Free Painless by Derek Ciccone

description, no mention of where they were sending her? Just that they were scared?” It was still a little hard for Billy to believe.
    Dana sighed. “Pretty much, except I guess there was some obscure law back then that a child had to be five-years-old to ride the train without supervision, because the only thing she remembered her mother telling her when she put her on that train was that she was four years old, but if anyone on the train asks, to tell them she is five.”
    The recollection seemed to hit Dana like a tractor-trailer, her words now struggling to maneuver past the suddenly rugged terrain in the back of her throat. “That’s the only way we knew she was four years old. We created a birthday for her on Valentine’s Day because she brought us so much love. What kind of mother could have done such a thing to her child?”
    “I often wished for a train that would take me away from my family. But in this case, the rich family rescued the abandoned girl. Sounds like a great rags to riches story. So how did it go so wrong?”
    “My mom, who Beth called Mrs. B, would do anything for her. My father was always at the office and my brothers were off spreading their sense of entitlement. So it was just the three of us during my high school years. The Three Musketeers.
    “My freshman year at Boston College, Beth and Mom were playing in the park—one of their favorite games was for Beth and Mom to chase each other’s shadows. They would run around for hours like school children.”
    Dana’s face sunk. It was strange to see the normally carefree woman so stricken with angst. Billy put his red Elmo arm around her. It felt unwanted and awkward.
     “I always told her to slow down—she wasn’t a spring chicken anymore,” her voice trembled. “I got the call at school from one of my brothers. He was so cold when he delivered the news of her heart attack. He actually told me I shouldn’t come home until the funeral so that I could concentrate on my midterms.” A tear rolled down her perfectly made-up cheek and she angrily wiped it away, as if she refused to admit the past still got to her.
    “Beth was lucky she ran into Mrs. B at the train station. She could’ve ended up with some lunatic,” Billy tried to console.
    “Trust me, after my mother died, Beth ended up with a whole bunch of lunatics. I was off in college and my father remarried some plastic bimbo who couldn’t wait to get rid of her. They blamed Beth for everything, including my mother’s death. Beth did what any kid would do, she rebelled. She was only eight when Mom died, and by the time she got to high school she was a mess—the nose ring, purple hair, you name it. If it even resembled rebellion she would do it.”
    Billy couldn’t visualize the ultra-conservative woman with purple hair. He viewed Beth in the distance and noticed she was actually smiling. She was snapping photos of a pack of energetic four-year-olds, who were hamming it up for the camera like a bunch of red carpet divas.
    Dana fought back tears, contrasting from the festive party in the distance. “The rebellion continued to escalate and that’s when the self-mutilation started. My father tried to put her into an asylum. If it weren’t for me talking him out of it, she might be in some sanitarium wearing a straightjacket. Then ironically, my father had a stroke. We were forced to put him in a nursing home, which became the perfect opportunity for the others to cut Beth out of the family. Beverly and I paid for her college. But the drinking got bad. Thank God Chuck came along…”
    As Dana’s voice trailed off, Billy noticed Chuck working the crowd in his Big Bird suit. Beth was at his side, giving off the appearance of contented motherhood. “She’s no barrel of laughs, but she seems like she got it together,” Billy commented.
    “For the most part she has,” Dana said, “but the past is always lurking under the surface. I recently caught her searching for her