“You had fourteen years before Andy came along to accomplish that,” Greta noted.
“And Andy was supposed to do that,” Tawnee spat.
“Yeah? How?” Greta asked.
“His daddy was loaded. His daddy also wouldn’t leave his fuckin’ wife to make an honest woman outta me.”
“Andy’s father is wealthy?” Greta whispered, and Hix put a hand to her hip as he felt a different energy coming from her.
“Don’t get excited like I did, girl,” Tawnee advised, now sounding world-weary. “He was. He was also twenty-seven years older than me. And now he’s very dead and he gave half his money to that cow he called a wife, and since the bitch couldn’t give him kids, when I could, he gave the other half to some museum or somethin’ so you won’t get blood from that stone. Believe me, I tried.”
“Did he . . . did he want something to do with Andy?” Greta asked.
“He wasn’t gettin’ his shot at havin’ a son without puttin’ a ring on it, Greta. God, did I never teach you nothin’?”
Hix didn’t snarl at that.
He stared at the woman in shock.
“So he did,” Greta whispered.
“In the end, I told him Andy wasn’t his. Asshole believed that fast enough.”
“What, after you did that, did his wife want DNA and you couldn’t assure he was the daddy?” Greta asked.
Now the woman was offended. “You take me for a slut, girl?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus,” Tawnee hissed. “No. ’Cause lawyers like to get paid even before the big payout actually happens, least the good ones do. The other kind are shit and can’t get nothin’ done.”
“So you actually harassed this poor woman whose husband you slept with in order to take his money, harassing her after the fact in order to take another shot at getting her husband’s money?”
“Didn’t work,” Tawnee muttered.
“You do know, Mom, that this isn’t making me feel real good about standing out in the cold listening to your crap.”
“I was tryin’ to do right by you both,” Tawnee retorted.
“That wasn’t the way to go about it,” Greta informed her.
“It was the only way I knew how,” Tawnee snapped.
Greta let that ludicrousness go and asked, “And my father?”
“Your father what?” Tawnee asked back.
“This is the first I’ve ever heard about Andy’s dad. So what about my dad? Who was he? Did you know him? Should I know him?”
“He was a waste of space,” Tawnee answered. “A punk ass gettin’ his rocks off with an underage girl, and when that had consequences, he scraped me off. I was seventeen, Greta. He was twenty-two. I needed help. He didn’t have a lot but he coulda helped me. He wanted nothin’ to do with you and the fifteen thousand times I asked him to help after I had you, he still wanted nothin’ to do with you. Eventually got himself a wife. Made himself a family. I even showed at their place with you standin’ at my side, holding my hand, and that bitch shut the door in our faces. So fuck him. And fuck her. Because never, not once, did he show, askin’ after his girl. He knew where I was. Where you were. And he didn’t give a single shit. I’d even see their asses out in Denver and he’d look right through me. You were with me, he didn’t even look at you.”
Greta had no response to that, she just turned her head away and Hix pressed closer to her back.
“Greta, girl.” Tawnee leaned in and his woman looked back to her mother. “I got nothin’. I got some clothes. That car. Kicked out of my mobile home. Sold all my shit I can sell and I got three hundred and twenty-two bucks in my purse and that’s it. That won’t even get me back to Denver.”
“So you’re here to give Andy and me presents and ask for gas money,” Greta guessed.
“I’m here to see my boy, and yes,” she bit off the last word, “my girl for Christmas.”
“Mom, although you’ve never used this tactic, I’ll warn you now, pretending to be nice won’t work.”
Tawnee’s voice was rising. “You broke my life.”
“You broke your own life,” Greta shot back.
“Then I broke his!” Tawnee screeched.
Greta went still.
Hix went still.
Tawnee stood before them, panting.
“Do you have any clue . . . any clue . . . ?” Greta’s mother’s head jerked to the side, her hands came up in fists, her head jerked back, and she whispered, “He was so beautiful.”
“Yes he was,” Greta whispered back. “He still is.”
“I would . . . I would . . . Sometimes I’d look at the two of you and think God got it wrong. God wouldn’t saddle me with that. God wouldn’t give me the ability to make somethin’ that beautiful and then weigh me down with it. The biggest diamond in the world could be the size of a boulder and you might want it, but you couldn’t wear it on your finger ’cause you couldn’t do nothin’ but that seein’ as it was weighin’ you down.”
“So we were nothing but a weight,” Greta said quietly.
“You had babies, you’d get me,” Tawnee replied.
“I did have a baby, Mom, and the only time in my life growing up with you I felt light was when I was with Andy.”
Hix got closer to her and slid his hand to her belly.
“You took him,” Tawnee accused. “You took him and made him yours. You two were so close, even if I tried, I couldn’t get in. It was like I wasn’t even there. Put a roof over your heads, food in your bellies, and both ’a you acted like I was a piece of furniture.”
“It’s odd to know right now that you felt the same as you made us feel,” Greta remarked coolly.
“You aren’t gettin’ me. You took my life then you took my boy,” Tawnee stated.
“You gave me life, Mom, and it was your responsibility to do everything in your power to make it a good one.”
“You never went hungry, you had clothes on your backs and where’s the thanks for that?” Tawnee sneered.
“That isn’t even half of it,” Greta retorted. “If you watched me with Andy like you said you did, you’d know.”
“By then, it was too late. You two had each other and I was the outsider in my own home and there was no turnin’ back.”
“How can you know? You didn’t even try,” Greta pointed out.
Tawnee’s focus became acute. “And if I’d tried, would it have made a difference?”
“We’ll never know since you didn’t,” Greta responded. “You did something entirely different. Do you even have a clue how much pain you’ve caused?”
“What happened to Andy was an accident,” Tawnee spat.
“What happened to Andy was an avoidable accident,” Greta returned.
“You don’t think I live with that every day?” Tawnee asked. “You don’t think that doesn’t eat away at me? You don’t think that’s why it was tough to get up the nerve to go see him, because goin’ to see him meant seein’ right in front of my face what happened to him?”