Mom is sitting on the porch drinking coffee from her favorite violet mug with the wild flower pattern. She pushes off with her foot, rocking the porch swing back and forth, with not a care in the world.
It sickens me that she can enjoy herself while she’s cast me and mine into a pit of drama.
She arches a perfectly groomed brow at us as we exit the car. “Well, what a lovely surprise. My girls both coming to visit me this beautiful morning.”
“Cut the pleasantries, Mother. We’re not here to visit. We’re here for answers.”
“Always so willful and rude,” Mo
ther drawls.
“I’m done with your games. You were the one who called Dad, weren’t you?”
“I figured for once in his miserable life, he could do right by you.”
“By stirring up trouble for you, me, and Rochelle? What do you think will happen if the press decides to dig up skeletons and find us? Don’t you remember what that was like?”
“Better than you do, little miss,” she snaps.
“So why? What’s so wrong with Skull that you would risk tearing apart our lives?”
Her lip curls upward. “I simply cannot stomach the thought of you with those savages.”
Savages? I mouth the word feeling like I’m in an alternate reality. “What are you judging them by? Those men Dad was involved with were heavy hitters. Into everything from sex trade to drugs and illegal gun running. They’re not the same as KOC.”
“Sure you think that, until you cross them. The minute you don’t give them what they want, they’ll show their true colors. Scarlet red, like the blood that will run and sin itself. I’ve seen the worst of what this life you’re living offers. You think they struck out at your father directly? Oh no, I was the pathway they deemed best. The men we’d had in our homes, at our barbeques. The charming bastards with the devil may care grins, long hair and what I thought were jovial spirits…they brutalized. What are you going to do when your man’s brother is the one raining down blows and raping you? Violating you in the worst way possible.”
I gasp and cover my mouth. All this time, she held in this ugliness.
Rochelle begins to sob openly beside me.
“I tried to shelter you. Raise you up right, so you wouldn’t go the route I did. But you.” She points at me. “You always had too much of your father in you.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” I ask.
“Why? So you could pity me?” She shakes her head. “I made my peace with it.”
“No, you didn’t, or you wouldn’t live the way you do.”
“After all this, you still love them more than me, don’t you?” Mom asks.
“It’s not a matter of who I love more.”
“Isn’t it? Do you have any clue what it took for me to call your father and ask for help? All of this was his fault. It soured what was left of our marriage. I could survive the binges. In-between the lapses he tried so hard to make it right. I could almost forget about the late nights, manic behavior, and long lengths of time we spent apart. But after that…I could barely look at him. It was leave or murder him in his sleep. I couldn’t live with the fear that they might come for my girls…” Her voice broke. There’s so much pain in her eyes.
My stomach rolls. I open my mouth and take deep breaths to combat the bile trying to escape my throat. “Mom, you need help.”
“I made the best of my life. I’m happy. Some wounds can’t be healed.”
“That’s not true,” I argue. So many things come together to form the puzzle that’s been my mother’s bizarre behavior my entire life. Why she never dated after Dad. Her irrational fears about attracting the wrong attention. Her and my father’s insistence we be proficient in self-defense and firearms. God, how had I not figured this shit out? “Tell me what you told him, Mom. That’s all I’m asking.” I want to help her, but I can see she’s not open to it.
“The truth, he needed to get his ass here and do something before you got swallowed up by the MC world.”
“Did you tell him about the baby?”
She glances away.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! That’s not your business to tell,” I hiss.