get anything past that girl. She’s a bright one, and you are very lucky to have her.”
“I know that,” I bit out. “Brooklyn is the best part of my life. Today, yesterday, always.”
But that wasn’t what we needed to deal with now. Now, I needed some answers, or I was going to lose my cool and turn this kitchen into rubble.
Mary let out a deep sigh before she grabbed a plate of cookies, poured two glasses of milk like we were children, and then set them in front of two barstools. She sat on one, patted the other’s seat, smiled at me kindly, and waited for my next move.
Like a fucking bitch, I almost cried then and there. It had been a long time since I’d shed a tear, but this moment almost destroyed me. Trying to get my shit under control, I focused on breathing as my feet carried me forward. I must have dropped into the chair, but I remembered nothing about how I’d gotten here. All I could see and think about was Mary.
Mary… who I was fairly certain was my mother.
She pushed the cookies and milk toward me, and I ignored them. It was an obvious mom move, and she might as well have just stabbed me in the fucking chest.
“I know you must have a lot of questions,” she said softly when it was clear I had no interest in partaking of her—admittedly delicious-looking—cookies.
“You think?”
I was not handling this very well, but fuck, why on one of the best days of my life did I have to run into this emotional shitstorm of a situation?
“Are you my mother?”
Blunt. It was about all I had in me tonight.
Mary clasped her hands together, and it was only now that I saw how difficult she was finding this as well. She’d been fairly successful at containing her sorrow, but deep in the well of her eyes, it was there. “Yes, Dylan, you’re my son.”
The urge to throw the fucking plate into a wall hit me, hard and fast, but I managed to stop myself at the last minute. It had taken me years, but I controlled my emotions, not the other way around… except when it came to Brooklyn, apparently. But she was an understandable exception.
My mother was apparently on edge as well. My hands trembled, and normally I’d bail the fuck out of here and go smash a punching bag for a while. But I couldn’t keep doing that. The reason it had taken Brooklyn and me so long to sort our shit out was because of our woeful communication skills.
I couldn’t do that here. I’d waited a long time to see my mother, half assuming she was dead, and I would get my answers.
“I’m going to need your story,” I rumbled. “From the beginning.”
She didn’t look surprised, more resigned. “That’s fair. I’ll give you the condensed version since I’m sure you’re keen to head back and check on your girl.”
I nodded, content with that. I did want to get back to Brooke, but this was just as important to me tonight.
“I was young, naïve, and dirt poor. My parents died when I was sixteen, and if I hadn’t gotten a job as a housekeeper, I would have been hooking on the streets.”
My father had always told me he’d saved her from a life of spreading her legs. Who knew he wasn’t a complete fucking liar.
“Your father paid attention to me on the nights his wife took her pills and went to bed early or any night when he’d had a few too many drinks. I’m ashamed to admit that I was flattered, at the time, to draw the attention of such a rich, successful man.”
Her face fell, but I didn’t blame her for that part at all. Truth be told, I didn’t blame her for any of it. My father was a monster, and she likely didn’t have much option to refuse even if she’d wanted to. I understood that all too well. But I still wanted her version of the story.
“And you got pregnant?”
She shook her head before a choked sound escaped. “First, his wife fell pregnant and I was assigned the nanny position. By then he was regularly coming into my room at night, and I was too scared to tell him no because a lot of the time he was cruel. His attention wasn’t fun for me any longer.”
Again, no surprise on my side with this information.
“I got pregnant just after his wife