“Thank you,” I whisper.
Gina watches me for a silent moment before reaching across the table and placing her hand over mine. “For what it’s worth, I truly hope you find a way out of this. I lied to you about who your father was so you had no reason to go looking. This isn’t the life I ever wanted for you.”
“I see that now,” I murmur. “I guess sometimes secrets simply aren’t meant to be uncovered.”
“Agreed.”
“Have you considered talking to Riv- Samuel about all this? I’m sure if he knew the truth, really knew who you were, he’d be able to start putting it all behind him. Not that he’d ever admit it, but I think he holds a lot of guilt for being the one to turn you over to the cops.”
Gina shakes her head with a deep sadness in her eyes. “No, that’s a lost cause right there. He clearly wants to forget and I’m not about to go and remind him of all the bullshit he suffered through. He has you now and those friends of yours. He’ll be just fine without me.”
“He lives in your home,” I tell her.
Gina’s whole expression lightens as she sits up a little taller in her seat. “He came home?”
“It honestly looks as though he never left.”
Gina relaxes down into her seat and her eyes go distant with nothing but pride shining right through them and I realize this is the single best piece of news she has heard since the day she was locked up.
I cringe. “Knowing that’s where he lives, you would never…sell it, right?”
“Couldn’t even if I wanted to,” she tells me. “Anton strong-armed me into signing over the deed when Samuel turned eighteen. That’s his home now.”
“Really? So we can fix it up for him?”
“Fix it up?” she questions. “Why the hell would it need to be fixed up? That house was beautiful.”
My face scrunches up. “It might have been beautiful back in the day when it had someone caring for it properly. I’d dare say Samuel was living there all by himself as a kid. He wouldn’t have known the first thing about patching leaks in roofs and replacing cracked windows.”
“Oh, no. It’s destroyed, isn’t it?”
“Well…I mean, it would have been alright had Anton not ripped through there and trashed the place looking for these,” I say, fingering the papers on the table. “It’s kind of a mess and needs a little TLC.”
“Damn,” she sighs. “That place was my salvation after getting away from Anton. It breaks my heart to hear that it’s not doing so great anymore.”
A ruckus is heard behind me and both Gina and I look that way and I’m quickly reminded where the hell I am, but something inside of me is screaming that I shouldn’t worry, that this is probably the only time I’ll ever get a chance to talk with my real mother like this and I don’t want to screw it up. I know that when I come here next, her walls will most likely be right back up but for now, this is probably the best I’m ever going to get.
“Can you tell me what it was like before that? You know, was there a time it wasn’t…bad?”
I sit back in my chair, realizing I might have just dug a little too deep but when she gives me a fond smile, my body relaxes.
“Of course, there was. He was my high school sweetheart. I fell in love with him almost immediately. I was the nerdy girl who kept to herself and he was the popular bad boy who nobody could touch. I could never understand why he liked me but he did and it made me the happiest girl in the world. I was so blinded by how I felt that I never questioned his cruelty to others or ever realized what was right under my nose.”
I let out a sigh as I listen to her story and find myself leaning in, wanting to hear every last detail. “When we were married, things changed. That’s when he became possessive. I was his obsession and when I first fell pregnant with Samuel, he was jealous that the baby would take my time, but the second he was born and he laid eyes on his little boy, that possessiveness crossed over. I was forgotten as he suddenly had someone to mold into the perfect soldier that he could use and one day take over his business. I hated it. He didn’t treat him as a son, he was a weapon that would one day rule over the Mathers’ kingdom.”
“Is that when you found out you were pregnant with me?”
“Sure is.”
“So, all you ever wanted was to be a mom and play happy family?”
A breathy laugh comes from within her and she looks at me with that same sad smile that she’d reserved for Rivers before indicating around her once again. “I guess this is what you get for dreaming, huh?”