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“No.” Landon’s voice pulls me back to him. “He didn’t. But I think it’s only right that I learn more about the woman who seems to have stolen my son’s ability to conjure up rational thoughts, especially when my own son refuses to tell me the slightest thing about her. I’m sure you wouldn’t mind that, would you, Louise? Sorry,Indigo? That’s the name you’re going by now, right?”
By some miracle, my brain and mouth manage to connect back up just enough for me to be able to speak words.
“Indigoismy name. My chosen nameandmy legal name. And it always will be. Louise is a deadname and I will never use it again.”
“It’s not the only name you’ve changed now, is it, Ms. Nilsson? Or is itAndrews?”
My mouth, now dry, barely allows me to swallow. I knew from those days working at the office that he must have paid someone to look into me, a fact that sickens me to my stomach, especially when he says the name of my father, a man no longer with us who would have killed him for talking to me like that.
Not to mention, uttering the name of a man who hurt me, who led my mother to kick me out of her house, refusing to believe that I didn’t try to seduce him, but that it was he who would brush against me constantly, making me wonder if it was all in my head, until the brushing turning into rubbing when he grabbed me that last day in the basement, a day when I was forced me to grab a tool and split his head open to get away…
“Andrews is my step-father’s name,” I respond, aware that my voice shook a little. “My mother changed my surname to his when I was seven years old and didn’t give me a choice in the matter. I haven’t used that name since I was seventeen. Nor will I ever use it again.” Grey squeezes my hand under the table. “Nilsson was my father’s name. He’s deceased now. And that’s theonlyname I’ll ever use.”
“She comes from money?” asks his mom, eyes narrowing. The woman couldn’t sound more like a soap opera villain if she tried.
“Yes, she does,” drawls Landon, his fingers curling to form fists on the table, his two silver rings, the symbols on which I can’t quite make out, glistening in the low light.
“I think we’re done with this discussion,” says Grey, breathless. He once promised me he wouldn’t look into my past, but I should have told him myself so that he didn’t get ambushed.
“Not that I should have to explain myself,” I continue, “but… it’s my mother and stepmother who have the money, not me. And as for my family, I’d really rather you asked me about them directly instead of researching them behind my back.”
I realize I trembled a little and some annoying droplet of a tear is now teetering on my lower lid, one which I know Landon sees for it makes him sit up and lean towards me, inspecting it so unabashedly that I feel like I’m in some fever dream.
“Message noted, In-di-go.” He draws out my name sneeringly, the name I love and adore and that fits me and has made me feel free and alive since I first chose it for myself and rid myself of the name my mother would sneer at me. “I will ask you my questions directly… or maybe we could invite your parents to dinner…”
“That’s enough.” Grey’s snarl cuts through his father’s, drawing his gaze for just a moment.
“I’m not in contact with my mother or her husband,” I shoot back, refusing to turn into a wallflower in the face of such dominant men. “Nor do I intend to be.”
“Why on Earth not?” asks the bleached wraith in a pause from her communion with the antichrist.
“Because… they’re not healthy people. And I refuse to allow toxic people to have access to me.”
“That’s your mother, Indigo. She’s the one who brought you into this world. You owe her a minimum of respect.”
Toxic people and their obsession with hierarchy.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t agree. She made her choices and I refuse to feel like I owe someone for being brought into this world. Parents need to stop acting like they’re doing kids a big favor just for having the immense privilege of bringing them up. That wastheirchoice, not ours. And anyway, I have two mothers who have shown me more love and acceptance than my birth mother ever has done. They are my mothers. If you want to meet my family, it’s them and no one else.”
Sandra turns to her husband as we’re plunged into the kind of suffocating silence that makes you want to run from the room just to be able to breathe again. “Who are these women?”
“Your soul mothers, no? Isn’t that what you call them?” Landon says with disdain, his thick muscles flexing beneath his tight white shirt.
Where would he even hear that?
“I consider them to be my real mothers. In every sense including physically.”
I glance to the left to see Grey’s eyes skewering his father’s as we both attempt the same dance, not wanting to give them what they clearly want—one or both of us so outraged that we storm out, never to be seen by his family again.
I exhale an audible breath, meeting the eye contact of both parents head-on until the clicks of metal, the scrape of wood and the babble of merry voices blast through the house.
A woman’s voice carves through the tension.
“Mom?”
“In here.” Sandra’s tone is sharp, as if scratched by irritation, as my mind begins to wander through the last hour, wondering what I could have done differently, if anything. I really did try to be cordial and polite. I could have ignored the family stuff but then why the hell should I when their comments are so clearly designed to antagonize?
If earning their approval means turning myself into a doormat, I’m not sure I'm genetically designed for it, unless it’s one of those ones which trips everyone up as they walk in.
