“Jesus! What the hell is going on, Dad?” I say, equally irate.
He exhales. “Look, I’m sorry I snapped. Just … do you have a picture of Mia or not?”
“No, I don’t. But wait a minute, I can get one.”
I pull my cell from my pocket and set the camera on. I hold it up to the window, and zoom in on Mia’s face.
She’s smiling. She’s happy. And she has no clue that I’m about to take a picture of her to send to my dad for a reason I can only guess isn’t good.
The hand around my throat tightens.
I snap the picture.
“I’m sending the photo to your cell now.” I watch the little bar sending, then telling me it’s been sent.
I hear Dad’s message tone beep in the background, then I wait, holding my breath.
“Jesus Christ,” I hear him mutter. “It’s her.”
And this is the moment when I know it’s bad, real bad, and that this is going to somehow change everything irrevocably.
“Dad, you really need to tell me what the hell is going on.”
He lets out a resigned sigh. “I know. I just don’t know where to start.”
“Beginning works good for me.” I’m getting slightly pissed off, and my heart is beating like a bastard.
“Look, this isn’t technically my story to tell, so go easy on me, son.”
I sigh with impatience.
I hear the phone rustle, like he’s moving, then he starts talking, “You know that Belle lived away from Durango.”
“Yeah, she went to college. It was why you guys broke up after high school. Then she moved back home, and you got back together.”
“Right. Well the story in the middle is a little different than the one you know. And Jordan, listen, I only found out the extent of your mom’s time in Boston days before she died…”
Boston.
Oh no.
Motherfucking, no.
Annabelle – that’s my mom’s full name. I’ve always known her as Belle, but her name is Annabelle.
Anna.
Why didn’t it click before now? I’m so fucking stupid!
Belle is Anna.
She’s Mia’s mother. I know it in my gut.
“Belle is Mia’s mother.” I nearly choke on the words.
Dad sighs a weary sound. And it’s confirmed.
My heart feels like it’s just been ripped from my chest.
“Yeah, I’m afraid she is.”
My mom. The woman who raised me … is Mia’s mother.
The mother who abandoned her when she was a baby. Left her alone with that shithole of a father, is the woman who took me on as her own and raised me.
This is a wrecking ball. And it’s going to destroy everything in its path.
Mia … us.
My head drops in my hands. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”
“I’m sorry, son. She told me days before she died about Mia. I didn’t know. I promise you. All I knew was that while she was in her last year of college, she met this doctor. He swept her off her feet, they got married soon after, but he wasn’t the guy she thought he was. The instant they were married, he turned violent. He hurt her bad. She ended up in hospital a few times because of him. Eventually, she left. Came back here. Divorced him. She never told me that she’d had a baby with him.”
I feel ill.
I slide off the counter. My feet hit the tiles and feel unsteady, so I sit on the floor.
Knees bent up, I put my head between them and take deep breaths.
“When Belle knew she was dying,” Dad continues. “She told me everything – all about Mia. She said that looking back, she thinks she was suffering with post-partum depression. And she was afraid, Jordan. Her ex-husband was a bastard of a man. The scars he left her with…”
I wince at his words, an image of Mia’s scars flashing through my mind.
“When I saw them the first time … I wanted to go there and kill him, but Belle wouldn’t let me. Obviously, she didn’t want me to go because she didn’t want me to know about Mia.” He sighs.
“Why did she leave her there, Dad? I don’t understand?” My voice cracks on the words knowing the life Mia had with her father.
Then I envision a different past for her.
One where Belle brought Mia back here with her. She would have been my sister. I would never have loved her in the way I do now, but rather that, then her have the life she had.
Her life with us would have been good. She’d have grown up happy. She would have had the life she deserved.
Not one filled with cruelty, and pain. Unimaginable pain.
I feel a sick, resentful anger toward the woman who raised me. The woman who patched up my busted knees when I fell off my bike time and time again. The woman who fed me. Bathed me. Loved me.
Jesus. Christ.