Page 95 of Ask Your Mom If I'm Real

“Your mother’s name is Annie?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Just Annie. No abbreviation for anything.”

“That’s beautiful, and a great tribute to her,” I said softly as I turned the mixer on to allow the ingredients to mix. “Do you ever call her Annie?”

“When we’re alone,” she admitted. “When my dad can’t…”

When her father can’t beat the shit out of her for hearing his dead wife’s name.

“I have this overwhelming urge to get in my truck, drive to your dad’s place, and murder him in his sleep,” I grumbled.

She nervously twisted her hands together, not answering.

Not denying me, either, I noted.

“Why didn’t you leave earlier?” I asked, glancing at her quickly before flipping over another pancake.

“Can I borrow your phone for a second?” she asked.

I nodded.

She reached for the phone, tapped a few things, then stood up stiffly.

My brows rose as she walked toward me.

“I told my dad that I was leaving to pursue a career that didn’t follow his path for me,” she said. “And then he gives me this look and says, ‘good luck with that.’”

I look down at the screen and feel my stomach sink.

It was a credit report.

“From the age of fifteen, my father had started taking out loans under my name,” she said. “And not paying them back.”

I blinked, then looked closer.

The credit report showed that she had over five hundred thousand dollars in unpaid loans taken out, all of which were in the red.

“I didn’t even know about them to pay them off,” she said. “I…”

That. Asshole.

“And then I got pregnant with Anleigh, and I just had…nowhere to go. I couldn’t go anywhere at all because I had no job experience. My credit was so bad that not even an insane person would rent to me. I had no friends because my dad was such an asshole that no one wanted their kids to be around him. I just couldn’t do anything at all. There was nowhere else for me to go. No other path for me to follow. Every time I try to leave, he reminds me why I have to stay.”

I turned the mixer off, then turned the skillet on before saying, “You do now.”

Chapter

Eleven

Never trust anyone that bites ice cream. They have Terminator teeth.

—Merriam’s secret thoughts

MERRIAM

My belly full of delicious pancakes, I was more than ready to fall asleep standing up.

Much to Jeremiah’s chagrin, I refused to let him cook without allowing me to clean, and by the time the front of my shirt was soaked with soap and water, I was ready to fall asleep standing up.

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