Instead, she closed her legs tight as if trapping my seed inside of her. I lifted her onto her pillow because I knew she would be too lazy to do it before settling down beside her and pulling her into my arms. She made patterns on my chest with her fingers which meant she was lost in thought. I’d learned that much about her in the last day or so.
It wasn’t long before the sound of her even breathing alerted me to the fact that she’d fallen asleep. I closed my eyes in contentment and settled down to sleep, but my mind kept going back in time, back to that day, her birthday.
After she started crying and railing, then pleading, I’d sat her down to talk. She was too drunk to know what she was saying, and that’s why I believed every word, that, and the fact that she’d never lied to me before. “Tell me again, everything you just said.”
“Why? You won’t believe me anyway, just like she said.”
“When have I ever doubted you? Now tell me.” She looked up at me through bleary eyes as I sat on the couch next to her.
“She said you couldn’t wait to get rid of me once I went off to college, so I don’t see why she should lie about you cutting me out of your life after you get married.”
“Rene said this to you?”
“Yes, she did and a whole lot more.”
“Why did you change your mind about the school you always wanted to go to?” It’s something I’ve always wondered about but never seemed to get a straight answer when I asked. Now I have a sinking feeling that Rene may have had a hand in that decision as well.
“She said you were only being nice to me because you felt sorry for me that it was time I let you live your life since I’d already taken so much from you when I was nothing to you, to begin with. She said that it was selfish of me to want to go to the local college where I could come home whenever I liked that it wasn’t fair to you.”
“Go on.” My voice did not give anything away, none of the anger and guilt I felt, but still, she turned to look at me.
“What more do you want to know?”
“Everything, from the beginning.”
“Well, when we first met, she seemed to like me, but that was only when you were in the room with us.” She looked at me as if gauging whether or not I believed her. I didn’t say anything, just waited for her to continue.
“When you weren’t around, she used to tell me things, like how you didn’t want children and had never wanted them. But she’d say it in a way like look how great he is, he did this amazing thing and had been suffering all along. After she told me those things, I believed her; she was right after all. You didn't owe me anything, and you’d already done so much. As sad and heartbroken as I would be to never see you again, I thought I owed it to you to get out of your way.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything to me about this?”
“Because I thought you knew, I thought it’s what you wanted, but like she said, you didn't want to tell me to spare my feelings. I felt so alone.” She started to cry, and I pulled her into my arms like I used to when she was a kid and needed reassurance.
She’d gone on to tell me how Rene had never really been kind to her, how she’d always reminded her that she was nothing to me, no relation, no real ties, and that she could be easily sent away for good. She told her how my family had been angry at me still for taking her in after what her mother had done, something I had told her in confidence, stupidly thinking that if she knew the young girl’s plight, she’d be more willing to play some motherly role to her.
Now, with her birthday coming up, while Rene was trying to get me to bring her along, she’d also been working on Madeline, filling her head with more nonsense about how I wanted to be rid of her and how she was ruining my life, which Madeline believed because she’d noticed a distance between us this last year or so.
Of course, there was a distance; she’d gone away a child and came back that last year a woman. I’m not sure if it’s because I hadn’t seen her that much in the last year because of my being too busy, or if it was a sudden change. But one day, she was the little girl who used to boss me around to do her hair, and the next, she was a voluptuous woman with tits and an ass that looked like someone attached two firm basketballs just beneath the curve of her spine.