There’s a shifting inside me. Years of self-preservation fighting against the new trust formed with the head shrink. I scrub my face with my hands, hoping it will help win the war, but it’s still hard as hell to open my mouth.
“My mom ran away from them. At least that’s what Carrie and Joe said. And she never brought them up to me. In fact, she said they were dead, and she was an only child.”
“So your mother lied to you.”
“She didn’t,” I snap.
“She didn’t?”
She did, and I feel fucking betrayed. A strangled sound leaves my throat, and I lean forward. I feel betrayed and angry and pissed. “My mother never lied to me.”
Never lied and never downplayed. Not when one of our dogs died. Not when Grandma was diagnosed with stage-four cancer and then when Papa died of a broken heart six months after she passed. Never did my mother try to make a situation less than what it was.
*
Hurt is a part of life, Noah, she said to me when she held my hand at the hospital the last time I saw my grandmother. I’m not doing you any favors by shielding you from it. Besides, it’s always better to be honest.
“Tell me about your mom,” Mrs. Collins says when the silence must irritate her.
“She talked to me in Spanish.” Even when it pissed me off. She was a Spanish professor, and she was determined that I’d be as fluent as she was. “And she laughed a lot.”
My throat swells, and grief pulls at me. “She’d poke her head into my bedroom at night and tell me she loved me.” When I was younger, I used to say it back. Then somewhere along the way, I stopped.
I could throttle the guy I was then. My mother was there, in my room, night after night, and I never said the words back. Fuck me.
What’s worse, Mom told me she loved me before I left that night and told me to wake her when I got in. The opportunity was there. I could have opened my damned mouth and told her what I can’t tell her now. But I didn’t. Instead, I failed her. I failed her in the worst way possible.
I clear my throat and tug at the collar of my shirt as too much heat has built up around me. Fuck this. Just fuck this. “Do you know if it’s true? Did Mom’s family misunderstand? Did they think that Carrie and Joe were adopting me, too?”
Did they think I was being taken care of, or did they purposely leave me to rot in foster care? That coil forever ready to spring inside me twists one more time, and it’s like I’m racing toward an explosion.
“Noah, why does it matter now?”
“It does.”
“Why?”
I scoot to the edge of my chair and have to force myself not to fly out of it. “Because! What if they wanted me? What if someone fucking wanted me, and the system screwed it up?”
The door to the business center clicks open, and Echo hesitates when she spots me, then Mrs. Collins, on the screen. Faster than a jackrabbit, Echo spins to leave, and I swivel the chair to catch her. “Don’t go.”
The relief of seeing Echo makes me feel like a man teetering on the edge of hell only to be brought back to life. With the dinner I bought her in her hands, Echo’s eyes flicker between me and her computer screen. “I can come back.”
“Echo,” Mrs. Collins says, and my girl’s shoulders roll forward like she got caught shoplifting.
“Yes?”
“We still have a Skype appointment next week, correct?”
“Yep.”
“Good. Do you mind giving me and Noah a few more minutes alone?”
The urge is to tell Mrs. Collins to fuck off. Instead, I nod, and Echo caresses my biceps in support before she leaves. When the door is shut, I turn back to Mrs. Collins. “You know I’m done, right?”
She points a finger at me. “Just a little more time.”
“One minute.”
“It’s okay to be mad at your mom.”
She’s wrong. “I’m not mad at her.”
I can’t be. That would be unforgiveable. Besides, if anyone had the right to be mad, it’d be Mom. She should be fucking pissed at me.
“We’ll discuss this next time.”
“There won’t be a next time.”
“Yes, there will.” She waves away my statement. “You paid me in advance. My departing thoughts are a word of caution.”
That gains my undivided attention.
“I understand your need to connect with surviving blood relatives, but before you do, I think it would be wise for you to understand why you’re reaching out to people your mother never mentioned. Maybe consider the options as to why your mom didn’t tell you about her family. Maybe think of what your expectations are before you reach out to them.”
“I don’t expect anything from them.”
“I have a feeling you do, but don’t realize it.”
“Is what Carrie and Joe said true? Are they awful human beings?”
“I don’t know the answer to that. I only know what Carrie and Joe have told me.”
Every single conversation and fight I’ve had with Echo about her mom crashes into my mind. The irony of the next question isn’t lost on me. “Is it possible they’ve changed?”
“People do change, but you know I don’t have the ability to answer that question as it pertains to your mother’s family.”