the floor. She caught it mid-fall, but I’d succeeded in catching her so off-guard that she looked like I’d just stabbed her with a literal knife. “You want to talk about your father now?” If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Mom had hoped I’d forgotten all about what she’d said before.
Basically, forgot that she’d been lying to me my entire life.
No, Mom wasn’t that lucky. Plus, I was stubborn as all hell, so it was only a matter of time before I brought him up. If I was going to go down for Brittany’s murder, I might as well learn about him now.
“Why not?” I asked, blinking, holding my mom’s stare as I felt my heart start to beat a little faster in my chest. I truly had no idea what my dad was like, nor why Mom always got that deer in headlights look when he was brought up. “Did we move because of him?” As far as I knew, Mom hadn’t dated in years. She never brought guys home, never even talked about doing so, and I’d always thought that was normal, but now…now I wondered just how much Mom had hidden from me all these years.
“I thought we were safe there, but I was wrong,” Mom whispered, her green eyes on the table before her. She spoke softly, hesitantly, as if afraid that my dad himself would pop through the walls and say peekaboo! “A month before your birthday, I got a letter. No return address. It wasn’t labeled with any name, but I didn’t need to see his signature to know it was from your father.”
My back straightened, and I leaned against the chair behind me. So he’d found us, and she’d forced us to run. Didn’t seem right.
“He wanted to see you after you turned eighteen. He wanted…” Mom paused, and she reached for her glass and chugged down the water inside. No wine tonight, although, if any night were a night for drinking, it’d be right now. “He wanted a chance to talk to you, to show you who he was. He said he’d known where we were all along, but let me believe I’d gotten us free of him.”
“Mom,” I spoke cautiously, hoping I wouldn’t step on any toes, “what is it about him that made us run from him?”
“I was young when I first met him,” she said. “Very young. Younger than you are now. He was young, too. He was…he was a part of something I thought he’d grow out of.” A short chuckle left her as she shook her head. “I was in love, and a fool. I thought he’d leave his crew.”
A crew? Like a gang? My mind flashed back to the first day I met Dante, and it was as my mind slowly put together all of the pieces that I realized my dad was still watching me, just through Dante.
Dante hadn’t admitted it to me, not really, but if I went to him with this knowledge, would he come clean? Was my dad the Skull guy he talked about, the one who’d banished him for trying to kidnap me against my will?
“But once you’re a part of the crew, you never leave it,” Mom was saying. “I’d thought he was a better man than he was, but he was just like the rest. Once I saw his real self, I…I got scared and I ran. At the time, I had no idea I was pregnant with you, but somehow he must’ve found me and found out about you.”
I watched as Mom shook her head, a look of guilt and sorrow across her features.
“I could never be with a man like that.” To say she sounded bitter would be an understatement, especially when she said, “Look where we are now. Maybe letting your father meet you would’ve been better than this. I’d thought Midpark would be a nice change, something that would be good for you, but look at us now.”
There was nothing I could say in that moment to lessen what my mom felt, no words to say to make her feel better, so I kept quiet, dropping my gaze to the half-eaten plate in front of me on the table. My appetite hadn’t been here to begin with, but now I wanted to eat even less.
I looked like him, she’d told me so. Mom must hate looking at me, knowing she was seeing a younger, feminine version of him.