▶️ Dreams by Fleetwood Mac
"Hello?" She opens the door.
She.
She who has been the topic of so much pain, confusion. She who holds the answers to many, many, questions. She who flees in the night, she who abandons. She who stands before me.
Billy's mom.
She looks healthy, blond hair cascading around her face. A confused sort of smile graces her lips, the kind that is polite but also wary of me. Her blue eyes are kind, there's something guarded about her.
Well, I am a stranger after all.
"Mrs...uh." I stammer.
Shoot, did she remarry, what's her name?
She just looks at me.
"Mrs...Hargrove?" I ask, wincing.
Her face pales.
Wrong answer.
Bzzt.
"Lucy, honey, who are you talking to?" Startled, I slow time at the sound of the voice and the sight of the man popping up behind Billy's mom.
Although I realize what's going on pretty quickly, I keep the slow on so I can study him.
He has, a surprisingly kind, albeit a little suspicious, face. Green eyes gleam like emeralds, he's tall, and lean.
How could she have remarried?
Screams one part of me.
How could she not have?
Says another part of me, a little quieter.
I resume time as the woman begins to speak again.
"That's not my name anymore." She says to me, her voice measured, words chosen as carefully as one chooses fruit at the market.
"Who are you?" The man turns to me and asks.
Slowly I hold up the picture of Billy and give it to her. She stares at it, and hands shaking, looks from the picture to me.
"My name is Seraphina." I say.
"No..." She whispers.
"I'm your son's girlfriend." I say softly.
"No..." she says a little louder. She starts crying, and buries her head in her hands.
The man, the husband, doesn't seem to know how to respond, he tries to take the picture away but she jerks it towards her and looks at it again.
"Billy?" She weeps.
"Yeah, that's him."
"How, how did he turn out? Is he like his father?"
I pause. I remember the fights, the threats against the weaker kids he'd make at school, the violence, the smell of cigarettes, the sounds of heavy metal and rebellion.
But then I remember the softness, the tenderness. The way Billy crafts his outfits like he's getting ready for a photo shoot. The way his cologne smells, woody and slightly sweet. The way he holds me at night, kisses my temple, protects me.
"No." I say confidently, my eyes tearing up. "He's caring, and he's sweet, and he's nothing like his father."
The woman leans into her husband and cries, he wraps his arms around her. Her eyes, the eyes that she shares with Billy, are still glued to the picture.
"And I think he might be in trouble." I say evenly and she turns her eyes up to meet me, a primal fear encompassing them.
*
"Kids, go to your room." Says Billy's mom for what has to be the third time. The little heads with blonde and brown hair disappear around the corner, their father getting up to shoo them away.
Billy's mom sits at the table, a cigarette between her fingers, and her head buried in her free hand which rubs her temple.
The picture I showed her of Billy lies in front of her. Slowly, I pull out the other two I brought, as well as the picture Billy gave me to locate her and set them next to the first. A tear falls from her face onto the picture of her holding little Billy. There's no mistaking it, she's the same woman.
I've done it, I've found Billy's mom.
"How...?" Billy's mom looks up at me, slightly fearful. Her voice trembles as she finishes her question. "How did you find me."
"Billy has been looking for years." That's a lie.
"We got in touch with all the people you knew, each one seemed to have a different piece of the puzzle."
Billy's mom nods.
"If you don't mind me asking, what happened after you left?" I tip my head.
Billy's mom sighs just as her husband returns from tending to the kids and sits down next to her, placing a hand on her back.
"I wanted to get as far away as I could, from Neil, so naturally I chose Augusta." She smiles sadly.
Where the hell is Augusta?
For a moment I think we must be in Europe, but that can't be, neither of these people have an accent.
"I always figured if Neil found me here that we could book it to Canada." She and her partner exchange a glance.
Augusta. Canada. Holy shit. Augusta is the capital of Maine, we're on the East Coast.
My heart sinks.
No wonder Billy couldn't find her, she lives literally on the other side of the country.
"Now. You said Billy was in trouble?" There's genuine concern on her face.
"Yeah. There was this huge thing." I proceed to tell her a half truth, half lie version of how Billy 'came to me after the mall fire' and we 'ran away together' and how he came back for Max...
"He has a sister?" Billy's mom interrupts me.
"They're not related."
"Is he gentle with her?"
"Moreso now than before. Sibling rivalry, the usual."
"Ok, sorry, continue."
At the end of my story, the old Mrs. Hargrove muses "he does seem to be in a bit of trouble..."
Her eyes flick left and right as she thinks.
"Neil was the one who wanted you gone?" She asks.
I thought that was pretty clear.
"Yes."
Billy's mom and her partner exchange a glance that I don't recognize.
"That's very un-Neil like. The only reason I could see him doing that is if..."
"If he sees you as a threat." To my surprise, the husband pipes up.
"Exactly." Billy's mom motions with a hand to her partner.
Why would Neil see me as a threat?
"...know, does he?" I only catch the last part of Billy's mom's question.
"Pardon?"
"Neil...he doesn't know we're here, does he?" She repeats uneasily.
"Oh. No, of course not." I say.
She and her partner both sigh, relieved.
"Why would Neil see me as a threat, Mrs..." I stop, at a loss of what to call her.
"Collins." She says.
"Collins." I try the word out and look to the husband. He looks like a Collins.
"Neil isn't threatened by much." She says on the err of caution. "What I get from your story, is not that he necessarily feels threatened by you in particular, but by you and Billy together. He sees you two as a threat to his family, his family structure. And by providing him with an ultimatum, one that he knows he could not keep, he knew he had to get rid of one of you, or both."
I nod.
Neil might be able to control Billy again by fear.
Chills run up my spine at the thought. Still, something doesn't make sense.
"Neil seemed like he was willing to change." I say. "Would he risk his family, would he risk Susan and Max and the life he's built all because he's too set in his ways?"
"Sweetheart, you have to understand. Neil isn't like you and me." Mrs. Collins' expression turns severely grim.
"What do you mean by that?" I squeak.
"That man does not change. That man does not feel empathy for women who cry, like most will. That man spins an illusion of happiness around himself, and he thinks that as long as he is happy, everyone else will be too. But usually, that ends up with everyone else ending up fearful." Mrs. Collins frowns.
"Oh."
"I tried something like you did once. I told him that I was going to take Billy and leave if he didn't change, if he didn't stop drinking. It worked, for awhile. One night Neil went out with friends and came home drunk. We got into a bad fight over it and..." Mrs. Collins stands up and lifts her shirt slightly. I gasp and cover my mouth with my hand. Near her stomach lies a round scar, no bigger than a fingernail.
"Is that....?"
"A bullet did that." She says softly, and puts her shirt back down. "I left shortly after."
One would expect to feel sympathy for her at this moment but I don't. I feel anger. Anger, and disgust, tinged with fear.
"How could you leave Billy there, with him?" I ask, a pained expression on my face.
Mrs. Collins sighs and looks into my eyes. Suddenly, she looks twenty years older, like a ghost of herself.
"That wasn't my original intention." She almost whispers, I have to lean in close and concentrate to discern her words.
"I called Billy, I tried to keep in touch but Neil told me if I kept calling he'd...he'd find me and 'finish the job.'" Mrs. Collins tries fruitlessly to wipe the tears from her face, but more and more fall as she goes on. "I couldn't do it. As much as I loved Billy, I couldn't do it. I wanted to but I was so scared. And every year I kept telling myself, 'this is the year I go back for him.' But I never did. Doubts began to enter my mind. After a while I thought he hated me and I started to believe that he wouldn't want me back. When I started a family, I feared for them. I feared what would happen to them if I went looking for my son. And I feel terrible about thinking this, but I worried that his father had already gotten to him, corrupted him, molded him to be a carbon copy."
"Mrs. Collins, you have to believe me. He's nothing like his dad." I say firmly.
She softens up a bit, and then looks down towards the pictures with new eyes. It's as if she's found a crinkle in Billy's smile and a gentleness in his eyes that she didn't see the first time.
"He's 18 now, right?" She asks.
"Right."
She looks at me sadly. "There's still time to save him."
I nod slowly, understanding what I must do.
"You know, I think if I could've met Neil ten years earlier, I think I could've saved him." She looks at me with a gaze pained by years of suffering and turmoil. "I think I could've helped him find peace. But I was too late. By the time we got together, he was already long gone."
I nod in understanding, and then look off, contemplatively.
"What are you thinking?" She asks softly.
"That I've made a huge mistake." I get up from my chair and start to back up. "I have to go, it was nice meeting you, thank you for talking to me."
"Seraphina." I freeze at the intensity of Billy's mom's voice.
"When you see him, will you tell him...will you tell him that I miss him and I love him? Or maybe bring him here, tell him where I am? That is, if he'll forgive me." Mrs. Collins says, tears in her eyes.
"I will." I say, clenching my fist with determination.
I walk out the door, the family watching me leave, and start down the road until they can no longer see me.
I know what I have to do.
Neil will never change. I need to take him on, whatever that may entail.