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"Yes. Of course. But, you may not believe this, it wasn't that hard of a sell. She knows more than anyone that she has some making up to do. She's feeling very mortal, and she'd like to leave this world knowing that she did some good."
I was still taking all of that in, still reeling from it, when they dropped another bombshell on me.
"And now we come to Leo," Dante said to his father with resigned scorn. "Are you sober enough to say your piece, Leo?" he asked him.
"I'm perfectly sober," Leo said, sounding less than perfectly sober.
Still, he was markedly less drunk.
"So what does Leo have to add to this?" I asked no one in particular when the silence had gone on too long.
Leo glared at me. I glared back. The usual.
"I know what happened to your mother," he said, sniffing, and I was shocked to realize he was fighting back tears.
"What happened to my mother?" I asked automatically, almost robotically.
We'd shifted gears so quickly, information overload, and I hadn't given my absent mother a thought in years, so I wasn't really even committed to the question.
Leo changed that pretty quickly. "Your father killed her. Jethro. He beat her to within an inch of her life and left her on my doorstep."
"Tell the whole fucking thing, you asshole," Dante gritted out at him. "Start at the beginning. She deserves to know it all."
Leo glared at his heir but complied. "Renee was a few years younger than me in high school. She was a freshman when I was a senior, but we went steady for a year." The childish phrase sounded silly from him. All of it did. But I didn't care. I wanted to hear. He'd effectively caught my interest. I wanted to know anything, everything I could about my mother.
He waved a negligent hand in my direction. "She looked like you. Prettiest girl in school. By far. Prettiest thing in the whole town. She's still the only woman I ever loved. But I was young, and once I graduated high school, the last thing I was going to do was wait around in that Podunk town.
"I left, went to college. I didn't forget about her, but I just sort of got distracted. That's when I met Adelaide. At Harvard. She was as conniving then as she is now. She got knocked up quick. I don't even remember how, but she talked me into marrying her. I got sick of that quick, and after the first year of college I went back home to visit. Not gonna lie, I was hoping to see Renee, to start things again. I was already planning to leave Adelaide. To divorce her as soon as humanly possible."
He took a deep breath, looking around suddenly, and I think everyone in the room knew that he was searching for his usual glass of Scotch.
"No liquor until you finish, Dad," Bastian said, voice quiet but firm.
Leo glared at him. "Long story short, I show up and Renee is seven months pregnant. I was pissed. Really pissed. Especially when I found out that the daddy was that piece of trash Jethro. I didn't talk to her for a few days, but I caved pretty quickly. I still wanted her, and she was already avoiding Jethro, said he scared her.
"We lived together over that summer break. I was planning to take her back with me. We had a lot of plans, actually, but one day Adelaide showed up, newborn Dante in tow, and threw a fit to end all fits, and scared Renee off.
"I was planning to fix it, to get Adelaide to leave, get the divorce and everything, but then Renee went missing. Couldn't find hide nor hair of her anywhere for three days. I was really worried, since she was due any day."
He took a very deep breath, looking distraught, and for the first time in my life, I felt sorry for the prick. "It was the worst timing, but that's Adelaide's specialty. Some part of me thinks she orchestrated the whole thing. Hell, it'd be hard to convince me otherwise. She came to my house one night and started a fight. I was so over her by then. I didn't even care. I just let her go crazy. She was pulling out her hair, bashing her head and face against the wall. She was deranged, and I did try to stop her at some point." He waved a dismissive hand at Dante. "She was the mother of my child. But I couldn't stop her. She beat the crap out of herself, and right at the worst of it, my doorbell rang.
"It took me a while to get it. Adelaide threw herself in my way. But when I finally did, I found Renee on my doorstep, beaten bloody. I brought her inside. I wanted to call the police, an ambulance. I wanted to help her, I swear, but she was in active labor, and I just reacted, helped her deliver the baby." He pointed at me and sneered. "And Renee died before I could ever make that phone call."
He sighed and started looking around for his drink again.
"Finish the story," Dante ordered him.
"You can guess the rest. I wanted to call the police. I wanted to have Jethro fucking drawn and quartered, but there was Adelaide. She told me that if I called the police she'd say I beat her, and that she'd watched me beat Renee to death, too. You know how she fucking is. She had her proof all lined up. It was a setup, all of it. All so I wouldn't divorce her. I was a wreck. A sad, terrified wreck. I agreed to everything she asked, even got rid of the body, took it where she told me. Did everything, everything she said. A fucking life sentence with that cunt. Then she took the baby and left. I didn't even know what she was going to do with it . . . with you. But I can't say I was even slightly surprised when I found out you ended up in a dumpster."
I thought, no, I knew, that I couldn't have held my own weight at that point. I was literally floored.
Dante was all that kept me upright.
It was sad, but a part of me, a big part, was relieved to hear the tragic story. At least she hadn't abandoned me on purpose. Maybe someone had wanted me. Maybe my mother would have kept me if she'd had a choice.
Leo was still Leo, but I asked him anyway. I needed to know. "Did she want me? Was she going to keep me?"
He was looking around for his drink again, but he answered quickly and absently enough for me to think it was the truth. "Oh yeah. She was real excited about you. She was a bit impulsive, but I think she'd have been a good mother. Wasn't meant to be, though. Obviously."
