Page 89 of Something Forever

I know exactly what she means.

On my way home, I swing by AT&T to get my mom a cheap flip phone. If she’s going to stay in the city, I want to be able to get in contact with her. All I can hope is that she doesn’t throw it away like she normally does.

When I get home later that afternoon, I’m feeling pretty good. All Rhodes is really starting to take shape and having Shatar on the team is exciting. Unfortunately, that good mood is dashed as soon as I walk into my apartment to find Caroline halfway out the door.

“Hey,” she says, eyeing me cautiously.

“You’re leaving?” I already know the answer, but I ask anyway.

“Yep,” she replies, popping the p with her lips.

“You were just going to take off without saying goodbye? Again?” I can’t help the anger that seeps into my voice. It’s the same old routine with her, and I’m sick of it.

“I thought you’d prefer it. You obviously want me out of your hair,” she mutters.

“Why did you even come here?”

“I told you. Had to see this husband business in person after I talked to that lawyer and learned the truth. That your sudden love match is a big fuckin’ scam.”

I suck in a sharp breath.

She knows.

She knows about the marriage clause, about the inheritance.

“He told you?” I ask, my shaky voice betraying my nerves. “Isn’t that confidential?”

“It’s in the will.” She shrugs. “So, how long are you gonna keep up the charade?”

“It’s not—” I feel suddenly protective, knowing that my mom knows the truth about me and Liam. “What do you want?”

She shrugs. “A cut of the cash couldn’t hurt. After all, my ever-so-generous mother left me nothing even though you got a nice little handout.”

My stomach drops. She’s asked me for money before, but never like this. Never in a threatening manner.

She waves her hand, brushing me off as usual. “Don’t be so dramatic. Do you know how it feels when your own parents leave you nothing and you have to watch the girl you raised on your own get all of it?”

I shake my head, empathy clouding my decision-making. When she puts it like that, it does sound really unfair.

“I’m sorry, Mom, but that’s not my fault.”

“Yeah, but you aren’t doing shit to fix it, are you?”

My chest rises and falls, agitation seeping into every part of me. “Why did you keep them from me? Grandma and Grandpa?”

“I told you, we were better off,” she scoffs.

“Better off?” I yell. “We slept in a barn, Mom! I got my first period with a stranger in an abandoned warehouse because you left me there to go off with some guy you’d just met. I’m terrified to fly because I never got on a plane until I turned eighteen, and you told me that they randomly fall out of the sky.”

“That is true,” she interjects, and I don’t bother to correct her. If we get into conspiracies that she believes in, we’ll go around in circles for hours.

I take a deep breath, trying to steady my emotions. “I know you want me to be like you, but I’m not. I’m not like you.”

“Trust me, I know that. I know you don’t want to be like me. I hardly want to be like me,” my mom yells back, stunning me into silence. “I did the best I could,” she says, brushing a sudden tear away. “You don’t know what it was like. When I left home, my parents told me I was dead to them. They disowned me. They were ashamed of me, but when they found out I had a kid, they tried to come after you. I knew they wanted to get their claws into you just like they did with me, and I was trying to protect you from that. Don’t you get that everything I ever did I did to protect you?”

I want to argue, to point out every time she abandoned me to hang out with her boyfriend of the month, but I can’t.

I’m just… sad.

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