Page 110 of One of Those Amnesia Stories

I tried to tolerate it.

To let her play the part of the mother she seemed so desperate to perform. Rationally, I understood. She’d been forced into a situation she never wanted. It made sense that she hadn’t wanted me then. Her desires had changed; now she claimed to want a connection. I thought I could grant her that much.

But every forced lunch, every overshared anecdote from her nomadic life, every painfully basic question about my life grated on me like sandpaper. My skin would crawl with a restless, burning irritation. I endured it for a few years out of a sense of twisted obligation, until my patience finally snapped.

I finally asked her, point-blank, what she wanted from me.

What was the actual objective of all these meetings?

She stared at me as though I’d slapped her, genuine shock spreading across her arresting, siren-like features. After a long silence, the truth tumbled out. She wanted me to get married. She wanted an heir to carry the family name.

A slow, genuine smile spread across my face for the first time in her presence.

Like father, like daughter.

The Quinn obsession with legacy was a poison in the blood, and she was just another carrier.

We struck a deal that day. I would attend the arranged marriage meetings she curated, and in exchange, she would disappear from my life.

A straightforward transaction.

I had zero intention of ever having a child to feed that legacy. I made the deal for one reason: to make her go away.

At least, that was what I told myself.

The truth was harder to admit.

Some small, traitorous part of me had wanted to know her.

I wanted to hear the stories I pretended to find unbearable. I wanted to understand the woman who had spent most of my childhood as a stranger and then, years too late, decided she wanted a place in my life.

I just couldn’t admit that to myself.

So I played along.

I went to the meetings. I listened to her candidates. I sat through one meeting after another, offering the same cold patience each time, pretending I was there because she had asked me to be and nothing more.

Until I lost patience with the entire thing.

Not a single candidate had been remotely tolerable. Every meeting left me more convinced that this ridiculous arrangement was a waste of my time. The last one finally pushed me past the point of endurance.

I was done.

I couldn’t sacrifice another evening to my mother’s twisted little legacy project, sitting across from strangers she’d decided might be worthy of carrying the Quinn name forward while I tried to pretend I gave a damn.

So I walked away.

And then I woke up here.

Married.

Sometimes, life’s sense of humor is so brutally ironic, so perfectly circular, that all you can do is laugh along, even when you’re the butt of the joke.

I tilted my head. “Did you need something from me?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I can’t visit my own daughter after she’s been through one of the most traumatic incidents of her life?”

I put the water bottle back in the fridge.