I shook her little hand and smiled. “It’s very nice to meet you too, Caroline.” I fucking loved the kid, right off the bat. I fucking loved the little girl that I hated and resented just five minutes earlier.
“Come on kiddo, let’s go batten down the hatches,” Jason said to Caroline, wanting to give us some time.
“There’s a big storm coming,” Caroline informed me.
I only smiled. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I suddenly had no words in my brain.
Jason kissed my mom before taking Caroline’s hand and leaving us alone. She was happy, and I was happy that she was happy. I’m not sure why. I hadn’t felt like that before I had gotten there. I hoped that she was miserable.
“Can you bring Morgan’s things in?” she asked, kissing him back as she hooked his fingers with hers.
What? I’m not staying…
“Sure thing. Can I have your keys?” he asked.
I gave him my keys.
“Do you want to take a walk?” my mother asked.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
This was strange. This was not the mother that I had grown up with for almost eighteen years. My mother was a loud mouth drunk with the vocabulary of a drunken sailor. This woman was soft spoken, well kept, and very loving. She was pretty with the same dark hair as mine, manicured nails, painted in a light pink to match the toes sticking out from her sandals. She looked healthy and in shape. My mother wore slutty clothes and didn’t keep herself up at all.
She held my hand as we walked along the beach.
We both laughed when we slid out of our shoes at the same time. We walked out to the end of the pier and sat down with our arms over the railing and our feet dangling from the side.
“You can ask me anything that you want Morgan. I am sure that you have a million questions,” she started.
I couldn’t hate her. I just couldn’t do it. I loved her, no matter what she had done. I loved her damnit.
“I want to know about my real dad. How did you meet a rich man from Vegas in the hills of West Virginia?”
My mom took a deep breath. I had just married your dad. We had been trying to get pregnant for about four months.” She laughed. “I wanted to have a baby so that I could get a monthly state check, like everyone else. It just didn’t happen. He decided to take off for the summer and follow the carnival across the south side of the United States. Michael was there on business, something about some diamonds that had been found while mining coal. I don’t know a lot about that because he had told me that it was all hush, hush and he was there to retrieve them before anyone caught wind of the outrageous find.
“He was so young and good looking. He made me want out of there and make a better life for myself. I always knew that he wouldn’t be my knight in shining armor and be the one to save me, but none the less I dreamt about it. I fell head over heels in love with Michael. We spent the entire two weeks that he was there together. We spent it in Charleston of course, in some fancy hotel. He wasn’t the type to stay in the rent by the hour hotel back home. When your dad got tired of being a carney and came home after three months, I was almost two months pregnant.”
“He beat the hell out of me but never told anyone that you belonged to another man. He would throw it up to me occasionally, but no one else knew.”
“How did Michael find out about me?” I asked.
“He came back six years later for the same reason.
That find didn’t turn out to be the gold mine that he had hoped for. They were just some sort of crystals that wasn’t worth much. I was still waitressing at the truck stop. I spent the night with him and told him about you.” She snorted. “I was hoping that he would take us away from there. He didn’t, and he was gone before I woke up the next morning.”
“I still don’t understand. How did you end up here? How did my little brother end up adopted by a family in Vegas? How did I end up married to a man that I didn’t even know?” I asked, not taking a breath from the never-ending questions.
“Is he good to you, Morgan?” she asked, moving my hair from the front of my shoulder to the back.
“Yes. He is very good to me,” I said. That wasn’t a lie. He was good to me. It just wasn’t always like that.
What was I supposed to do, tell her that he took me to be his lawfully fuckable sexmate? To fuck and to suck in various positions until his orgasm do we part? I had a good feeling that she had been through a lot herself, and this was harder for her than I had originally thought.
She smiled content with my answer. “Mr.