Fuck.
“And it pays for Andy’s home and will for a good time, so I can, you know, not having a mortgage or a car payment or, um, other stuff, I’ll be able to do it for, maybe, um . . . ever.”
She stopped talking.
“That’s very wealthy, Greta,” Hix said low.
He watched her swallow.
Hix looked to the street and threw back some more beer.
He did this thinking he could never do that. Buy her a house outright. A car outright. Hell, he couldn’t even help her take care of her brother, not with setting up his own house and what would be coming up with his kids as they finished high school and entered life. He’d already dipped into his uncle’s inheritance to buy furniture and pay for the divorce and he’d need more.
He didn’t get paid shit but he’d never be able to buy anyone a new car outright.
No way a house.
Not in his life.
“Hixon?” she called hesitantly.
“And he divorced you because of your mother?” Hix asked the street.
“He took care of Andy, and obviously gave me a really good life. I mean, I worked and sometimes I sang but, you know, we had a comfortable life mostly because of him.”
He bet they did.
“But, well, I gave her money and he hated her and it bothered him that I did.”
Uh.
What?
He looked again to her. “Sorry?”
She did another shrug. “He really hated her. Like I said, we were together when the accident happened. He knew Andy before and after. She hurt him. And she wasn’t ever nice to me. So me giving her money—”
“She’s your mother.”
Greta shut her mouth.
She opened it right back up to say a loaded, “Yeah.”
He didn’t know what that was loaded with but he didn’t ask after that.
He asked, “So that’s it? He had you and gave you up because your mother is a parasitical bitch?”
“Well, that and I, um . . .”
She tried to slide her hand away.
Hix kept hold of it.
Her focus sharpened on him and she whispered, “I didn’t want to have a family.”
“And he did,” Hix guessed.
“Yes.”
“And you two didn’t talk about that before you got married?”
Her head twitched. “No. We did. He knew.”
That made Hix’s brows draw together. “So what was his beef?”
“He thought he could change my mind.”
“That’s not a beef, Greta. That’s bullshit.”
Her fingers convulsed around his.
“Why didn’t you want a family?” he asked.
“I had one.”
He twisted her way. “I get your mom isn’t great, Greta. And it goes without sayin’ I hate that you and your brother gotta live with what she did to him. But I mean a family that’s yours.”
“I had one, Hix.”
“The one you make,” he explained.
“I raised Andy, Hixon,” she told him. “He was mine. He was never hers. I took a bus to the hospital when she called me after she had him and the nurses got him for me and put me in a little room where I sat in a rocking chair and held him and that was it. He was mine. And I mean that in an emotional sense. But also in an everything sense, because she had nothing to do with him.”
Uh.
What?
“Come again?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “No bottles. No diapers. No forcing him out of bed for school in the morning. We weren’t latchkey kids who had to look after ourselves while Mom was out making a living. She lived her life with two kids in her trailer she had to put up with and maybe throw some money at so we could eat, I could buy Andy diapers or go to Goodwill to get him clothes. I mean, in the beginning, I had to go to school and someone had to look after him. But if I couldn’t get a neighbor to help out, I’d come home and he’d be bawling because he had a dirty diaper and she barely pulled it together to give him some food so she’d hand him off to me and then she’d vanish. Other than that, we didn’t exist until I started making money and she could lean on me to give some of it to her.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You’re joking,” he growled.
She shook her head, again trying to slide her hand away but Hix held tight.
She gave up trying to get away and kept giving him her story.
“Normally, he would walk. But it was raining. So she was the one who picked him up from that party, because I was out with Keith and Andy didn’t want to interrupt us so he called her for a ride. And unfortunately, she felt in the rare mood to give him one.”
Hix looked back to the street and the amount of beer he threw back was a lot bigger.
“So now you get it,” she noted in a strange voice that regained his attention.
“Get what?” he asked.
“Get how Keith felt about her. About me not wanting a family because I’d already raised a son and started doing that at fourteen so I wasn’t feeling doing it again, this also because of her. How all that, being what she made, could . . .” she gave a tentative tug on her hand but when he didn’t let go, she quit doing it, “make him divorce me,” she finished.
“No, I don’t get that.”
She blinked several times before she asked, “You don’t?”
“Hell no.”
Her mouth got soft, her eyes went troubled, and she said quietly, “Hix, he lived with it for ten years.”
“Sweetheart, maybe he feels okay about himself that he left you to your life puttin’ you in a nice house in a nice car in a nice town with your brother in a good place where they take care of him, but you’re still here and he’s wherever he is and it isn’t here with you, so no. I don’t get it. I think he’s an idiot.”
Something lit in her eyes like humor with a whole load of something more before it faded and she said, “You haven’t even met Andy yet.”
“I’ve met your mom and I haven’t led my life or my career in law enforcement all in this town, so I know women like her and I know they’re bad news and I knew that, babe, before she even opened her mouth. I got more of it when she did. I get it. I get it would be frustrating. I don’t think bad about the man because of that, because this shit is extreme and he obviously wanted to look out for you in a variety of ways. He just totally fell down on that job.”