Bitter Truth (Hawthorne Vines #1)

Then I storm from the room, just before the first tears begin to fall.

Chapter Fourteen

WES

The phone rings for so long, I’m almost positive it’s going to go to voice mail, but just before it does, someone answers.

“Yeah.”

I clear my throat. “I’m looking for Sonia?”

“Oh, you are, huh? And why the fuck should I let you talk to her?”

Licking my lips, I rest my palm against my forehead and close my eyes.

“I’m her son.” I try to keep my voice calm.

There’s a pause, and the guy grunts before I hear footsteps and shuffling. Then my mother’s voice comes across the line.

“What.”

I instantly know she’s sober. She’s only angry when she’s sober.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Look, I don’t have a lot of time. Troy and I have things to do.”

“I just wanted to check in.”

She snorts. “I don’t need you to check in. I’m the mother here.”

Sighing, I squeeze my cell phone in irritation.

“All right. I was thinking about heading into the city to see you.” My stomach roils with every word. “Maybe I could take you to lunch.”

I know exactly what’s going to happen if I meet up with my mother in San Francisco and take her to lunch. She’s going to end up having me meet her at some roach-infested corner store and try to hustle me out of money instead of eating with me. Because this is what happened the three times I met up with her before I moved to Chicago, and my mother is nothing if not predictable.

“I don’t know if I’ll have the time,” she finally tells me. “But if you let me know when, and I’m free, I’ll meet you somewhere close to me.”

“Where are you now?” I ask. “Still near Union Square?”

She’s roamed around quite a bit over the years, but she’s most consistent about staying within certain neighborhoods with a larger homeless community. Even when she finds ways to put a roof over her head, she tries to stick in the same area. It really just depends on how dark things have gone in her mind.

“I’ll let you know where I’m at when I want to,” she answers, her voice suspicious. “I don’t need you and your lazy-ass brother getting into my business.”

“’Course not, Mom.”

She makes a noise like she doesn’t believe me, and then I hear her talking to someone else. Maybe the guy who answered the phone … Troy? He yells something and then she yells something.

I wince, feeling helpless. I truly wish there was something I could do for her that could change this devastating recurring pattern of her life.

But addiction is complicated. I’d like to get her into rehab. I’d like to be able to set her up with an apartment. I’d like to get her away from whoever this guy is that sounds like an asshole.

Hell, I’d like to believe anything she says to me, ever.

But Ash and I have tried the rehab road. We’ve tried the apartment thing. We’ve tracked her down in cities and offered to help, tried to get her out of whatever toxic relationship or environment she’s settled into. We’ve tried countless times to reach into the drunken hole she likes to bury herself in and support her as she climbs her way out.

None of it has worked.