Page 6 of Twisted Collide

She doesn’t blink as she stares me down, not breaking eye contact. “I know all about your little extracurriculars.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Deny it all you want. You won’t change my mind. I’ve been patient enough.” She shakes her head, and a lone tear slips down her cheek so fast, I’m not sure I saw it right. “This isn’t the woman I raised.”

I stare at my feet, unable to meet her eyes. “Mom.”

The wail is guttural, and ugly, and so unlike me, but something changed in the past minute. I don’t know what, but suddenly, it feels like nothing will ever be the same.

“I made a few phone calls . . .” Her words trail off, and my head snaps up so that our gazes lock.

“Who did you call?” My voice cracks.

“A few people.”

“Okay,” I whisper, finding it hard to get the word out. My stomach tightens as if something bad is about to happen. Even the air in the room feels heavier.

“I called your father.”

My knees wobble. I’m barely able to hold steady. I brace my hand against the wall to keep upright. Did she just say what I think she said?

“What do you mean, my father? I don’t understand. You know who he is?”

“Yes, I know who he is.” She sighs heavily, eyes never wavering from mine. “But right now, we need to discuss—”

“What the hell do you mean you won’t discuss this with me right now? I deserve to know. Have you been lying to me my whole life?”

Despite knowing that I obviously have a father, she’s never mentioned him before. I mean, sure, a few sentences in passing, but I’ve always known that the subject was a nonstarter.

Any time I’ve asked in the past, she’s changed the subject. Either that or reminded me that she was the only parent I needed.

Father?She’d laugh, shaking her head.I raised you myself. I provided for you when you got sick, when you found a new book you wanted to read, when you needed a laptop for school. You don’t need a father. You have me.

I stagger against the wall. Her words shock me into silence. I don’t know anything right now—how to think, speak,feel.

Most of my childhood, I thought I was the product of artificial insemination. Not that anything is wrong with that; I just didn’t think anything would keep a father away from his kid . . . so, I must not have had one. Mom, of course, nipped that thought in the bud as soon as I was old enough to ask her.

But a part of me still held on to the hope that she lied to me. The part that wanted to believe that my father would never leave me of his own volition.

In my mind, something stopped him.

In my mind, it was never about me.

He always wanted me.

But now, as I stand on Jell-O legs, feeling like the world will swallow me whole, I have to accept that everything I’ve thought of all these years was a lie I told myself. Something to protect my fragile heart.

“I had a father all this time, and you never told me?”

I have a father, and he never wanted me.

“Josephine, I will not get into that with you right now.”

“Wow.” My eyes go wide. “Really, Mom?”

Did she actually just drop this bomb on me and then say she can’t talk about it? Seriously. Am I in the twilight zone?

What the hell is happening?

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