Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

My Own Damned Life

When I walked into the kitchen the next morning, even if it was early, and summer, and a weekend, my son was sitting on a stool at our island.

He opened his mouth.

I lifted a hand, palm out his way.

“Nope. No.” I shook my head. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“Okay, Mom, but you have to hear it.”

I ignored him and went to the coffeepot.

There was a pot made. My boy started drinking coffee a few months ago. The beginnings of this slipped under my radar. By the time I cottoned on, it was too late.

Maybe his father introduced him to it.

I pulled a mug from the cupboard.

“I was going to call him. Figure out how we would come clean with you. And I did. Except, he’d been kidnapped by an asshole, so he couldn’t take my calls,” Liam said.

I turned to him then.

“Language, boy,” I snapped.

I saw his jaw flex, and then, doggedly, he went on, “It needed to stop. We both knew it. I just couldn’t get Dad to admit it. He felt…like, unworthy of you or something. So when you asked me if I wanted to meet him, I agreed like, well, uh…” he scratched his head uneasily, “like I hadn’t met him yet when I had.”

I’d poured my coffee, and after he finished talking, I turned to him. “That part, I got.”

I moved to the fridge to get the creamer.

“Mom, it isn’t like we wanted to keep it from you. You just, you know, still loved him. He told me you wanted to make us a family. And it wasn’t safe to do that…yet.”

“How did you know I still loved him?”I asked.

“You told me,” he answered.

After pouring my creamer I turned to him again. “Yes, about seven years ago.”

He looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, Mom, but you don’t date. You’re my mom, but I got eyes, I can see you’re hot. You’re still kinda young.”

Still kinda young.

I was thirty-three!

Lord, grant me strength.

He continued, “You could totally land a guy. You never even looked. Because you’re hung up on Dad.”

Someone please explain to me why I suddenly wished I had a dull child.

I went after a spoon to put sugar in and stir my coffee.

“He’s messed up,” Liam said.

“A tire iron will do that to you,” I told my coffee as I stirred it. “He’ll heal.”

“No. About you. About us. About what he did after his dad died. He’s hung up on you too, you know.” Weighty pause. “And he doesn’t date either.”

Shot…right through the heart.

I was correct when I walked in.

I didn’t want to hear any of this.

I opened the cupboard to get a travel mug. “I’m going to the grocery store.”

“Mom.”

I poured my coffee into the travel mug. “Since you’re up, I want the floors vacuumed before I get home.”

“You can’t walk away from this,” Liam told me as I grabbed the keys from the counter and my purse, then I moved to the grocery list and ripped off the top sheet that had my and Liam’s scratchings on it.

I then leveled my eyes on my boy.

“My son lied to me. His father lied to me. For years. I’m sorry, Liam, but you have no choice. You’re going to have to give me some time.”

“And Dad?”

“As angry as I am about how it happened and how long it went on, I’m delighted you have a relationship with your father,” I admitted.

“No. I mean and Dad, you, me, us, our family. We can be that now. For real.”

“I love you, Liam, but you’re old enough to understand it isn’t your business as to how it came about when I say that ship has sailed.”

He got visibly angry.

He was just going to have to get over it.

Actions had consequences.

He was going to have to learn that.

Starting now.

* * * *

The cars lining the street in front of my house told me I wasn’t going to get to put the groceries away, throw together some peach salsa to put on top of the grilled shrimp tacos I was going to make later and put my feet up for a lazy Saturday with a book.

Even so, I pulled the car into the garage, went to the trunk, grabbed some bags and headed in.

Liam was standing at the island with his grandad. His grandma, one of them, was seated at a stool with my sister. His other grandma, who’d never stepped foot in my house in my life, looked like she was making cookies.

Gah!

I dumped the bags on the island and said to Liam, “There’s more in the trunk.”

Liam glanced at his grandfather, got a nod, then took off to the garage.

I started to pull out groceries.

“Darlin’, we gotta talk,” Dad announced.

Feeling a lot, too much, having just struggled all the way to the grocery store, and all the way home with not pointing my car in the direction of the hospital so I could check on Darius, managing to best that herculean task, I’d had enough.

And for some reason, I aimed my ire at the person who I felt betrayed me the most.

Darius’s mother.

“I didn’t expect this from you,” I stated.

She stared right into my eyes, and sweet, quiet Miss Dorothea didn’t back down. “I didn’t expect it from you either.”

“I was doing what your son wanted.”

“You got a mind of your own, child,” she retorted.

“So you thought the last sixteen years has been easy? All the decisions that needed to be made a breeze?”

“I didn’t say that. In fact, since I hope you’re listening, I’ll say I know it was hard, terribly hard, for you, for my son, for my grandson, for all of us. We did the best we could with the lot we were cast. And now, praise the good Lord, it’s over and we can heal.”

I pulled out some bananas. “It doesn’t feel over.”

“That’s because you’re determined to hang on to hurt when the time for hurting is passed,” Mom chimed in. “I get it. It’s habit. But for everyone concerned, you gotta let it go.”

I pinned her with a glare. “That’s it? You all hiding secret visits with Darius and Liam from me for years, and I have to let it go?”

“He saw Liam at Toni and Tony’s wedding,” Lena put in.

“I know that,” I snapped at my sister.

“Girl, it wrecked him,” she whispered.

The tear in my heart from that time hadn’t mended, so I felt that.

I felt it.

“He couldn’t stay away,” she said.

“Your mother and me already figured out you were getting money from somewhere, it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes wading in to know where you were getting it,” Dad shared (totally should have lied about winning the lottery, I was seeing that now). “Your mom dropped by Lena’s place once when Darius and Liam were visiting. She wasn’t expected. But we knew then, and we’d heard some things. We understood what he was about. But a boy needs his father. We did what we had to do to make that happen.”

“A mother needs a partner,” I returned.

“Now, baby,” Dad said in his disappointed voice. “I know you’re hurt, and I understand why you got that feeling. But you did not go this alone. Not even close. We had you. And Darius had you too.”

Damnit.

I couldn’t argue that.

I went to the fridge to put away the milk and cheese.

When I closed the door, I let out a squeak as I jumped back half a step, because Dorothea was right there.

“He’s loved you since high school,” she said.

I shook my head to shake her words out of my ears and rounded her to get to the groceries.

“Where’s that boy with the bags?” I muttered.

“He’s staying out there until we hash this out,” Dad told me.

I looked to him. “Then he can put them away.”

I turned to walk out of the room.

“Don’t be stubborn,” Mom called after me.

Right.

Enough.

I whirled on her.

On all of them.

“I know Darius gave me money. I know Darius bought us our furniture. I know Darius pretty much bought this house. I know he looked out for us. What you don’t know is, it hasn’t been over with him and me. It was stops and starts, and the last few years, he kept his distance. But in the beginning, when I moved back to Denver, he and I were together for years.”

I could tell by the looks on their faces they didn’t know that last part. Lena’s expression, particularly, was hard to witness considering her shock was liberally mixed with hurt, as I knew it would be.

Even so, I lowered the boom.

“He could have told me. He had ample opportunity. He didn’t tell me. He didn’t tell me about the business he was in. He didn’t tell me he was spending time with me and other times with his son. He didn’t let me in. He didn’t let me be a part of the conversation. Of the decision making. He didn’t let me decide if I was willing to take the chances he wasn’t willing to take so we could have a family. He kept us apart for his own reasons, and they might have been good ones, but he didn’t give me a say.”

I focused on my mom and kept going.

“I tried patience. Years of it. Years. He took my time and our boy’s time, and he gave, but he didn’t give enough.”

I looked to my dad, and I wasn’t done.

Far from it.

“Yes, we had your love and support, and it meant everything, Dad. Everything. I don’t know where Liam and I would be without it. But you know damn well, it’s not the same. It’s not the same as a mom and dad living under one roof raising their child. You could take my car to have the oil changed, but you did so much, I couldn’t ask you to, even though I had no time to do it myself, but it had to be done. You couldn’t pop by the grocery store with a tired four-year-old to pick up something you forgot to buy when you were there the day before. I had to drag Liam to the store and heft him up into the seat and get what we needed and get my boy home and fed and in bed at a decent hour. Then, dead on my feet, hit my computer to do my coursework. I needed him. We needed him. And he was there. But he still was a ghost. So I’m mad. I get it. Your point is made. You think I need to get over it. But you’ve gotta let me be mad for as long as it takes, and whatever shakes out after that, you’re gonna have to live with. Because for sixteen years, I’ve been living for whatever Darius Tucker felt was right. Now I’m going to make my own damned decisions about my own damned life. And he’s gonna have to live with whatever those are too.”

I got out what I wanted to say, then before anyone could utter a word, I hightailed it to my bedroom and slammed the door.

* * * *

Sometime later, when I sensed the hubbub was gone (and frankly, when I could no longer resist the lure of the smell of cookies baking), I went back downstairs.

There was a tin of cookies on the island along with a note from my son that said they’d all gone to the hospital to visit his dad, and it’d be cool if I joined them.

I didn’t join them.

I ate one of Dorothea’s cookies.

The instant it touched my tongue, memories flooded me. Of her, and Mister Morris, and lost youth, and wasted years, and dying hope, and as mad as I was, I hoped with all my heart these weren’t the first cookies she made for my son.

I really wanted to cry.

But I didn’t.

I grabbed two more cookies, made myself some tea and went up to my room with my book.