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I… wished I hadn’t asked.
Instead of saying a single word more, I just went back to my car.
My Mercedes, not the car Orion bought.
“Yeah, run off to the man who bought you. I tried to save you from that shit, but it was just another thing you couldn’t appreciate. I could’ve got the store back, protected you. I could’ve gotten you out of it. But did you listen? No. ’Cause you can’t be bothered to, just like your mother,” he screamed from the door, and honestly, that didn’t bother me much.
“You’re probably a whore just like her too!”
Okay.
He was clearly gone in the head.
“Run along home to the shitty house that bastard put you in and tell him I saidfuck you!And that dead daddy of his too,” he kept on, approaching my door as I closed it.
“I’m going to my place thatIbought , but I’ll give him the message,” I quipped, then whipped out of his driveway, not knowing—or caring—if he heard me or not.
I didn’t have the bandwidth for asingle shredmore nonsense.
Which was why, instead of bothering to go toNectarat all, I did exactly as I’d said. I went back to my own damn apartment. It was quiet, and just the way I liked things, and didn’t smell like Orion.
I ordered myself enough lunch to use the leftovers for dinner, then settled in with my laptop to tend to what I needed for the store.
AndthenI started going through the box from my mother.
The birth records file was on top, so I started with that, quickly realizing it wasn’t just “birth records” for me and Soren. Those were there, along with footprint cards and other keepsake things, but there was a third, incomplete set.
Fourincomplete sets, actually.
One from when I would’ve been two or three years old, and then another quite a bit later, before Soren.
Lost pregnancies.
Heartbreaks my mother had never spoken about or shared.
Just… shut away in a box full of other precious memories.
It was sad to think about. Even sadder when it occurred to me that she probablywould’veshared those stories with me, when the time was right, when I was ready to have babies of my own.
Like… now.
I couldn’t bear to read all the details—the birth scans, the updates, the thoughts she’d jotted down journal-style on little cards.
I closed the box, ready to move on to the next things, the framed photos I’d used to hide the things she’d clearly intended to keep private from my father.
I set them all up, smiling at the images in them—mostly me, Soren, Lucy, other family members and friends.
None of my father.
Not that I’d taken with me.
The next thing in the pile were the letters, but before I could dig into them, my phone started ringing. I pulled myself up to grab it from my purse, rolling my eyes when I saw the name on the screen.
Still, I answered.
“Beloved husband,” I answered keeping none of the annoyance out of my tone. “How can I help you?”
“Funny,” Orion said. “Where are you?”
