Page 46 of Wicked Sins

I wasn’t expecting a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek or anything, but this? It’s as if I’ve become my mother’s own worst enemy.

“What is your problem?” The words slip out before I can stop them, but then I’m glad I said them because my mother’s chin moves back and her stare hardens.

“You gonna talk to your mother like that?”

“I’m not even sure Iamtalking to my mom.” I wave a hand in her direction. “You’re like, some alien clone or something. What the hell did I do to piss you off?”

She takes a big sip of wine, and her throat moves as she swallows it. “It’s always about you, isn’t it?”

I take a step back as if I can somehow gain clarity by taking in more of this moment.

Always aboutme?

“Me?” I say through a laugh, touching fingertips to my chest. “I’m not the one who can’t keep a man long enough for her own daughter to finish out a grade.”

I expected her to flip out at that.

Instead, her mouth curls into an unfriendly smile. “You think we kept moving because they dumped me?”

Theyincluded more guys than I can count on both hands. And those were just the ones she actually had a relationship longer than a few hours with. I was convinced she was a prostitute at one stage, except I never saw money exchange hands. No folded bills left on the dressers, and the client turnover was a bit pathetic for her to be earning enough to keep us alive by selling off her pussy.

Mom comes around the bar, her wine sloshing left to right but never spilling. “Remember Harry?”

I shake my head. Who the hell could keep track of all the guys Mom’s boned? Not I. Oh no, not I.

“He’s the sweetheart that let us live in his trailer for those few months after I lost the gig at the diner. We had to leave after I hit him over the head with a frying pan.”

My mouth falls open. I shake my head.

She’s delusional. She’s gone and lost her goddamn mind. “I—that didn’t happen. It couldn’t—”

“Oh, you didn’t see it,” she says glibly, giving me another cold smile from behind her glass. “I made sure you were in bed already.”

“Why the hell would you—?”

“I’d had enough of him staring at you through the crack in the door while you were showering.”

“What?” I laugh. “He never…”

Is that why I’d always felt eyes on me? Not just when I showered. He didn’t live in the trailer with us, but he was around an awful lot. I thought it was just because he and Mom were boning, but he’d been there a lot when she was at work, too.

School was too far, so I spent the whole day in the trailer. I’d play outside sometimes, but Mom had told me it would be dangerous if I went too far. That’s why I was grateful for the big, meaty guy who always hung around. I knew he and Mom were friends, because she was always so friendly around him.

Always around.

Watching me through the cracks.

“I…didn’t know.” It sounds like the most pathetic excuse in the world, but I was a naive little girl back then.

She was supposed to protect me.

“Then there was dear old Gerald. Remember him?”

I freeze. Him, I remember. He was the white-haired man who Mom dated a few years after she’d started working as a receptionist at the sawmill. He owned the farm a few miles away where we rented a room.

“What did he…?”

“Oh, him?” She purses her lips and waves a limp hand. “He was a sweetie pie. Treated us like fucking gold.”

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