Page 56 of Fierce-Gabe

“You don’t know for sure?” he asked.

She continued to eat and then said, “I heard the fights. My father was always sticking up for me at a young age. When I turned thirteen I was still in my jeans and sneakers, my hair tied up. I was a girl, I looked like one and all. I wasn’t trying to be a boy. I just didn’t like all those fussy frilly things.”

Gabe laughed. He’d only seen her looking like a woman out to attract a man once. In college that night.

Every other time she was simpler in her attire.

He liked her better the way she was now.

You got what you saw with her and that was exactly what he wanted in his life.

“The more you resisted, the more your mother pushed?” he asked.

“She was good at pushing,” she said. “I am too.”

He thought he knew where this might be going, but he wanted her to say the words without him putting his foot in his mouth. “Then what happened?”

“My mother said she’d had enough. My father wasn’t going to change and he stuck up for his kids more than his wife. It was another wedge between them. The truth is, we just had a bigger connection to our father. Maybe because he wasn’t trying to make us be someone we weren’t. I will admit that my father tried to give me what I wanted more because my mother was the dream killer.”

“And your mother left?” he asked.

“Yes. She moved about an hour away back then. Just left us with my father. But one thing my mother didn’t like was people talking about her.”

“My guess is people talked about her more than she wants to admit.”

“She’d never acknowledge that,” she said. “But after a few months she realized it looked bad that she left her kids with my father. That doesn’t happen much.”

“No. It’s normally split or with the mother,” he said.

“Exactly. She wanted me to go live with her. Not Royce. He was too much like my father, but she thought she could mold me.”

“I’ve got to imagine your father put his foot down,” he said. Gabe could see that now. He could also see a young Elise standing up to her mother and saying it like it was.

“Yes. I wasn’t moving. And if the court forced me, then Royce had to go too. My father said he’d fight until his death for us. He wasn’t letting it happen. Nothing would get in his way. Royce didn’t know until recently that my mother only wanted me.”

“No one wants to feel as if they aren’t wanted,” he said.

They’d both finished off their pizza and reached for another slice.

“My father wanted us. He was more than enough. I think he bought her off. I don’t know. I didn’t ask. It dropped and we got to stay with my father. Life was so much calmer. I had to see my mother at times and tried to suck it up. I think she did too. To this day my father still beats himself up over our childhood and what we went through. That he felt he could have done something sooner.”

“That’s something at least that your life was calmer. As for your father, you can’t go back in time. Trust me, I know. I wish I could have a lot in my life.”

“The thing is, she sets me off. Every conversation with her is a reminder of her treatment of me, Royce and my father. She hasn’t changed. She likes to argue too. She holds grudges and won’t let go for anything. I’m just like her.”

“No, you’re not,” he said. “Don’t say that. I’m not saying there isn’t part of you that isn’t like your mother. The holding a grudge and argumentative part.”

He reached his hand out and tugged on a lock of her hair trying to make light of a truthful statement. “Fair point.”

“I think there is just as much of your father in you. You’re beating yourself up over that and you can’t control it.”

“True again. And this brings me to yesterday. My mother calls every few months. I try to put off talking to her.”

“She sets you off, as you said. What happened yesterday?”

He was getting a better idea of things but wanted to know it all.

“She’s met Chloe once. She doesn’t know her. She criticizes Royce all the time. Always says his relationship won’t last because he’s just like my father.”

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