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“I—no.”
“Does he know you’re here?”
I shake my head. “He’d kill me.”
“You should have listened to your father. No good is going to come from this visit.”
The situation has begun to catch up to me. I’ve gotten some of my wits back, and I’m beginning to seethe. I have spent countless hours of my life searching for this woman, so much mental anguish wondering, and she’s acting like I’ve done her some horrible wrong by coming here. “I deserve to know where I came from,” I say, managing to inject some strength into my voice. “And I don’t know a thing about you besides your name, where you went to college, and that you took off with no warning.”
Marie shakes her head. “There was warning.”
“What?”
“Therewaswarning,” she repeats. “Julian knew I was unhappy, and he’s lying if he told you otherwise.”
“He hasn’ttold meanything,” I say, frustrated. “If he had, I probably wouldn’t be here, asking you.”
She lets out an indignant huff. “He doesn’t want to tell you because it’shis fault.”
Oh no, oh no. Oh no.This is my worst fear: finding out something about my dad that I’d rather not know. I’m tempted to turn away, to run back to Maverick’s car and get out of here, but I find myself standing still, barely breathing as I wait for her to continue.
“We had no money,” Marie continues, and her eyes get a faraway look in them. “I transferred to the University of Colorado and got pregnant my first year there. I dropped out, but he refused. He slept four, five hours a night so he could go to school and work two jobs.”
She’s saying all this like it’s a bad thing, but it sounds like he was just trying to support all of us while completing his degree. I feel defensive of the only parent I’ve ever known. “What else was he supposed to do?”
Her eyes lose their pensive sheen and flash at me instead. “He could have left school for the time being. I was home with you all day, every day. You were colicky. Youneverstopped crying. Ibeggedhim to drop out of school so he could be home for part of the day, but no. He wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t even listen to me. Making more money down the road was more important than me losing my mind.”
My brain churns, trying to process and file all this information. All my life, I’ve held my dad on a pedestal. Even when I’ve had the uncomfortable thought that he held some of the blame for Marie leaving us, no part of me truly believed it. Deep down, I’ve always blamed her.
That wasn’t fair of me. But what she’s done to me, to our family…that’s not fair, either.
“I’m not a colicky baby anymore,” I say. “I haven’t been for a long time. And my dad’s actions aren’t mine. You could have visited or called. You didn’t have to leave me in the dark all this time.”
Marie stares at me like I have two heads. It’s November, and she’s standing out here in the side yard in house shoes and no jacket, but she’s not shivering. She stands eerily still. “My God,” she says finally, “you really don’t know anything, do you?”
I fling my arms out at my sides. “I told you I didn’t!”
“I signed away my rights when you were seven. I couldn’t have visited, even if I wanted to.”
“But—” I search through the archives of my memory, trying to square this with what I know. “How did you do that? Dad didn’t know where you were.”
“Not at first, but he found me after I moved here. He wanted to make sure I’d never try to come back and take custody from him. I signed what he wanted me to sign, and we haven’t spoken since.” She punctuates her bombshell with a casual shrug, like it was no big deal to legally give up her daughter.
I’m humiliated. I’m angry. I want to leave, but I must be a glutton for punishment, because I stay rooted right where I am, the heels of my boots sinking into the mud beneath my feet. “So you never cared about me at all.”
For the first time, she looks away from me. “I wouldn’t say that,” she says, her voice still hard but softer than it’s been at any point since I told her who I am. “But I was in college for a reason. I wanted a career. Ineverwanted to be a stay-at-home mom, and I still am, because I had to quit school to have you. I see a therapist to this day, because of you. My life going off track is directly related to you being born, and I know none of that is your fault, but I’ll never be able to look at you and not see the reason things turned out this way.” She raises her chin and delivers the final, devastating blow. “Your dad had nothing to worry about. I never would have gone after custody of you. I didn’t want you then, and I don’t want you now.”
The words land between us like a grenade, and when she stops talking, eerie silence fills the void. My ears are ringing.
I didn’t want you then, and I don’t want you now.
I don’t want her, either.
“This was a bad idea,” I say finally.
Marie nods. “We can agree on that.”
There’s an unpleasant feeling snaking through my gut. If I stay here another moment, I’m afraid of what I’ll do.
