“You’re wrong. I hated it,” Greta said coldly. “Until Andy was two and he could grasp a little bit what it meant.”
Tawnee’s face fell but she pushed, “Just let me drop your presents. You can give Andy’s to him.”
“Though,” Greta went on like Tawnee hadn’t spoken, “only way I could give him anything was to steal from you. But it’s miraculous how a three-dollar, beat-up teddy bear from the Salvation Army can light up a two-year-old kid.”
“I knew that was you,” her mother muttered.
“Yep, didn’t remember to buy us presents but you sure missed that three dollars from your purse,” Greta returned.
“It wasn’t just one year you did that, Greta,” Tawnee fired back. “And I never said shit. Did I? I never got in your face about stealin’ from me so you could give Andy a Christmas.”
“Are you serious?” Greta whispered.
Hix had the same question.
He just didn’t give a fuck about the bitch’s answer.
“This isn’t gonna happen,” Hix growled, pushing on the door, and Tawnee’s boots actually slid his welcome mat (Greta and the girls got it online so he didn’t have to buy that) across the porch as she put her weight into keeping it open.
“I wanna . . . I wanna explain. I wanna . . . I want you to understand why,” she stated urgently.
“Greta, call Donna,” Hix ordered.
“No, honey. I wanna know,” Greta said.
He looked over his shoulder at her.
Her eyes were pinned on her mother but she kept talking to him.
“She wants to explain, I wanna hear it.”
“Right, sweetheart, but I don’t want this woman in my house,” he shared honestly.
She looked to him and nodded. “I get that. So I’ll get my jacket.” Her attention returned to her mom. “Stand out there, I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Greta, it’s cold and—” Tawnee began.
“Mom, do that or spend Christmas in one of Hix’s cells. You’re trespassing. You have another arrest for that in this county. You also have a record. And you have a protection order as granted by a judge that you haven’t yet been served, but he knows you’ve been stalking me and taking pictures. And we’ll just say, you haven’t made a friend of local law enforcement. Stand on the porch. I’ll be out in a minute.”
Greta’s mom looked shocked. “A protection order?”
“You can’t follow anyone around and take photos of them with malicious intent, Mom. You did that. When you’re served, if you continue to do anything to harm me in any way you can, it’ll be handled as a felony.”
The woman’s face paled.
“You wanna explain, I’ll give you time,” Greta granted. “You have this. Then it’s over. No more chances. No more time. No more anything. If you don’t leave me and Andy alone, I’ll take it as far as I have to take it to make certain that you do.”
Tawnee’s hand came off the door so fast, the pressure Hix was putting on it meant it closed right in her face.
He didn’t think of that.
He turned to Greta to watch her moving quickly toward the kitchen to get to her coat in the mudroom.
“Baby,” he called after her, his hand at his back pocket to get out his phone as he followed her.
“I wasn’t kidding, she gets this, then it’s over,” Greta said, not looking back at him.
“Not sure this is a good idea,” he told her.
“There’s half a chance I’ll get back out there and she’ll be gone,” Greta replied, hitting the mudroom and grabbing her coat.
Time to call Donna.
This he did at the same time he grabbed his jacket and shrugged it on, following her.
Donna answered, he gave her the details and he was doing this as he saw Tawnee hadn’t left.
Greta moved out. Hix moved out after her.
“Gotta go now,” Hix said into his phone.
“Be there in ten, max, Hix,” Donna replied, reading the urgency in his tone.
“Right,” he muttered and hung up.
Tawnee had her gaze to him.
“Reckon I’m about to be served, right, Sheriff?” she asked snidely.
“Is that more important at this juncture than speaking to your daughter?” Hix returned.
She glared at him then looked to Greta.
“You got me, Mom. Last chance, after thirty-eight years, to finally give me the answers for why you broke Andy, why you broke Keith and me, why you tried to break Hix and me, eventually broke Keith and never faltered in your quest to do just that to me.”
“If I could take back what happened to Andy, I would,” Greta’s mother said softly.
“Well, that makes you about one-sixteenth of a decent person, but nothing happened to Andy except you. You happened to Andy,” Greta told her. “You did that to him so the appropriate words are, ‘if I could take back what I did to Andy, I would.’”
The soft disappeared.
“I paid for that, girl,” she hissed.
Greta shook her head and turned to Hix who was standing just outside the closed door, murmuring, “This is meaningless.”
He began to move to open the door for her but Tawnee cried, “No! Don’t! I don’t got nothin’, girl. I don’t got nothin’. ’Cept the two of you.”
Greta gave her mother her attention. “Now give me one reason, one even infinitesimal reason that would make me feel you earned me giving that first crap.”
She swayed forward like she was going to move toward Greta, and Hix coming forward to stand close to Greta’s back wasn’t what stopped her.
She stopped herself, her gaze never leaving her daughter.
“I’m your momma.”
“You are. And?” Greta prompted.
Tawnee shook her head. Fast, short, little shakes like she was trying to pry something loose to keep a hold on a daughter she’d never actually had.
“I was supposed to have a different life,” she said. “Not be knocked up at seventeen and thrown out on my ass by your grandparents.”
“Were you raped?” Greta asked unemotionally.
“No,” Tawnee snapped.
“So you had consensual, unprotected sex with someone, decided not to abort the baby, but instead, do your best to make the whole of her life a misery,” Greta deduced.
“Look at me,” Tawnee exclaimed, suddenly angry, lifting a hand, finger pointed to her face. “The life I led wasn’t the life meant for me. I was supposed to have more. Be a model. Be a movie star. Be a singer, like you. You got that from me too, Greta. I got chops. Choir director at school said I had more talent than any student he’d seen. I coulda gone the distance. Maybe found a man who’d look after me, the real way, hold me close and not let me go. Then I got you and all my chances were shot to shit.”
“So because you were attractive, you were supposed to live the big life, not work for it, not earn it, not find a way to be happy with whatever you worked for or earned, but what? Be handed it because you aren’t hard on the eyes? Then when I came along and ruined that, I had to pay for the fact you’re literally criminally conceited?”
“It’s hard to bounce back from your dreams dyin’,” Tawnee bit out.
“Sorry. I wouldn’t know about dreams, Mom. The way I grew up, I knew from early never to have any,” Greta retorted.
At hearing that knowledge, Hix couldn’t beat back his snarl.
“Well, it’s hard,” Tawnee shot back.