Chapter One
Tabby
It was a miracle that I managed to wait for the door to shut before sliding down it onto my ass on the floor.
I’d only been in Piersville for eighteen hours and already I was burned out. It wasn’t my sister Jose’s fault that she’d come home from her prenatal appointment and found her husband boinking some ho on the day I’d driven into town. It also wasn’t her fault that the ho in question, Rita, had turned psycho on her.
No, the fault lay with her soon to be ex-husband’s wandering penis, and the fact that, like the aforementioned penis, he was a dick. I was just glad that I’d been able to help her out when the deputy sheriff had arrived to haul their asses out of the house after Rita Slutita tried to attack her, and her soon-to-be-ex Larry tried to take anything of value after she’d told him to leave.
Few people would dream that the first time they met their half-sister – one which they’d only found out about a few months previously – it would go down like that. Regardless, I was relieved I’d been here to help out during and after it all.
Now though, I was in my new house. I absolutely loved the property and the town I’d moved to, but Texas was hot as balls and I had sweat gathering in places I didn’t know was possible. Oh, and I was more exhausted than I’d ever been in my life, and there was nothing to eat in the house. All I had was a case of water and some coffee in my car, but no furniture to get up and lie on because that wasn’t due to arrive until tomorrow. Awesome!
I would have given anything to be able to call my mom to sort out the riot of emotions inside me, but she’d lost her short battle with cancer five months ago. Everyone kept telling me that time was a great healer, but so far I felt as raw as I did the day we found out that she didn’t have long left – as in days left, not months. That news had prompted me to get one of the genealogy DNA kits I’d seen advertised online and send the swabs back to them to be tested which had led me to where I was today.
After her diagnosis, Mom and I had sat down and had many heart-to-hearts getting everything out and bearing our souls to each other. That might sound dramatically worded, but when you know you’re about to lose someone, you dig down to your soul and make sure you have no questions left when they’re gone. It was during one of these conversations that she’d finally explained why she’d never moved on after my dad. Apparently, they’d met, and she’d fallen in love quickly, completely taken by the handsome blond man. He’d said he was in love with her too, but then she’d found out that he was also in love with eight other women. Eight! Something which she’d found out when she was six months pregnant with me, and he’d followed it by telling her that had no intentions of ever being a one woman man.
After she’d ended it, instead of showing an interest in being in my life he’d claimed it would be too painful to see her and not be able to touch her, and had never gotten in touch with Mom again. She’d tried contacting him after I was born for my sake, but he’d made it clear that he wasn’t interested so she’d decided that being a mom was the most important thing and had focused on it.
Did I feel like shit that she hadn’t had another partner since? Absolutely. It felt like if I hadn’t been in the picture she’d have tried again for her happily ever after. When I’d told her that, she’d argued and said it had been her choice and she’d had the happiest life she could imagine raising me, loving me, having adventures with me, and creating a world with just the two of us in it. It still hurt my heart that she hadn’t had someone else giving her the love that she’d given out – someone who would have been her support network, and who’d have shared her problems whenever they happened.
One night we’d been sitting watching television when an ad for a DNA testing kit had come on, and she’d encouraged me to do it to see if we could track down any more family members. When she’d told me that she didn’t want me to be alone after she was gone, I’d ordered one and had sent it back a couple of days later.
I’d expected to find an aunt on Mom’s side, or a cousin, or something like that, but when it came back with a hit on a possible sibling, I’d felt numb. I hadn’t even thought along those lines, although in hindsight that probably should have been the first thing I should have considered having out there given dear old Daddy’s proclivity to swinging his dick around the country.