“I never understood why you quit talking to him,” I say to her.
“He quit talking to me.”
“Why?”
“I can’t relay that information on recorded prison lines.”
I sigh and shove my foot harder on the ground. The swing sways with a squeeeak squeeeak squeeeak, taking me back to childhood, when I used to escape the fighting inside my house by going to the park down the street.
At least, until my parents divorced and my father moved to Jersey, where he, too, has gotten himself into legal trouble.
Thank God Dean’s show was small enough that the desire for gossip about us was fully satiated by made up details about our divorce.
Now that I’m out of the picture and there’s constant Are they or aren’t they shagging? speculation about him and his new costar, everyone’s forgotten me.
“Did I hate you when I was a teenager?” I ask Mom, needing to find a safe subject where she might be helpful. And she was a good mom. It’s been fascinating to realize that she can be both a good mom and a criminal. “I don’t remember hating you as a teenager.”
“No, you saved that all for your father. But you’ll have it different with Junie. For one, she’s half Dean. That puts you at a distinct disadvantage.”
“Mom.”
“It does. Your father was a piece of work himself, but Dean? He’s a serious pill at a whole other level. Do you know he was in Cedar Rapids at the high school yesterday for some publicity stunt tied to supposedly updating the lights in the theater over the summer? While you and Junie were finally following that moving truck across the country, he was acting like a local hero, telling people you took his daughter from him and that he knows she’ll come back and work for the family business when she turns eighteen and doesn’t have to abide by the custody agreement anymore.”
Three days ago, even with all the turmoil, I would’ve said my daughter would never pick her father over me.
Today?
Today, my stomach hurts.
“He can say what he wants,” I tell her, as if Junie abandoning me when she turns eighteen isn’t one of my biggest, most terrifying fears. “I don’t have to justify my choices to him anymore.”
“And he’s a manipulative asshole,” she says cheerfully. “But, baby, your father left us for that casino whore in Jersey.”
“Mom. Can you please not?” While my first stepmother wasn’t my favorite person, she was smart enough to divorce him as soon as she realized he was only trying to get his hands on her family money.
Mom huffs. “Yes, yes, we were both victims of his charms and should be soul sisters. You and your rose-colored glasses. But the bigger point here—you made Junie leave her father behind. You need to tell her he didn’t want her.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Maisey—”
“I know how that feels, Mom. I will not do it to my daughter. And—” Nope.
I cut myself off before I can say She blames you too.
Not helpful.
Mom fucked up. She fucked up big time. But running an illegal homeowners’-association ring didn’t make her a bad mother.
Yes, it made her a bad role model in some areas. For sure.
But she was the parent who got me to doctor and dentist and orthodontist appointments. She was the parent my friends came to when they couldn’t ask their own parents questions about puberty and periods and sometimes even sex. She was the parent who’d let my friends hang out at our house all weekend long, providing pizza and junk food and driving us to the mall to hang out whenever we asked.
Yes, she did something wrong, and she’s in prison for it.
But that doesn’t mean she’s bad in every area of her life.
“Life hurts sometimes,” she says quietly, still the voice of reason even when she’s in an orange jumpsuit hundreds of miles away. “You can tell her the truth and support her through it, or you can be the asshole who makes her find out all on her own when she’s thirty-six and divorced with a kid of her own.”
I let that pass and change the subject. “How’s the food this week?”
“About like you’d expect prison food to be.”
“You’re not losing weight again, are you?”
“We had pudding for dessert on Sunday. I ate all of it. I’m up a whole tenth of a pound.”
And this is why we weren’t here in time for Junie to do soccer tryouts.
Mom looked sick the last time I went to visit her, and since I feel partially like I’m abandoning her, too, on this run away and find myself journey, I had to stay long enough to make sure she was okay.
“Good. Eat more. And if you start to feel feverish—”
“Stop worrying about me and—”
The line clicks and goes dead abruptly, which means Mom heard her two-minute warning and didn’t tell me.
Probably hoping the system would malfunction and we’d get to keep chatting.
She’s an eternal optimist when it comes to breaking the rules.
I pocket my phone as a shadow falls across me, and I spin in the swing, ready to karate chop whatever animal is looming in the settling darkness.
But it’s not an animal.
It’s Flint Jackson.
Which might be worse.
I don’t like it when people don’t like me, though after my divorce, I’m getting better at telling myself that’s their problem.
There’s no question he’s seen me at my worst today. And I probably didn’t handle that bombshell about how he’s been using Uncle Tony’s ranch the best way.
But my biggest issue?
When he startled me, my head bumped the chain wrong, and now I can’t move because my hair is stuck.
“Ow!” I yelp as I realize moving any farther will rip everything out by the roots.
And I just had my roots redone.
“What—” he starts. Then he does one of those sighs through his nose that makes his nostrils flare. Doesn’t matter that the sun’s dipping low and the light’s dim. Pretty sure I’d see that nostril flare inside a pitch-black cave. “Are you stuck?”
“What? No. Not at all.” I try to move my head away from the chain, and my hair threatens to rip out again. Crap. I am totally stuck. “Fancy meeting you here. Can I help you?”
He lifts two Styrofoam containers. “You left your dinner.”
I grimace in the midst of trying to untangle my hair before I can stop myself. “Thank you. That’s very kind.”
“Tony would’ve wanted someone to watch out for you.”
Right.
This isn’t about me.
It’s about a man who wants nothing to change from how his life has been. He has no idea how much I cannot afford the liability insurance that would be necessary for him to keep bringing kids out to the ranch. He also has no idea how much more I do not need the publicity and scrutiny that a kid getting hurt on the ranch would bring.
Junie and I need to stay squeaky clean. Raise zero eyebrows. Cause zero problems.
I want her to have a true opportunity for a fresh start, not more drama dumped on our doorstep.
And there’s only one way I know to get what I want.
I need to charm the hell out of everyone here.
Not because I want to play them for fools.