Page 92 of Fierce Love
Everything I uncovered is clearly my mother’s, but I don’t understand why my aunt had it stored in a secret compartment that Mickie didn’t know anything about. The pieces are all around me, but I can’t make them fit.
“When you went to jail last time,” I say, slowly, “what were the circumstances around that?”
“If you found my stuff, you fucking know, Hollyn.” She gives me an unimpressed look.
“I’d like to hear your version of the truth.”
“That’s a first.”
I don’t say anything in response, because it’s true. Instead, I just wait for her. She’s always liked to tell a story. Loved the ring of her own voice in a room. The only sound I think she liked more was my high-pitched cry as I begged her not to hurt me again.
“I’m always getting fucked over by a Tucker. You should watch your back. If your guy can do this to me, he can surely do it to you. He has it out for us Davis women, you know.”
“Cut the shit, Mom,” I say, exasperated. There was a time when I would have frozen up, been unable to speak back or fight back. Whether it’s the years that have passed, the wall between us, or the fact I was actually able to find the courage to rise up against her last time we were face-to-face, I’m done taking her lies as the truth. Now I want the real thing.
“Just like last time, I’ve been framed by a Tucker,” she says, pointing her finger at me.
No matter the depth or scope of Nate’s anger at how Mickie treated me, I can’t see him bending the truth that far. He’s not that kind of person. Whatever Mom’s been arrested for this time, I’m sure she’s done it. Maybe she even did it last time, too, and she’s just bitter she got caught.
“Who framed you?” I ask, seeing an opening.
“Celia Tucker. But you already know that if you found my papers.”
“I read it all, and I don’t feel like I knowanything.”
“That fancy fucking school she sent you to not teach reading comprehension?”
“Mickie,” I say, exasperated again.
“I’m not Mickie to you. I’m your fucking mother. You came shooting out ofmyvagina. You don’t get to treat me like I’m some stranger. I gave you life. You’re full of my genes.”
I’m not arguing with her over what I call her. In my head, I call her both. But naming her Mickie when I was younger helped a lot with separating the things she did to me with what I knew a mother should be.
She gives me a hard stare. “I didn’t know who framed me and your dad when I went to prison last time. A mountain of evidence, and I knew I hadn’t done shit. Other things, sure. If they’d picked me up on something else, maybe. Your dad and I were careful. Did we clean money? No. Not me. And sure as shit, that wasn’t Verna either.”
At least that answered that. My aunt hadn’t been involved in what my parents had been arrested for.
“It wasn’t until I got out that I decided to do some digging. Figured out how the whole thing went down. Phenomenal scheming, I have to admit.” There’s a hint of admiration in her voice tinged with anger. “Celia Tucker fucked us over good, didn’t she?” She looks at me as though I should be nodding in agreement.
I mean, yes, but it feels wrong to agree with anything my mother says.
“Once I connected the dots, I went to Celia with the picture I’d formed. I told her I’d tell Nathaniel, tell you, about all the scheming she’d done behind the scenes to set you up. The whole thing would blow up in her face.”
“You’re lucky she didn’t have you killed.” Saying it feels like an exaggeration, but part of me believes it.
“She had enough money to make us both happy. No need for extremes.” Mickie shrugs. “Of course, when I told Verna, she got all up on her high horse. You’d sacrificed so much to keepher safe and blah, blah, blah. Said I couldn’t prosper off your heartbreak. I went to fucking prison, and I’m not entitled to anything?” She gives me a petulant look. “Guilted me into giving her the money. She said she’d tell you everything, give you the money, when the time was right. But she never did, did she?”
“No,” I admit. But there’d been another document in the pile that makes me wonder whether shecouldtell me.
“I don’t feel so bad about keeping half that cash, then. If it was just sitting somewhere in that apartment the whole time. Leave it to Verna to only do half a job.”
“You kept some of the payoff?”
“Tuckers got deep pockets.” Mickie’s expression is unfazed. “Your dad and I needed something to get us back on our feet, get us up and running after prison. She sent us there to benefit herself. Least she could do was pay for our time.”
Hot and cold keeps rushing through me in waves. At eighteen, I thought life and circumstances had backed me into a corner, were forcing my hand. Or maybe I thought Mickie was forcing my hand through her poor choices, but I never, not once, suspected that Celia was both my executioner and my savior. Celia gave me impossible choices, but this whole time, I’d thought they weremychoices to make, that I’d gone to her of my own free will.
“She knew what I’d do,” I whisper.
