Page 17 of Force At Third

“Chloe—”

“Gonna guess, with them doing their final round of fertility treatment Monday, he’s not going to want her stressed out any more than necessary,” he cuts me off. “Right now, we don’t know anything for sure. He misses his parole meeting tonight, Lawson will let us know.”

“We just keep doing what we do.”

The fact that Chloe was told this was her last viable egg and that she’s two years younger than me hit way harder than I’ll ever admit. For fifteen years, I’ve been adamant that I don’t want kids, but the in-your-face reminder that, at a certain age, that no longer becomes a choice … yeah, it hit.

“He staying on?” I ask.

“He’s considering the position.”

“He wants more money,” I say, knowing he does and wanting desperately to offer it. But those strings attached to my purse will no doubt be snipped soon.

I’ll be thirty-five in August, unmarried, childless, and not working for Cabot Financial. As the step-monster Nadine has more than once mentioned, I am unworthy of the Cabot name, let alone the money.

I was thirteen when I overheard that for the first time during one of my mandated once-a-month visits. I called my mom in tears, and she was rolling down the driveway with her beat-up Chevy truck in under thirty minutes. They got into an argument where Nadine refused to let me leave, even though my father had been “called away on business” and wasn’t there. Mom pushed past her, took my hand, and we left. Half an hour later, a cop friend of Mom’s was at our door and warned her that Nadine had filed a report. She had to go to court, and an order of protection was placed on her.

For two years, Mom spent every penny she made on lawyer fees, and I was forced to continue my visitations. She sold the house that she’d bought when it was in shambles and made it into a beautiful home for us when she was nineteen, to continue the fight. Mom finally won a small battle in court, a plea to move out of Dallas to a town where we could afford to live modestly. We moved to Walton that summer, where she worked part-time as a 911 operator and full-time as a dental hygienist.

For another year and a few months, I was still forced to adhere to the court-ordered custody arrangement. During that time, my father’s other children had decided it was acceptable to blatantly treat me like shit and passive-aggressively talk about my mother as if she—we—were beneath them. I overheard conversations between Nadine and their son, Ronald Jr., where she referred to me as my father’s bastard child of a whore. I’d lay in bed at night, counting down the hours before I could go home to Walton, to Mom, to softball and, yes, to Leland Locke.

The two worlds never collided since my father never made one of my school functions. So, at some point, I stopped asking. I also never talked about the time I spent there, or anything for that matter, but baseball and softball. I didn’t tell my mother either, primarily for selfish reasons—I didn’t want to have to move again. I loved Walton, playing sports, and had a giant crush on Leland Locke.

Then it got worse.

Once, Nadine pushed me. I didn’t tell Mom that she laid hands on me, but I was angry enough that I wanted something done. I told her what I had overheard her call me. That’s when I learned the truth about my mom’s past, one she said she never regretted. That was also the day she asked that I promise to let her know when I felt I needed to be put on birth control.

Leland and I hadn’t had sex, but we fooled around plenty. So, that same day, I asked if she could make me an appointment. A couple months later, I told Leland I wanted to have sex, so we did. After the first time, it was amazing, and life was even better because of … sex.

Not more than a month after that, I was at my mandated visitation and shit hit the fan. Ronald Jr. said those words about my mother to my face. During that particular verbal beatdown, I informed Ronald Jr. that she had never been a whore; she’d been stripping to pay her way through college. To that, he looked genuinely disgusted, which pissed me off even more. So, what did I do? I continued by telling him that our father had been in a relationship with my mother and that she hadn’t been made aware that he already had a girlfriend. Then I informed him that our father had made my mom an unknowing side piece because his debutwat college girlfriend was no doubt fugly and more than likely uptight and a lousy lay.

He ran to his mommy.

Nadine, said debutwat, burst into my room and slapped me across the face. I laughed in hers.

When I tried to call Mom, she stripped the phone from my hand and refused to let me leave. I told her to call my father, and she also denied that request, saying he was at an important meeting.

What did I do? I informed her, “The fact you buy that is hilarious.”

She slapped me again.

After everyone was in bed, I snuck out and made it all the way to Walton with no phone, lucky to be alive. Luck was also on my side as I still wore marks on my face from that bitch’s hand.

Mom called her lawyer and was immediately contacted by Sondra Cabot, my grandmother, from her home in France. An arrangement was made. She guaranteed that if Mom kept it out of court, I could choose where and when I visited my father and halfsiblings—as if—and she would set up a trust fund.

Mom immediately fired her lawyer, knowing she was in bed with the Cabot family.

Leland and I were sitting on the porch the following weekend when a little white Beamer pulled into the driveway. The driver’s side door opened, and my father stepped out. His words? “Been putting this off too long. Happy belated birthday.”

He met Leland and stayed for only ten minutes when his driver pulled up and took him to wherever he had to go—probably a hotel room.

Leland asked, “He knows your birthday was four months ago, right?”

I laughed and tossed him the keys. “Who cares? Let’s see how fast she goes.”

Leland named her Pearl, and we hit a hundred.

I’m guessing that was his way of apologizing since there was never a word said about his wife slapping me and never an apology from his demonic kids, either.

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