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“So, this!” I shake the photograph at her. “This is the same exact picture that Zaff Heliot has in his wallet, Mom! If you hate him so much, then why would you hold on to these photographs?”
> She looks hurt now. “He contacted you, huh?” she says. “I knew he wasn’t going to let this go, I knew it. I mean, I know he’s a fucking two-faced bastard but this is low even for him. Don’t you see it, Holden? He’s using you to hurt me. He doesn’t care about you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t believe me?” she says. “Holden, you know that man for what, five minutes? An hour? A day perhaps? I’ve known him for forty-two years.”
“Did he really abandon us?”
She takes the picture from my hand and starts putting everything back into the box. “I held on to these because they’re memories from my past,” she says. “Is it a crime to hold on to a few old memories?”
“No,” I say. “It’s not a crime. Unless every good memory of yours happens to have my biological father in it!”
She finally manages to fill the box back with that old stuff and stashes it back in the false cabinet. She turns to me. “Never get into my stuff again.”
“Did he abandon us, Mom?” I ask. “Or did you leave him?”
“Holden,” she says. “Half-truths don’t make a fact.”
“He was right,” I say, unsure what to do with this new information. “You took me from him. And then you married Dad for his money, didn’t you?”
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”
“You’re going to tell me the truth Mom,” I say. “Or I will hear it from my father.”
“Your biological father.”
“Well he wants to be my father.”
She looks at me. “Baby,” she says. “You can’t be angry at me for trying to protect you from that man.”
“How bad could he be if you’re still holding on to pictures of him?”
“Those pictures are of a different time, Holden. Your father wasn’t the same person then. And sometimes I like to think that everything I did in life wasn’t a mistake, is that so bad? Those good moments that we shared, including you being born Holden, that’s my whole life.”
“Look Mom,” I say. “I’m not a complete idiot. I get that you wanted to leave him, marry someone else for whatever reason, I get that. What I don’t get, is why you and Dad made sure my father never got to talk to me?”
“We loved you, Holden. We were only trying to protect you from him. He’s a dangerous man; you don’t know the half of it!”
“Well maybe you should have let me draw that conclusion for myself, Mom! He’s my father, I have every right to talk to him!”
“Edmond was your father,” she says. “Don’t you forget that, Holden.”
I scoff. “All the time Dad was alive you did nothing but bitch about him. And now suddenly he’s husband of the year?”
“Every couple has their differences, Holden! He may not have been the best husband but he was a damn good father, and you know it.”
I can’t help thinking about the way Zaff was talking, how he kept saying he wanted to be able to see his son, nothing more. “Did you really stop him from seeing me, Mom?”
“Don’t you see it, Holden? He’s turning you against me!”
“Mom. You’ve already done a pretty good job of that yourself.” I storm out the room before she can say a word.
But the minute I’m outside, I can hear her crying.
Truths, Lies and Virgin Piña coladas
DANIEL
