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She shot a hardened look over her shoulder. “Will you keep your goddamn voice down? Get over here.”
A cigarette was pulled from the pack and placed between her lips as she led me to the other side of the building. We were secluded by a cluster of trees, but I had a clear view of Harry, sitting in his car. My escape route.
She flicked her lighter and set the flame to the end of the cigarette. “You want one?” she asked, holding the pack out to me.
I glared at the four remaining cigarettes with raised suspicion as if they might be laced with arsenic or cyanide. But reason quickly told me she’d had no idea I was coming, so she’d have no reason to poison her pack with anything and risk losing her precious smokes. So, despite not having smoked since high school, I accepted her offer, slid one out, and held it between my lips.
“Now, you can't say I never gave you anything,” she said with a condescending curl of her lips as I took the lighter and lit up.
I snorted and rolled my eyes to the clear, happy sky as I filled my lungs with smoke. Then, I sputtered through an exhale and coughed, pinching the cigarette between twofingersand pulling it from my mouth.
“Yeah, thanks for the cancer,” I choked out.
The side of her mouth twitched, and I thought she mightactually giveme a real smile.
But before she could give herself the chance, she cleared her throat and asked, “What did you want to say to me? And keep it down. I don't know who's listening, and—”
“Who do you think is listening?” I watched her skeptically.
Was she really that scared, or had she completely lost her mind?
She squinted her eyes in the sunlight as she stared up at me. “I think you already know.”
And with that, understanding cleared the suspicion from my mind, and I slowly shook my head. “What the hell did you get yourself into, Diane?”
“Nothing I wasn't already into,” she countered with a defeated shrug and a puff of her cigarette. “What did you have to say to me?”
I wanted to ask her more about Levi. How long she'd been involved with him, if he was living with her, if she was working with him or simply keeping his bed warm. But my time with her was limited, and my focus had to be the reason I'd come.
“Was David Stratton my father?”
Her eyes widened at the unexpected question, and her startled gaze met mine. “H-how do you know that name?”
“I read an article.”
She blew out her held breath, cigarette smoke permeated the space between us, and she shook her head. “I don't know.”
“You don't know what?”
“I don't know if he was your father.” She shrugged like it all meant nothing and lifted the cigarette back to her mouth.
“How do you not know?”
“What do you mean, how do I not know? Soldier, do you even know how many guys I was fucking when I gotknocked up?”
I didn't want to cringe at her language. I wasn't a child, and I knew damn well my mother hadfuckedmore than her fair share of men. But she was still my mother, and the idea of herfuckinganyone made me recoil a little.
“But the article said he was your boyfriend.”
She pursed her lips and slowly nodded at the cigarette as an unexpected wave of sadness clouded her eyes. “Yeah … he was.”
“And wasn't he …” I hesitated, clearing mythroatand questioning how much I should actually say. I didn't want to allude to talking to Billy's mom. I didn't want to get anyone else into trouble. “Wasn't he tall? I … I saw a picture, and …”
She slowly exhaled. “He was.”
“So”—I waved the forgotten cigarette in my hand, trying to put the pieces together—“isn't it possible that he—”
“Jesus Christ, Soldier,” she hissed impatiently. “It doesn'tfuckingmatter, okay? Why the hell do you even want to know? Knowing won’t change anything, okay? It’ll just make shit worse.”
