Page 56 of Sinful Promises

Her shoulders sagged and she looked at me like I’d smoked her last joint. “Daisy. I’ve never told you this.” She heaved a massive sigh. “But I guess I should have told you a very long time ago. When I found out I was pregnant with you, I was gutted.”

“Jesus Christ, Mother?—”

“Let me finish,” she snapped.

I blinked at her.

She held her finger to her lips. “Shush.”

I did, and then she made me wait an extraordinarily long time before she heaved a sigh. Mother had center stage—a podium she loved.

“What I should have said, I guess . . .” She rolled her eyes. “. . . is that at first, when I found out I was carrying you, I had the shock of my life.” She cocked her head at me. “Better?”

“Oh, yeah. Much better.”

She flicked her hand, dismissing my sarcasm. “You always were a drama queen.”

Drama queen! I scowled. A drama queen was not something in my repertoire. At the very least, I bottled up my emotions rather than put them on display. Unlike her.

Maybe that was my problem.

I waited. She eyeballed me. I waited some more.

“But after the initial shock of finding out I was pregnant, I realized how lucky I was. I was about to bring a beautiful little human being into my life.” She smiled at me like she’d just knitted me the most glorious sweater.

After a moment of discomfort, I ogled her. “So how did I save you?”

She shook her head. “Because of you, I had to clean myself up. I stopped doing drugs.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Mother, I can give you dozens, if not hundreds of examples of times I’ve seen you high on dope or jabbing some fucking needle in your arm.”

“Oh, Jesus, you make it sound like I gave you the worst childhood.”

I stood again. Rage scraped through my veins. “I did have a shit childhood. I saw you with heaps of men. Strangers! Not the man who I thought was my father. Complete strangers who you’d introduce as your boss, or the new neighbor, or the trailer-park gardener, or the fucking guy you picked up at the gas station. They were always more important than me.”

She clutched her chest like she was having a fucking heart attack. “Don’t be silly. Nobody was more important than you.”

“If that was true, then tell me what you did for my thirteenth birthday?”

She rolled her eyes skyward. “Oh, Lord, that was so long ago. How could I possibly remember?”

“I remember.”

“Oh, here we go.” She slumped down on the mattress.

“Yes. Here we go. You lie there thinking you did nothing wrong. Thinking you were the best mother.”

“I never said I was the best mother.”

“No, but you were thinking it.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“No, I don’t. I’ll tell you why. Because most of what spills from your mouth are lies.”

---