Her All Along

“Correct. You’ll see my house easily,” I confirmed. “My new backyard faces the playground.”

“Correct,” she echoed, staring at my mouth. “I like that word. Correct. It’s good, isn’t it?”

I chuckled quietly.

She shrugged and smiled, then opened her bottle of lemonade. “Correct, correct, correct.” She nodded to herself, satisfied, and took a swig from her bottle. “Oh, that tastes of so much correctness.”

I shook my head in amusement.

I feel like we haven’t gotten closure, Avery.

I rolled my eyes and typed my response.

Would it help if I came over to your new apartment and fucked another woman in your bed? Do yourself a favor and delete my number. We’re done.

After pressing send, I followed my own advice and erased her from my contacts. I’d block her if there wasn’t the occasional message related to our divorce that I had to deal with. Then I put my phone on silent and returned to staring at the building in front of me. I was still in my car, hiding out like I’d done so many times around my mother.

It was Angie’s fault I was here. It was because of her I had to go through this.

“Forgiveness takes a minute, Avery. And then you can have your mother back in your life. You have to forgive her. I’m your wife—don’t you think I want what’s best for you?”

I scrubbed my hands over my face and drew a deep breath.

She never fucking got it.

I’d had a couple girlfriends before meeting Angie, though I’d never divulged much about my past. I’d made up lies about the scars across my back and the ones over my knuckles. The marks on my rib cage had been concealed by a big tattoo of a silhouette of a boy sitting between two massive bookcases, and he was surrounded by books that rained down over him.

“Fuck it.” I reached over to the glove box and pulled out my emergency pack of smokes.

I rolled down the window and lit one up, taking a deep drag that almost made me choke.

I glanced at my hand and the smoke trapped between two fingers, and I shook my head at myself. I’d once been deathly afraid of cigarettes, not because of risks of cancer but because my mother used to enjoy putting them out across my hands. Most of the blotchy marks had healed, but my knuckles still looked like they’d been involved in too many fistfights.

And I should forgive her for that?

Angie could rot in hell with my mother.

I opened the door and stubbed out the smoke on the ground.

Time to get this over with so I could head back to Camassia. I stepped out of my car and ran a hand through my hair. Part of me wondered if it was the taxpayers who footed the bill so my mother could stay at this fancy institution right outside of Seattle. In which case, they should just throw her off a bridge.

Breathing through my anxiety, I entered the four-story building and signed in as Louisa Becker’s son and hoped to God it would be the last time.

One of the nurses accompanied me in the elevator, and I took the opportunity to ask if my mother was allowed to have a cell phone.

Unfortunately, she was.

As soon as the elevator doors opened, the hospital smell hit me with a force that made me want to run back to my car.

I swallowed uneasily and loosened my tie a bit.

So, she’d been moved up here now. Last time I’d been forced to visit, she hadn’t required much care.

I didn’t bother asking for an update from the nurse. I already knew pretty much everything was wrong with my mother. Aside from a chronic chemical imbalance, a narcissistic personality disorder, and Borderline, she had a medical condition that had given her the weakest immune system. She was always ill.

I firmly believed the world would be a better place if she hadn’t been born.

It wasn’t as if my brother and I had contributed to much anyway.

The nurse smiled politely and slowed down as we reached the right room.

Once she’d left, I stood there in the doorway and studied the frail form sitting in a wheelchair by the window. She didn’t have a regular bed anymore. Everything looked like it’d been delivered straight from a hospital.

She pulled off seventy-five great for a fifty-six-year-old.

She must’ve noticed some movement, because she glanced at me from over the rims of her glasses.

It was the same dead gaze I’d grown up seeing. Steely dark blue. My brother and I had inherited a dark hazel color from the father we’d never met.

“Took you long enough, Finn,” she noted sourly.

I hated her voice. It was too sharp—and probably the strongest thing about her, except for her teeth, maybe. She was always crunching her hard candy.

I left the doorway and put my hands in my pockets. “It’s Avery.”