Sometimes opposites do attract // Mikey Barone

11

Liz's POV
Alex showed up about 3 hours ago and we've just been playing with Emily and Travis for the majority of the time until Emily started to get tired so I went up in the attic to see if I could find travis' old playpen.

"SHIT" I screamed as I bumped into some of the crap we had up there causing it the completely fall over. "Wait. Is that? No it couldn't be. He would never leave that behind. It is."

Among the pile of things I just knocked over was a trophy my dad got at work. He was so proud of that damn thing. I don't ever remember what it was for but I'd never seen him as happy as the day he brought that home. The trophy was just one of his coworkers kids old soccer participation trophy but he loved that thing. I loved seeing him so happy. God I miss him so much. He was my bes-

My thoughts were interrupted when a thumb touch my cheek wiping away a tear I didn't know had fallen.

"Hey hey don't cry"

"I sorry it's just this was my dads and I miss him so much" I said crying even more now

"It's gunna be okay. You're dads in a better place now."

"I'm not quite sure jails a better place than here but considering how it is when my moms home you may be right."

"Wait your dads in jail?" He seemed so confused it was cute.

"Yeah. I go visit whenever I can but if my moms home she doesn't let me go."

"If you don't mind me asking what'd he do?"

"Um" okay this is going to be the hard part. I took a deep breath and proceeded "well you know Travis now, he uh h-he was supposed to uh be a twin but the other baby um didn't make it through labor." Tears were now pouring down my face as I somehow manage to push out that sentence. "Things got really hard for my mom and she" I had to pause to take a breath "she started drinking." I think I had stopped crying now or the numbness of my face prevented me from feeling the tears. "One night it got really bad and when she came home Travis had knocked over his thing of baby food and as I was getting stuff to clean it she saw it and got so mad she hit Travis." I looked at his face for the first time and he was in utter disbelief.

"What'd you do."

"I called CPS. I didn't care how drunk she was or how much she wasn't my mother at that time I was not going to let hat ever happen again. Travis was only a couple months old he didn't deserve that. He wouldn't deserve that at any age."

"So what did CPS do?"

"When they got there she blamed it on my dad and God knows why but they believed her. They took him to jail that night and he's been their every since."

"What about a trial? Doesn't he get a trial?"

"He did but we couldn't afford a fancy lawyer so they got one of those free lawyers that can't keep their papers in order and when they got to trial I guess they found an assault charge on his record from when he was 19. My dad told me it was a misunderstanding but the women didn't drop the charges. He wasn't found guilty but the cheap ass lawyer my father was appointed didn't know how to deal with it so he was sentenced to 5 years."

"Well it's gotta be almost over right. Travis is 4 so"

"Yeah but my mom divorced him and got complete custody of us so when he gets out we won't really be able to see him. Luckily I'll be 18 by then but I don't want to see him without Travis. I want to try to get custody of Travis when I'm 18 but I have to prove how bad of a mother my mom really is. That should be too hard but you know how the court system is. It could go either way."

"You're right it could but until then enjoy the time you have with Travis and protect him at all cost. Visit your dad when you can too and do it as much as you can. Just spend as much time as you can with both of them."