Page 120 of Playing With Love

“Is Dad here?”

“No,” she said from closer. I tipped my gaze down the length of the bed and there she was standing at the foot of it looking like she always did. A Monroe, well put together and always presentable. “He sends his love but couldn’t make it.”

He sends his love.

His love.

That did it.

After nearly dying, after nearly losing Tucker in an even more kind of way that meant I’d never see him again, never hear his voice, never touch him, I snapped.

“Cut the shit, Mom. That man doesn’t love me.”

“Of course he does,” she lied. “You know his job⁠—”

“Mother, he’s not working, he’s in Atlantic City. And even if he was working, his only child almost dying would be an acceptable reason to miss work.”

My mother jerked back and lifted her hand to cover her heart—the perfect picture of civilized affront.

“What has gotten into you?”

“Some sense.”

Allyson moved closer, her hand gently going to the mattress.

“He’s—”

“Stop making excuses for him. Honest to God, I’m so tired of hearing your excuses. The man does not love me. He doesn’t care about me. He never has and he never will.”

“That’s not true. I cannot believe how ungrateful you sound after the life your father has provided for you.”

Ungrateful.

I’d heard that a time or two. Or five-million times.

I glanced at Lenox. A man who’d served his country, who’d gone on long deployments, yet still had given his time and attention to his two boys. A man who openly loved them. A good father. A man I knew would drop everything to rush to their side if one of them was injured. A man who cared enough about me to rush to my side and sit in my hospital room.

“It’s unbelievable I have to explain to you that providing a roof over my head, putting food on the table, but nothing else, does not mean he provided me with a good life.”

“He also put you through school and bought you a car⁠—”

“Yes, he bought me a car. What was I thinking? A car—that makes up for all of the times he told me I was a waste of time. And yes again, my education makes up for all the times he told me I wasn’t good enough, I’d never find a well-suited man because I was too much.” I rolled to sit upright. Pain burned through my body but I’d be damned if I was having this conversation while lying in a bed as my mother stood over me. “Next you’re going to remind me he clothed me as well. But that doesn’t make up for the times he told me I was weak-minded and used my attitude as a crutch because I was too stupid to formulate an intelligent argument.”

“What would you have him do, Liza? He works hard. You know how important time management⁠—”

Time management?

Was she for real?

“Are you listening to yourself?” I hissed. “A child isn’t something you fit in.”

Suddenly, she snapped straight and her face twisted in anger.

“I did my best,” she told me. “When I fell pregnant with you, I took on the responsibility of rearing you. That was the arrangement.”

I was stuck back on ‘fell pregnant’ like she tripped and mysteriously an embryo found its way into her belly. So it took my brain a second to catch up to the rest of what she’d said.

“Arrangement?”