap-ass furniture.”
Lexi pushed in between the women. “I need it,” she said to Tamica, almost pleading. “I can’t stand it anymore. I don’t want to feel anything.”
“Hold out your hand,” Smack whispered.
“No,” Tamica said. “I won’t let you do this, hermana.”
Lexi made a roaring, wailing sound of pure unadulterated pain and punched Tamica in the nose.
A whistle blew.
Smack slipped two pills into Lexi’s hand and then ran so fast it was as if she’d never been there.
“You crazy?” Tamica said, stumbling back. “I don’t know why I care about you.”
“I don’t either. I never asked you to.”
“Hermana,” Tamica said, sighing. “I know how much it hurts.”
“Do you? A year ago today I killed my best friend.”
Two guards stepped in between them and pushed Lexi away from Tamica. “Back up, Baill.”
“I fell,” Tamica said.
“Nice try, Hernandez,” one of the guards said. “I saw the whole thing. Come on, Baill.”
Lexi knew where they were taking her, knew and didn’t care. Yesterday she would have said that nothing scared her more than going to The Hole, but now, on the anniversary of Mia’s death, in a world where Lexi had had a child and lost her, it barely warranted a sigh.
They led her down one hallway after another, finally coming to a small, windowless room. When the door opened, Lexi got a whiff of urine and filth and she started to panic, to turn away.
“Too late,” the guard nearest her said, giving her a shove inside. There was a rough steel-gray blanket on a metal bed. The mattress and pillow were made of old, misshapen rubber. The only opening in the door was the size of a TV remote. Food probably came through that slot three times a day.
Lexi stood in the darkness, shivering suddenly, although it wasn’t cold. The stench of the cell was making her eyes water.
“You’re here,” one of the guards said. “Learn something.”
The door clanged shut, and she was in the dark.
Lexi stood there, freezing already. She opened her palm. It was too dark to see the pills, but she felt them. She put them in her mouth and swallowed them without water. It took a while for them to take effect, but finally a calm settled over her. She closed her eyes and forgot all about Mia’s off-key singing and Zach’s promise of love and Grace’s mewling baby sounds. She sat on the cell’s rubber mattress staring at nothing, thinking nothing, feeling nothing, just passing through time that felt interminable.
Part Two
Though nothing can bring back the hour
of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not; rather find
strength in what remains behind.
—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, ODE:
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY
FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD
Eighteen
2010
From a distance, the Farraday family appeared to have healed. Miles, the renowned surgeon, was back