Who We Are (The Seafare Chronicles 2)

“Unless you answer the question, this is over. Last chance. I have better things to be doing than talking to a cunt like you. What do you want?”

Her hands trembled as she reached for the folder in her lap. She picked it up and handed it over to me. Her fingers touched mine as I took it from her, and she gasped quietly at the contact, but I ignored it. It didn’t matter.

There was a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, one that I knew would explode once I opened the folder. Everything was already collapsing around me. What was one more aftershock?

I opened the folder and didn’t understand.

“What is this?” I snapped at her, my eyes unable to translate the legalese in front of me. I wanted to go back to Otter and curl up next to him and forget about everything while I waited for him to wake up.

“I’m relinquishing custody of Tyson,” she said quietly. “I’m giving up my rights.”

I was sure I’d misheard her. I was sure that it couldn’t be true. She’d come back again and that only meant one thing: that she would try and take from me, that she would try and break me down. My hatred warred with rationality, and I couldn’t believe either side. I couldn’t make sense of which was right. I tried to read over the words in front of me, but I couldn’t string them together coherently. It can’t be this easy, I thought. It can’t. She’s made my life miserable anyway she can. It can’t be this easy.

Careful, Bear, it whispered. Even if it’s true, you don’t know what the cost will be.

“What do you want from me?” I asked harshly, not sure I was still in control. I’m the strong one. I have to be the strong one.

She shook her head. “Nothing. I don’t want anything from you.”

“Then that’s it? This… you just give up? I don’t fucking buy it. What do you get out of this?”

“Nothing,” she breathed. “I get nothing. I lose almost everything I love.

I lose my sons. I lose you.”

“You lost us years ago. You lost us when you walked away. And now you have a daughter. A family. You have something that you had already given up. But you know what? So do we. We have a family. We have people that love us, that would die for us. We may be broken, we may be hurting, but you will never destroy us.” My eyes started to burn and my voice was like gravel, but I didn’t care. I knew, in my heart, that this would be the last time I would see my mother. That if what she’d given me was correct, that if she had signed over custody, then I would watch her walk away, and that would be it. It would be the end. And I still had questions.

“I know that,” she said, tears in her eyes. And wonder of all wonders, she looked like she meant it.

“If this is real, if you’re giving me Tyson, then you know you can never have contact with him again. If you do this, I will not allow you to see him again.” It almost sounded like I was giving her a way out, and while part of me was screaming for me to shut my mouth (why did I never shut my mouth?), the other, more feral part was gauging her sincerity, to make sure what she told me was truth.

She closed her eyes. “I know that too.”

“How?” I asked before I could stop myself. “How did you know about me and Otter? How did you know about San Diego? How did you know we were here?

“Bear, just let it go.” She was resigned, because she knew I wouldn’t.

“Tell me!”

“What would it change?”

The anger came flooding back. “Tell. Me.”

She glanced down the hallway as if gauging how far she’d make it toward the doors before I tackled her. She wouldn’t make if far. I’d tear her apart piece by piece. Even though she said she was giving Ty to me, I didn’t trust her at all. I wouldn’t believe it to be true until I knew that no one could take the Kid away from me again. But then she said the one name I didn’t expect to hear, the one name I would never have guessed in a million years, and when I heard it, it became so furiously obvious that at first I thought it a joke.

She wasn’t joking. “Jonah Echols,” she said.

Jonah fucking Echols.

Ooooh, twist! it laughed. Didn’t see that coming, did you? Jesus, Bear, it’s so fucking obvious, and you’re just now figuring it out? Sometimes I wonder how you have such a narrow view of things. Christ, what else have you missed?

“Jonah?” I said incredulously. “Otter’s ex?”

A tremulous “Yes.”

“Bullshit.”

A firm “No.” A sigh. “He had a detective friend of his track me down.”