Chapter 7: CREED

Jessie and I share a long and sordid history. One that I try not to revisit too often because I don't like hurting her, and any reminder of the way we met was bound to hurt her in some way. Looking back at it, it was a stroke of luck that I'd been the one to be there that night. I like to think that there was a bit of fate involved there too.

I can't imagine life without her in it, couldn't fathom the last nine years being any different. Even when I wasn't there with her, just knowing she was in my life, that she was mine and only mine, was enough to get me through.

She was my own little good luck charm. The one thing that had gotten me through some of the toughest hellholes in Baghdad, and that was before I knew I was going to make her my woman some day.

I was a young twenty-four year old soldier on leave after coming back from my second stint in the desert, and looking at my third in a few days. That's where I'd met Lawton. We were both serving in the same platoon, two young upstarts full of piss and vinegar, who'd hit it off right away.

I didn't have any family to speak of since I'd aged out of the foster care system one month before I joined up years before, so he'd dragged me home with him.

It was in his neck of the woods that my whole life had changed in one hour. We'd only been back one day when something came up and he'd had to make a run somewhere else, leaving me with his family. My own foray to the local liquor store had landed me in the middle of an alternate universe.

There was an old man who was obviously drunk or high, with a young scruffy looking kid tagging along behind him. It was hard to tell whether it was a boy or girl at first. All I saw was an unkempt kid that reminded me of my time on the street.

The kid looked to be about six or seven, but I later found out she was a twelve year old under nourished kid with extremely long lashes, and the most amazing blue-green eyes I'd ever seen on a human being.

Something about her eyes tugged at me even then, and things only got worse for me when the fucker offered to sell her to me for his next pint. I didn't know if to knock him the fuck out, call the cops, or laugh in his face.

But something in the helpless way she looked at me told me that I was this kid's only hope in life. I don't know where I got that conviction, but it was strong and it was real.

The fact that the fucker had all her important paperwork handy in a dingy Ziploc bag, along with a paper bag with a few dirty tops and shorts inside, told me that he was dead serious. He even had a legal enough looking document, that I could sign if I was so inclined. Only this didn't say he was selling her, but giving her up for adoption.

I knew if it wasn't me it would be someone else, and that someone else might not be as nice as I am. I shuddered to think what could happen to the young girl at the hands of a predator. I knew they were plenty fucked up individuals in the world. I'd run into my fair share when I was a helpless kid with no one to stand between me, and them.

I gave him the money for a couple pints, hoping one of them would kill his ass, and because I thought she was worth more than the one. I couldn't see calling the cops and having her put in the system, I'd done that shit and it was a hell I wouldn't wish on...nah that's a fucking lie, I would wish that shit on my enemies, fuck them.

So there I was a twenty-four year old who was shipping out in a few days and had just landed myself with a new dependent. I didn't know where the fuck to start. It wasn't like I could take her with me.

I questioned the poor frightened girl the best I could and got the information that the mother had a sister in town, but the mom herself was long gone, and there was no one else.

She didn't act weird when she mentioned the aunt so I figured she wasn't afraid of her and she was maybe a little better than the father. And since I was in a crunch, I searched her out and things went from there.

I did check around the best I could with what little I had which in retrospect hadn't been enough. But at the time, I thought I was giving her the best I had to offer. Someone she knew, a relative no less, and one that hadn't asked too many questions or seemed too surprised that the young girl had ended up in her plight.

To make a long story short, I told her I adopted the kid, told the kid never to mention to anyone that her old man had sold her, and to pretty much wipe that shit clean from her mind.

I wasn't old enough to be her dad, so I was just her guardian until she came of age. I did all the necessary shit the army makes you do when you have a co-dependent just in the off chance shit went FUBAR on my ass, then she'd get what was mine. But in the meantime, I was leaving her with the aunt who I paid a healthy stipend each month to see about her.

We worked shit out in the best interest of Jessie, or so I thought, and I went off to my next deployment with her heavy on my mind. I was in essence the new father of a pre-teen girl who I knew nothing about, but those eyes; they haunted me.

Over the years I'd go see her. In the early days I'd even taken her on trips and shit when I was home in between deployments. She was a shy little thing back in those days, but as time went on she started coming out of her shell.

She was never too talkative, but she wasn't shying away from me as much, and she felt safe enough to ask me a few questions here and there. Once she opened up she was a regular little chatterbox, but funnily enough, she never mentioned the old man and never talked about her life before me.

It never crossed my mind to bring her to live with me on post when I was stateside. Plus the fact I was moving around a lot back then with the army and their bullshit, and she needed a stable home.

I didn't know much about kids, especially the female kind, so I wouldn't have known what to look for if anything was out of whack, but I knew the times I saw her she seemed happy enough, and I grew to love those times.

I'd especially grown to like the way she'd run and jump into my arms whenever she saw me coming, until she remembered her shyness and would back away again. But in that split second of recognition her barriers would come down and I'd see what she really thought of me.

I always kept her close at those times, because I knew she needed it. We'd come to mean the world to each other even though we spent so much time apart.

I saw so much of me in her back then. The unwanted orphan that had everything stacked against us. It's why I'd gone overboard with everything when it came to her.