Page 42 of Walker

“He’s only a little younger than Josh. It will be a long time before he can make those decisions.”

“I’m so sorry, baby. I’ll do what I can to see if we even have legal grounds to get proof, and then if that happens and he turns out to be your brother, we can go from there.”

“Yeah, okay.”

14 - Drama in Aisle Three

I didn’t hear from Walker for the rest of the day, and by mid-day the kids were hungry and begging me to fix them things for dinner that we didn’t have in stock at the house. We packed up and headed to the local grocery store to go grab everything, since I didn’t have work again that night, which left me with plenty of time to shop and cook.

That was where my day took a turn for the worse. We rounded up everything we needed from the produce section and grabbed the bread, then as we headed into aisle three, the whole day turned to shit in an instant.

At the other end of the aisle, coming from the opposite direction was Terry, Dina, and the boy they claimed was my husband’s other son. “Mom,” Ariel whispered worriedly when she noticed them too. “Should I call Auntie Shaina?”

“No, not just yet.” I stood my ground beside the pasta that we’d come to the store for and waited for Terry to bring the drama to me. She did not disappoint.

“I hear your little girl has a smart mouth on her and likes to start shit,” Terry announced loudly.

“Actually, she told your daughter to prove the things she said aftershestarted shit with Ariel.”

Terry worriedly looked down at her daughter. Her face blanched ghostly pale as Dina nodded her head. “You stupid girl,” she hissed at her daughter who glanced up in shock at her mother.

“What? I told her exactly what you said to Missy. Danny is her dad’s kid because you were sleeping with Miss Ambrose’s husband.” Unfortunately for Terry, her daughter also did not have any semblance of a volume control for her voice. Everyone within three aisles of ours had to have heard the girl announce that her mother was a man-stealing, home wreaker who had an affair baby.

“Keep your voice down,” Terry insisted before shooting a glare my way as if I were responsible for her daughter being loud and airing her dirty laundry all over the Pack and Save.

“No offense, but that boy doesn’t look like he could have come from my husband,” I mentioned. The boy was very obviously mixed race. That was fine, but I knew Terry’s family going back three generations and we had those ancestry DNA things done years ago when Josh Jr. was born. Now that I thought about it, Josh’s parents had suggested we get it done, and it made me wonder if they were making sure the grandkids were really theirs. Not that it mattered, since they abandoned them after their son died.

“How the hell would you know?”

“My husband was one hundred percent Scottish and English descent. I also know your family, and he doesn’t look a thing like any of them,” I pointed out. Terry’s face grew red in anger.

“You know what, little miss bitch-face?” She yelled, as if her kindergarten-level taunt wasn’t embarrassing enough for her. “I didn’t want Dina to know that she’s the one who really belonged to Josh. She’s his daughter,” she recited smugly. “And she’s four months younger than Ariel, so you do the math on when that might have happened.” She had the audacity to wink at me.

I stared at Dina for a minute and catalogued her features. It was possible. It might even have been something a younger Josh did and figured he’d be able to hide it forever. He had dated Terry first and I knew she tried her best to get him back, even after she knew I was pregnant with his child.

Dina did not take the news as well as I did. “Mom! What the hell? How could you just blurt that out in the Pack and Save without telling me first?” She screeched out some other obscenities and then ran off leaving Terry to stare after her. I thought a saw a bit of regret there, but then she turned her hate-filled eyes my way again.

“You always knew how to screw everything up. You stole Josh from me. Then, you forced him to marry you even after he decided to come back to me instead.”

“Josh proposed to me, and I said no the first time he did,” I informed her. She stared at me with her mouth moving like a fish out of water trying to breathe. “As a matter of fact, it would have been about the time you claimed to have gotten pregnant with your daughter that we had a huge fight about me saying no, even though I was already almost five months pregnant with Ariel. We waited to get married until after I turned 18, after she was born. He asked me again the day she was born, and I said yes that time. Had I known that there was a chance he went back to you when he was angry about the first time I told him no, I would have told you to keep him.”

“Maybe I should have spoken up sooner then,” Terry taunted.

“You definitely should have spoken up sooner. You might have had a chance at keeping him then.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Not a damn thing. You and Josh are the ones who had the problems.” At that point, I turned around and walked away with Ariel standing tall beside me. I hated that my children had to witness any of that ugliness, but it couldn’t be helped. We lived in a small town that thrived on gossip. Even if they hadn’t been with me at the store for the showdown, they would have heard all the details come Monday morning at school.

I purchased what we already had in the cart and decided to stop at the little general store on the way home for the other things we needed. Josh and Ariel were quiet on the way home. Josh probably didn’t understand what had been said, but Ariel did, and she was stewing on the fact that her mortal high school enemy might just be her half-sister.

What a freaking day. By the time we got home, made dinner, and then cleaned up afterward, we were all drained and exhausted.

I was shocked when there was a knock on the door just before I settled into bed. I went back downstairs and took a look out the peephole to see Walker standing there.

“Sorry, I know it’s late. I broke my phone earlier and couldn’t text, so I wanted to come by and let you know I’ll get one as soon as the cell place opens in the morning.”

“Come on in,” I invited as I stepped back out of the way.

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