I have no clue how Ray’s body ended up stuffed in the back of my van, and I’m blunt about one thing: it wasn’t me who put him there. The room goes quiet, then someone dares to ask the obvious question. Who do you think did this? I shrug, wishing I knew, wishing I could point my finger at a single name. But the truth is murky, and the circle of suspects is narrow and dangerous, the kind of people who live around here and know how to stay hidden. Whoever it was must have a real reason to want Ray dead, someone who can sleep at night after crossing that line. Adela made a terrible misstep somewhere, and now we’re all paying the price for it.

The chatter tightens to something sharper: the clock is ticking, the truth will crack the surface soon enough, and when it does, consequences will be brutal. You don’t deserve love. You don’t deserve forgiveness. You deserve something harsher, something painful, the kind of reckoning that mirrors the harm you’ve caused so many others. And the question surfaces again, louder this time: are you dealing drugs? Are you dealing drugs? The volley lands like a punch. Ray’s influence, Ray’s pressure—is he pushing you to traffic what you sell?

No, I insist, I’m not doing anything. There’s a sting of fear in the denial, a tremor of guilt that’s hard to swallow, but the words spill out anyway, raw and defensive. Tell me the truth, someone says, softly and insistently, as if coaxing a frightened child. Mommy, it’s me. It’s me. I won’t do that anymore. The voice is a lifeline, fragile, begging for a rescue from the dark mess that’s spiraling around us.

Then a shift in the room’s atmosphere. Dylan said that Ray has been pressuring him and April to use drugs. The name slips through the chatter like a shard of glass, and my brain tries to grapple with the weight of it. It sounds insane, I admit—crazy even—but Dylan’s worry was real, a beacon in the fog about me, about us, about letting Ray into our lives. In that moment, I know I’ll never allow Ray back inside this house. Ever. The urgency to push him away bleeds into a frantic command: you’ve got to go to work, you’re going to be late. Go. Go. Go. The chorus of voices finishes with a bitter verdict: people like you don’t deserve a life.

And then the other truth surfaces in a rough, stubborn declaration: you have no idea what I’ve done for us. There is no “us” left to fight for. Whatever we had—gone. The plea to Laurel—don’t do this, Laurel—bounces around the room, a desperate call to hold on to what’s left. Please, just open the door. Let me explain. Pick up the phone. The fear of the police, the fear of ruin, makes the shouting feel almost like a drumbeat to a tragedy.

A distant voice cuts in—Nicola, a friend, someone who doesn’t belong in this moment of crisis—and the scene tilts again toward a fragile attempt at calm. I’ll leave, I promise, but not quite yet. I don’t want you here, she says, and the ache in the room compounds the loneliness of this mess. Laurel, she pleads, let me speak. I want to see you, to face what’s real.

Eventually, we agree to meet. The cafe, no, the more intimate space; somewhere quiet where headphones won’t seal us off from truth. And then, in a room that feels like it’s closing in, we talk about what Dylan told them: that I used Dylan and April to push drugs. Don’t lie to me anymore. The insistence grows heavier, more insistent, and I am forced to admit it: I am a drug dealer. Not something I brag about, not something I broadcast, but something I’ve hidden in the shadows.

Pause. The confession slides out with a strange mixture of relief and self-loathing: I didn’t want you to see this, I didn’t want you to know if you would look away. What would you think of me if you knew the whole truth? The answer arrives unbidden: probably not much. Of course not. I’ve lived a life that many would judge, a life that I hate as I live it, but a life I felt I had to survive.

I speak then of the “law of the jungle”: take or be taken, live or be crushed. I’ve carved out a path that keeps me breathing, but the cost is heavy, and I hate every step of it. Then I tell you about the moment I finally believed in something better, when I met you. You gave me a glimpse of an ordinary life—the kind with kids and a home—and that glimpse promised a future where I could finally be the real me, a version of myself who could be trusted with a future that didn’t involve hiding.

The words sting: the real me. And you respond with a refusal to soften the blow: you’re a monster. Stop calling me that. The accusation lands like a hammer: you terrorize vulnerable children. The counter’s immediate: no, children never. We argue about ages—April and Dylan are teenagers, not little ones—because the gravity of the past won’t stay quiet in a room full of echoes.

I reveal a childhood that erodes the ground beneath us all. I was ten when I sold my first bag of heroin, and the weight of judgment is crushing. Don’t judge me for what happened before you knew me, I plead; you don’t know what it’s like to be truly alone, to fight for a sense of belonging when every doorway seems barred. I’ve carried the burden of a broken childhood, of a granddad who fought his own battles with depression, of a life spent either running from or hiding in the shadows.

The story spills out in a torrent of memory: hunger, cold, and a boy who learned to survive by any means. Then Celia appears, a savior who offered warmth and a place to belong when no one else would. It was a trap, I confess now, a contract of care I didn’t fully understand until it owned me. And then, the worst memory—my granddad stepping in front of a bus, his life slipping away, the note found in his pocket pleading for someone to look after Raymond. Look after him, the note asked, and I became the recipient of a debt I never could repay. The memory is a blade: it cuts through the bravado, reminding me that I’ve carried this weight since eight years old.

I tell Laurel about that long road: the care system, the streets, the figures who fed and beat and taught me to survive. Celia gave me a bed and food, and I would have done anything for her in return. But she knew I was desperate, knew I would be hers for life, and that was the exact moment I lost control of my own story. Now the room quiets to a hum, the tremor of fear dampening the air.

“I just want to go through this,” I murmur, barely louder than a breath. The room grows heavier with each confession, with every shard of memory laid bare. I ask to be left alone with the truth for a moment, to let Laurel take in the gravity of what I’ve become.

And then the tale circles back to the present, to the fragile, aching honesty of a man who has known both mercy and ruin. The talk about the teapot—the small, domestic detail that somehow anchors the memory of a life that almost felt normal—pulls the moment toward a human moment, a sliver of tenderness in the wreckage. Granddad’s tea, shared in a home that couldn’t always afford much, becomes a symbol of a past I’m trying to reclaim.

I recount the day-by-day life that followed: the way my past followed me, the way the bus stop of my fate kept pulling me toward further choices I didn’t want to make, the moment of clarity when I realized that someone else’s life—your life—deserved not to be tied to mine in perpetuity by these mistakes. The truth, raw and unflinching, settles over us: I have not been a good man, not by your standards, and certainly not by my own.

And yet, amid the confession, there remains a stubborn thread of possibility. If you can see me—not the monster you’ve painted me as, not the danger you fear—I might still become the man who can stand for something better. I want to be worthy of the chance you’ve given me to tell the truth, to face the consequences, and to perhaps rebuild what has been lost.

But the final note is heavy with inevitability. The past cannot be erased, the harm cannot be untold, and the path to forgiveness is a long, brutal road. I cannot pretend the damage doesn’t exist, nor can I pretend I haven’t lived the life that made this moment possible. What remains is the choice to try to repair what I can, to confront the shadows that linger, and to hope that the future can be something other than the sum of my worst impulses.