“YOU ARE NOT getting back together with that man.”
It was the next morning and I was standing in the back room of the House of Beauty getting ready for my first client, with Lou, who was also getting ready for hers and apparently feeling like she could tell me what to do.
Needless to say, after she’d shared she’d heard about the grocery store incident, I’d shared what came after.
“No, I’m not, Lou,” I replied. “But you have to admit, he’s had it rough. And that was before some random, crazy drifter shot a twenty-eight-year-old father of two after he did nothing but stop to help out said random, crazy drifter, and it being Hix who’s the guy who has to find some random, crazy man that’s crazy enough to shoot to death a man with a kind enough heart, he’d stop to help him out.”
Lou looked away and muttered, “I gotta admit, that’s way worse than any day Julie Baker sat in my chair and stared at herself in the mirror after I’d done her hair like she’d allowed a small child with learning disabilities to do it and wondered at her own sanity.” She looked back to me. “Before, of course, she moved to your chair and did that shit to you.”
One could say I wasn’t too torn up Julie Baker was no longer my client.
“I’m kinda glad we had it out,” I declared.
This was a lie.
I was not.
Before, I was hurt, mad and sad.
Now I was confused, scared and wondering at my own sanity if I didn’t think on it like Hix asked me to do.
“And at least this is a better way to leave things than they were before,” I went on.
And at least that was true.
“But when Keith told me we were over and I asked why, he said he couldn’t live with Mom in his life anymore and he wasn’t going to ask me to choose between him and her because he knew I’d choose her. And he was so done with it, he didn’t let me have the opportunity to prove him wrong,” I reminded her.
And that was also, sadly, true.
I kept going.
“He loved Andy and would lay down his life for him. I believe that to my soul. He loved me the same way. But he hated her with a passion that was equal to those two things combined. We would argue, but we’d only fight about her. Any time she asked me for money, he’d get angry. But when I gave it to her, which was too often, I knew that then, I know it better now, he’d lose it. Totally. He got tunnel vision about it. That was all he could see eventually when he looked at me. My weakness about her. The fact he used his hard-earned money to look after Andy, and I used mine to look after her. It just got worse and worse until it consumed everything, including us. And she’s already played with Hix in ways he clearly didn’t enjoy.”
“We’re in no doubt about that,” she cut in to say irritably.
We certainly weren’t, me especially.
“So I don’t need that threat hanging over me, falling in love with a new man.”
She stared at me hard and asked, “Falling in love?”
I lifted a shoulder. “He’s great.”
“Babe—”
I interrupted her before she could get started. “He didn’t end it in a good way. But that was the only thing bad about it.” I fought my lips curving up as I said, “He called me gum drop.”
“How ridiculously sexist,” she decreed.
“I called him snuggle bug.”
Her eyes bugged out. “You called Hixon Drake snuggle bug?”
“It was a joke. Both of them were.”
She pulled herself together after receiving that news and did it ending up looking hesitant.
The next thing she said explained the look.
“I always wondered why you kept helping that woman out.”
I looked to the boxes of hair dye and replied, “She’s my mom.”
“Greta—”
I looked back at her. “You don’t get it. You have a great mom. You don’t understand. But even how she was with me growing up, if she’d died when I was twenty, I’d still feel it on her birthday. The anniversary of her death. It’s just how it is. It’s just the connection. It’s there and there’s no getting rid of it. Even cutting her out of my life that connection is still there. It makes no sense. It just is. And maybe I was a slow learner with that, Lou. But also maybe if I had stopped helping her out, she would have gotten herself in trouble, sick, in prison, out on the streets, dead. Who knows? And then it would have been guilt that I wasn’t the kind of person who had the fortitude to look after my mother even if she is how she is. I couldn’t win either way. Keith didn’t get that and I understand why he couldn’t. But the bottom line is . . . she’s my mom.”
“Are you gonna let her back in?” she asked.
I licked my lips, rubbed them together and lifted a hand to pull out the box of dye I’d be needing.
“I don’t think so.”
“And it was what she did to Hix that pushed it too far?”
I looked to her and gave her a smile that even felt sad on my mouth.
“She didn’t do that to Hix. She did it to me. She just used Hix. So yeah. Definitely. That she would go out of her way to find new ways to harm me and do that without compunction hurting some innocent person just out doing his job, with her knowing that job was a really not-fun one at the time. It had always been her manipulating me, using me, lashing out at me. She didn’t hurt Andy because she wanted to hurt me. She did it because she’s stupid and weak. It was an avoidable accident but I think I still let her stay in my life because it was that. An accident. This wasn’t. She planned what she did to Hix to get at me. She went out of her way, got others involved, and that kind of malice is too extreme to ignore.”
“You know, Hixon is right,” she told me. “Everyone’s heard of Kavanagh Becker. He’s kind of our Voldemort. He’s the one you don’t speak his name. People try to forget he exists, talk about him in whispers. He’s not a good guy.”
Yep.
That sounded like my mother’s type.
“Marvelous,” I muttered.
“No matter what happens with you two, babe, Hixon Drake is a good sheriff. Bunch of people saw him up late, in his office, while that whole thing with Nat started going down. Even before they found Nat’s body, word spread he was all over finding him. Everyone talked about how single-minded he was about doing what he could for Faith and her kids. The man even put on a uniform he never wears and made his crew stand at his side at Nat’s funeral to make it known to Faith he has her back. He’d lose his mind if Kavanagh Becker hurt you.” Her lips twitched. “And I reckon, what he said to you, he’d really lose his mind if that guy hurt you. You’ll be okay and maybe your mom will slink away after a time of not being able to get anything out of you.”
“I hope so.”
But I didn’t actually hope so and not because I never hoped for anything important.
I knew she wasn’t done.
But I did think she’d eventually give up if I had the strength to continue going my own way.
She played all her angles but she wasn’t a big fan of expending too much time and effort getting blood from a stone.