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Hell, she would’ve stolen all of that along with my freakin’ car a few months ago.
She would’ve…
I gasped when I was led to a large holding cell area in the back where none other than my very own mother was holding shop.
She had a deck of cards in her hand, and she was playing Go fucking Fish with another woman that was foreign to me.
My mouth must’ve been hitting the floor with my surprise because when she looked up and saw me, she winced.
“Come on,” Agent Li said. “This’ll be your place for a while.”
Then she shoved me inside, slammed the door to the holding cell closed, and left me standing there staring at my mother.
“What the absolute fuck are you doing here?” she snapped.
I blinked at her.
“Why are you here?” she repeated when I still couldn’t come up with anything to say.
“Greer Solo Ortiz!” she snapped. “Answer me right now!”
I blinked as if just waking up from a long nap, then said, “I was arrested because a man broke into my house, found drugs in the walls that I didn’t know were there, and then the FBI somehow got involved, the man’s cousin or something, and then poof, I’m arrested for something in my house I didn’t know was there.”
I was repeating myself.
But I couldn’t find a way to process any of the information that I was telling her.
I mean, I was freakin’ arrested, for Christ’s sake.
The woman that followed the letter of the law to a T. The woman that hardly ever sped and felt guilty when she did. The woman that forgot to check out something at Walmart, and immediately drove back to the store so she could pay for it.
I was a rule follower. I was a grade A student. I was a little brownnoser and it showed.
I was not a freakin’ criminal!
“I made that plea with that dirty sheriff, took out that dirty boss of yours who liked to film your ass and post it on Only Fans and then took your car so you could collect insurance money on it because it was a heaping pile of junk and you deserved better. Then, for good measure, had the damn house you were staying in destroyed so you could get an insurance check for it, too. Only to have you wind up here in jail?” she shrieked. “Those drugs are freakin’ fake! You shouldn’t be in here right now!”
Um, what?
What was that she’d just said?
Was I missing something here?
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said. “Start over.”
As in, tell me about the part about you murdering my boss because he was filming me for Only Fans.
“I’m a bad mom,” she said.
I blinked at her.
“I was an altogether shit person to you for way too long. I got clean, thought to come to you and make up for…everything. And found that you were living worse off than I ever expected. So, one last time, I thought to hell with it. If I can make it better for you, I will.” She paused and looked toward the woman that was still asking her for any threes. “I don’t have any. Go fish.”
“Mom.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What are you talking about?”
“I wanted you to have a better life,” she said. “It hurt my heart to see you living it like that.”
Living “it” like that.
“Mom, I was happy.” I sighed.
“You were happy?” She shrugged. “I went by your work to, you know, negotiate with your boss about paying you a little better.”
I opened my mouth and then closed it, unsure what to say.
“Okay,” I said finally.
“And when I got there, I walked into his office and found him posting pictures of your ass online. Your tit cleavage.” She crinkled her nose. “Photos of you on the security system. You in the bathroom.” She looked shook then. “I just…I lost it.”
My mouth fell open. “Photos of me in the bathroom?”
“Yeah,” she confirmed. “You going to the bathroom. That was the popular stuff on his Only Fans of you. Dude legitimately made fifteen grand a month on you going to the bathroom. He didn’t even blur out your face.”
I wanted to rage against Herb for his careless, reckless behavior and treatment of me. But then realized that my mom had protected me.
Just like she’d done once upon a time.
“Mom,” I said, choked up now.
Why was that so sweet?
And why, after all these years, was she finally getting straight?
“I met someone,” she said, as if understanding where my thoughts had headed. She could always read me so well. “I wanted to be a better person for him. But I knew that I had to start with myself, heal the broken pieces of my life, and that started with you and your sister.”
“Oh, Mom,” I whispered. “I feel like there’s a lot going on here. But I can’t even say that you’ve ever gone this far to protect me before. I kind of like it.”
