Say It Ain't So (SWAT Generation 2.0 9)

I sighed. “It’s fiction, Sammy. I write fiction. Sometimes my characters do things that wouldn’t always happen in real life.”

“But a woman whose man is Army would know that it would never happen,” he pointed out.

I shrugged. “I realize that it likely wouldn’t happen. But that’s the beauty of fiction. I can make shit up and give it a little spin that likely would never happen in real life.”

He winked. “So are you asking me if I can find you someone to help you shoot automatic weapons? Or are you asking me what it’s like to shoot them?”

“If you can find someone to let me shoot one…” I paused. “That’s what I want. If you can’t, or don’t know anybody, then the second.”

He winked. “Let me see what I can do.” He paused. “But it’s going to take some time. This isn’t the kind of thing you just get to do when you’re a civilian. And it might never happen.”

I was just about to tell him that would be perfect, and I would be patient, when we rounded the corner of the bread aisle and ran smack dab into Patman.

“You.”

That was when my gaze was caught by the woman at his side.

An older woman in her mid-sixties.

She looked like she could be sweet, but the scowl on her face aimed at me was ferocious.

“You’re the woman that got my husband fired,” she continued as if we weren’t in the middle of the store where quite a few people were very much paying attention. “And don’t think I don’t know who you are!”

I felt Sammy put his hand at my back as he sidled up beside me, placing himself slightly more in front of me than beside.

His scowl was ferocious as he stared at the woman.

“I’m not sure this is the place to be doing this,” he said as he gathered my hand into his and started to tug me around the couple.

We were nearly at the exit when the woman caught up to us.

She was spry for her age.

“You don’t think that now’s not the perfect time?” the woman hissed. “I allowed it to be let go before. But not anymore!”

Sammy’s hand on mine tightened and he continued to pull me behind him.

I would’ve kept going.

Really, I would have.

But just as I was stepping through the door that would lead outside, the old lady commented again.

“I guess you’re a whore just like your mother! My husband told me that you came onto him! When will you whore Hughes women learn that my man is not a pawn!” the woman screeched.

I froze and turned, my blood all of a sudden boiling.

People could say all that they wanted about my dad. About my sister. About me.

But I drew the line when it came to my mother.

My mother was the sweetest, most loyal and giving woman I’d ever met.

She was the backbone of our family, and I would do absolutely anything for her.

Anything.

And she was not, under any circumstances, a whore.

She never had been, and never would be.

“I know you’re not talking to my daughter like that,” I heard the familiar voice say from the other side of us.

The sweet, never ever raised her voice to us once even when I’d snuck out of the house when I was sixteen, voice.

There was a long pause as the woman who’d been doing the screaming turned to stare at my mother.

“You.” She gasped in outrage, her voice even more acidic than before.

“Me,” my mother confirmed. “Now, what was it that you were saying about my daughter?”

“Apparently, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” the woman growled, her hands on her ample hips. “Joseph didn’t want you when we were in high school, and now your daughter is trying to get the same thing from him!”

My mother threw her head back and laughed.

She laughed so hard that the lemons she was holding fell to the floor.

“Do not laugh at me, Adrianna. I won him, okay! He’s mine. Now tell your whore daughter that she needs to stay away!” Mrs. Patman ordered harshly.

She wiped her eyes and righted herself when the woman’s voice went positively nuclear.

“Trust me, Taryn. I know” —my mother looked from me to Sammy and back— “that she has a really great guy. They’re expecting a baby. She doesn’t need your man. Not that she would’ve wanted him and his wrinkled balls and his Vienna sausage weenie anyway. You can keep that snack-sized appendage all to yourself. I didn’t want it in high school, and I didn’t want it in college. My daughter certainly doesn’t want it thirty years later. Trust me when I say, you can have Patman’s gropy hands all to yourself. Please inform him to keep them away from my daughter.” She paused. “And, now that we’re on that subject, if I ever hear that your husband put his hands on my daughter again, even to help her out of the path of a bus, I will personally filet him alive. And if anybody can do it, I can.”