and she let you go into the system just because she didn’t want your mom to marry your dad.”
So, yeah. I’d told Tig and Delia a few too many personal details after a few too many margaritas.
But he wasn’t lying.
It was fact, a painful one but . . . still the truth.
My mom had shrugged off the socialite life, had gotten a real job, had met my dad and fallen in love . . . then they’d had me.
And I’d had them for eleven awesome years.
Until they’d been killed by a drunk driver and I’d been left alone, unbroken except for my right leg and my heart. Sometimes, even all these years later, I still had nightmares about the accident, being startled from sleep by metal shrieking as it compressed around me, glass shattering and cutting my skin, the seat belt tightening painfully against my abdomen and chest . . . and then quiet.
Nothing but quiet.
Three had become one that night in the hospital.
I still remembered the nurses checking on me until the social worker had shown up.
That had also been the first time I’d met my grandmother. She’d shown up in a navy suit—the kind with the structured jacket and below-the-knee skirt. I remember her wearing a strand of white pearls and high heels that matched her suit.
My mother never wore heels.
She was an artist, and I’d never seen her in anything but paint-splattered sandals.
It didn’t matter that the streets of New York weren’t known for being clean or that in the wintertime, there might be snow on the ground. Her feet had needed to breathe. And I’d loved seeing what color she’d painted her toenails, loved being old enough so that she’d paint mine to match hers—sometimes we’d have a rainbow of purples and blues, oranges and reds, other times black or pink or mint green. God, we’d both hated that mint green color. We’d quickly covered it with rainbow sparkles the next day.
Which had made it even more hideous.
She’d been wearing the combination during the accident.
I’d kept mine on, my heart slowly crumbling to pieces as the paint had flecked away.
My grandmother’s toes had been covered in those navy pumps, though her fingernails had been polished. A pale, unassuming pink.
But there had been nothing unassuming about her demeanor.
She’d known what she wanted . . . and it hadn’t been me.
“You’re Charlie?” she’d asked, tone cold, lip raised in a sneer.
Maybe she’d been expecting a boy, or maybe she’d never expected I would be the spitting image of her daughter.
Maybe it was all too painful, and she’d reacted badly.
Having some understanding about the reason behind her reaction, perhaps came from the benefit of having clarity as an adult. People reacted poorly—though actual grown-ups tried to right their wrongs—but as a kid, all I’d known was that my only blood relative didn’t want a thing to do with me.
That had been made crystal clear as she’d berated the social worker for calling her about “a child from him”—the last being spat out—and I had to admit, I didn’t really want to go with her, either. She’d been cold and angry, and I’d been scared and in pain.
Later, in some of the really bad places, I’d realized that she would have been the better option in a lot of ways. Still, even though my parents had distanced themselves from the venom of my grandmother and her money and connections, they’d been responsible. She was the closest relative and thus, next of kin. She’d had the means and even aside from that, they’d provided a fund for my care. While not millions of dollars, it should have been enough to raise me.
My grandmother was the trustee.
I hadn’t known that until the check had arrived on my twenty-fifth birthday, along with the trust paperwork.
I’d spent seven years in foster care, seven years after that making it on my own, and . . .
I hadn’t needed to.
Still, the money had come at the right time in many ways. It had enabled me to pay for my car, to buy the small apartment I was living in outright, to repay the money I’d borrowed from Dave to cover the costs of my apprenticeship and tools, and it had enabled me to set up my business. But old habits die hard when it comes to money. I hadn’t bought a fancy apartment or an expensive car, though the money left for me had meant I could have bought both. Instead, I’d gone cheap with each