It was better before. That thought was fixed in her mind on most days. It was better before. It was better when it was just her and mom. When it was the two of them struggling against the world. Sure, they didn’t have money and often not even a home. They had been in shelters, lived in cars, or on friends’ couches. But there had always been a dignity to the struggle and challenges. They had always been unified in an, perhaps underserved, optimism that there were better days ahead. Not great, but likely better.

It wasn’t that really bad things hadn’t happened before. They had been robbed twice and she knew her mom had done things to make sure she stayed in school, was safe during severe weather, or when they struggled to eat. Mom would come home (wherever home was at the moment) with a far-off look in her eyes, staring at nothing in the distance. During those times her voice would be soft and timid, and she would struggle to look at her daughter. But she would have money and any questions asked about it were ignored, as if unheard.

She’d had bad moments as well. Shelters that didn’t protect girls as they should. Strangers on the street that pretended to offer help. She knew how bad people out there could be, both men and women. If they couldn’t grift you out of what they wanted, they’d just take it by force. Losing one’s virginity is often not the best experience for many women. Cornered in the office of the man running the shelter they were at when she was 11 was not how she had wanted to lose hers. Her mom couldn’t have protected her, but she took her away so that it wouldn’t happen there again. In such a way, they made sure to protect each other.

Until Gary, that was. He was the one who taught her that not all suffering was dignified or justified. That not all struggles were something to view as challenges to overcome. He was the man who taught her that hope was something that could be strangled, smothered, drowned, and murdered. She knew because he had done it to her mom and was now doing it to her.

It hadn’t been bad at the start. It had felt better. Money has an insidious grasp that way, where even a little bit can feel like a blessing and can be life-changing. Gary had money. And Gary was infatuated with her mom. After so many struggles, it was hard for either of them to accept someone else into their life, to accept help, to hope for not only a better tomorrow but the worst kind of hope. A false hope that there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel. That light, however, was Gary and he drove right over the two of them.

Mom got addicted to him and his life fast. He gave her whatever she wanted, and to someone truly poor, she drank deeply from that well. That he was jealous, prone to mood swings, and sometimes violent, just showed how much he cared for her. At least that was the lie her mom told them both. Of course, Gary fed other addictions, picked away at old scabs and wounds her mother had, broke down her defenses, and opened the floodgates. And as much as she loved her mom, she was weak. She drowned in the waters that were Gary, thinking that a roof and money meant safety when it was nothing of the sort.