Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

Prologue Two

PROLOGUE TWO

RIVERS

Twenty-Five Years Ago

His mother was rough as she got him out of the car seat, her hands jerking the way they always did when she was in a bad mood.

“This god-damned motherfucking thing,” she muttered, jerking at the buckles. “Thank fuck I won’t have to deal with it again.”

The boy watched her, frowning and trying to sit as still as he could. He’d learned a long time ago that it was best not to struggle when she was in a mood like this. Struggling got him pinched and shouted at, particularly when it came to the car seat. And her fingers were too close to the skin on his thighs. The skin that hurt worst when she pinched him.

She looked up at him then, her eyes gone dark the way she did when she was particularly angry, and he drew back even more, catching his lip in his teeth and trying to think of whether he’d done anything wrong today. Anything that might get him punished.

He didn’t remember anything. But that didn’t always mean he was safe.

He wasn’t old enough to use the bathroom by himself—not yet—but he was old enough to know that sometimes, his mother got mad for reasons that had nothing to do with him. He’d learned to hide when she did that, but right now he didn’t have any place to go.

He didn’t have any protection.

She glanced away from him though, to the man on the outside of the car, and grimaced.

The boy didn’t know the man’s name, though he’d been around for longer than any of the other men he could remember. She’d been telling the boy to call him ‘Dad,’ and though he didn’t have many words yet, he’d learned to wrap his mouth around that one, just to please her.

She yanked him out of the car seat then and propped him in her arms, though he could tell by the way she was holding him that she didn’t want him there. She wanted to put him down and tell him to walk on his own.

He threaded his fingers into her shirt, holding on to her in spite of that. He didn’t want her to put him down. He didn’t know this place and he didn’t want to walk on his own.

As she started up the sidewalk behind the man, the boy turned to look up at the building they were heading toward. No, he’d definitely never been here. That dark, cold building in front of them wasn’t one he knew.

But he knew immediately that he didn’t like it.

The grass in front of the building was dead, the sidewalk cracked. There were no flowers. The sky above them was full of gray clouds and when he glanced at the windows of the building, he saw other faces there. Other children.

It should have made him feel better. He liked other children, when they played with him.

But these children looked sad. He didn’t like it.

He didn’t want this place.

Moments later they were climbing steps toward the front door of the building, though, and when that door swung open, a tall man was standing there glowering down at them.

The boy didn’t like the man any more than he’d liked the building. The man looked angry. Scary. Like he was someone who shouted almost as much as his mother did. Except that this man wasn’t his mother.

This man was a stranger, and he knew he wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers.

He turned his face into his mother’s neck and closed his eyes, not wanting to look at the man any more than he had to. He wrapped his chubby fingers more tightly into his mother’s shirt, wishing they could go away from this dark building with the scary man and hoping this was another friend they wouldn’t have to see again.

But then there were hands grabbing at his back, pulling him away, and he could feel space growing between his chest and his mother. His fingers scrabbled at her shirt, his throat growing tight in the way that meant tears were coming, and when he looked up into her face, trying to understand what was going on, he found that she wasn’t even looking at him anymore.

Her eyes were turned up to the building, and then away from it toward the street again, like she’d already forgotten that she’d been carrying him.

And the scary man—for that was who it had to be—was pulling him away from his mother while she looked away, his fingers digging into the boy’s skin as he yanked at him, and the boy was screaming, trying to understand what was going on.

And his mother was murmuring something to the man without even looking at the boy.

And then she was turning and walking away, the boy struggling in the man’s grasp and shrieking. He didn’t want to be left here. He didn’t like the man. He wanted his mother. She yelled and hit and sometimes burned, but she was the only one he’d known. She was his home. His safety.

But she was getting into the car, and they were driving away without looking back, and he was left with this man, who shook him slightly and then turned into the building.

“Stop screaming, kid,” he muttered. “I don’t know what you did, but she don’t want you no more. You live here, now.” He glanced at the paperwork in his hand and chuckled. “Rivers Shine, eh? Well, with that name, we should be able to find you a home right quick. And if we don’t, we’ll find other uses for you. Mark my words.”