“What the fuck, Grady?” Brenda yells down the phone line.
She knows what happened here. I couldn’t very well hide it from her, even if the press hadn’t already found the information like the fucking bloodhounds they are.
“She’s okay, Brenda. She did exactly what she needed to do,” I say, but how do I explain such an impossible situation?
“Regardless of what a good job she did, Paige shouldn’t have even been in that situation,” she says. “This is ridiculous, I should rescind the offer. She’d be safer with me, obviously.”
Fuck. My. Fucking. Life.
Mom said this would happen. She warned me yesterday before they left for Portland that when I told my ex, she’d use it as more leverage. But, again, what the fuck am I supposed to do about it? Brenda is her mother; I can’t keep the important events of Paige’s life away from her.
“Don’t you fucking dare, Brenda,” I say, trying really hard to keep my anger from spilling over as I pace my front lawn. “She’s safe, she’s proud she was able to help a friend, and I’ve already scheduled an appointment with a therapist. It’s a lot, but I’m handling it.”
“A friend,” she says snidely. “She’s more than that, isn’t she?”
“Is that what this is really about? You’re mad I’ve met someone new?” The utter audacity of this woman. Brenda is the one who cheated on me. Brenda is the one basically ready to sell her child to me for a new man. Yet, she’s mad I’m in love with someone. “Do I need to remind you of how we ended up in this situation to begin with?”
“We’re in this situation becauseyou,” she starts to accuse, but stops herself. After a heavy sigh, she continues, “I don’t want to fight, Grady.”
That’s a lie. She does want to fight; she always wants to fight. Only, she hates it when I bring up that she was fucking around with Carter for five goddamned months before I caught her.
“She should be here, Brenda,” I say, much softer now. “We both know it. She’s happier here than she is in Portland. Not because of you or even me. It’s her home. Please don’t take that away from her.”
“Three days. That’s all the more time I’m giving you.” With that, she hangs up on me.
“Fuck,” I curse too loudly.
“Everything okay?” Lou stands on Irma’s front stoop, small suitcase in hand.
What the actual fuck is happening to my life today?
“Where are you going?”
“Portland,” she says, staring at her shoes. “For Luke’s shoot.”
“Lou, surely, that can be postponed.” There’s no amount of makeup available to cover up the wounds she’s carrying. It hasn’t been forty-eight hours since her showdown with that monster.
“I have to go.”
“You can barely see out of your left eye. It’s not safe for you to be driving,” I say, but it’s a stretch. We both know it.
“I’ve made up my mind,” she says, defiantly raising her chin.
“That wasn’t me trying to tell you what to do,” I say, stepping closer, my hands raised. “I would never do that. I’m worried about you, is all.”
“I need to do this,” she says.
“Listen, if this is about him getting out of jail, that’s going to take a few days, at least. They’re dragging their feet for us,” I say.
Between me, Jerry, and Sam all calling in favors, we’re doing our best to keep things tangled. The longer he sits in jail, the more time the prosecutor has to come up with the right charges. It helps that he epically violated the protection order.
“Besides, the whole town is behind you, Lou. He’ll be chased out as soon as he leaves his jail cell.”
“It’s not only that,” she says, a weird look passing over her features. One I haven’t seen before and can’t read. “I need to clear my head. Put it back on straight.”
“You can’t do that here?”
“No,” she says so quickly, I flinch. “That’s not how I mean it, Grady.”
