“This is fucking weird,” I mutter as I extend my hand back toward the chair Andrea was sitting in when I came in. She nods, and I sit beside her, clearing my throat. “What’s going on?”
“Corbin,” she starts and then licks her lips. “Corbin,” she says again, and I lean forward. “Can I tell you a story?”
What is this, library story hour?
“Yeah,” I say, slouching back in the chair and eyeing her as if she has a screw loose.
“When I was nineteen, I ran away from home. I’m not proud of it, but I fell in with a bad crowd and started doing things I shouldn’t be doing.” She moves slightly in her chair, placing her hands in her lap, firmly clasped. “I started seeing a guy. He was, for all intents and purposes, my drug dealer. One thing led to another, and I ended up pregnant.” Her eyes flick between mine as I stare at her. “I was scared, pretty much alone, and I started to realize that I had messed up. But I couldn’t go back to my family, afraid of them throwing me out for good.”
“Sounds like you have nice folks,” I can’t help but interject.
“They were set in their ways,” she says hesitantly.
I nod and motion for her to continue, still unsure of where this is going. I’m starting to suspect Brock is messing around.
“When I went into labor, I put my parents on the list as my emergency contact. I’m not sure why. I think part of me realized that I was about to have a child to care for, and I didn’t want that boy or girl to view me as a horrible person. During delivery, due to complications, my placenta ruptured. I went into renal failure, and I almost died. They had to put me in an induced coma. I was like that for a few weeks. I was diagnosed with HELLP syndrome, and it took me a long time to recover from it.”
Brock is fucking with me. This is a straight-up soap opera.
“While I was in a coma, my baby didn’t make it—or so I was told by my parents. I had been transferred to a private facility as soon as my parents arrived, so I couldn’t talk to the original doctors and nurses. I was devastated and sick. I didn’t even have the presence of mind to ask for records. There are no words for what a mother feels when she loses a child. I ended things with the father, not wanting to continue living in his messed up world, and I moved back in with my parents. I went through depression during my recovery, so much so that I didn’t ask any questions. I accepted things as truth. My parents never talked about it again.”
I’m starting to see where this is going, but I still don’t understand why it applies to me.
Andrea coughs slightly and leans down to pull a water bottle from her purse. After a drink, she slowly twists the cap and looks back at me.
“The father, realizing who my parents were, decided to extort money from my family, staying silent about the whole ordeal in exchange for a monthly amount deposited straight into his bank account. My parents wanted their perfect life and their perfect daughter back, so they never told me. They let me think my child had died so that they could continue being the high and mighty Almadales who do no wrong.” Her tone is angry, and she tears her gaze away from me while she composes herself. “I carried this weight around, grieving for a child I never got to meet, until a man found me one day, telling me a strange story.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your friend Brock hired a private investigator to find me,” she says, leaning forward and placing one shaky hand on my knee.
“Why? And what does this have to do with me?”
“It has everything to do with you, Corbin. I’m your mother,” she says as tears fall from her eyes.
I watch her as she blinks rapidly, sniffing, and I register her taking my hand.
“What? My mother is a drug addict. She’s gone,” I say, frowning in confusion. My whole world is sliding out from underneath me.
“Your father is Jonah Henson, correct?” She tilts her head to catch my gaze again.
“Yeah, if you want to call him a father.”
“Then, you’re my son. My baby didn’t die. For seventeen years, I grieved a living child, and I never knew it.”
I pull my hand from her grasp and stand, rubbing the back of my neck. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“It didn’t to me at first. I couldn’t comprehend the kind of evil that would separate a mother from her child. But I’m so thankful that I know now.”
“Your parents lied to you, and they left me with my father?”
“Yes. They paid him off to keep him from telling people I had you and also to take care of you. As far as I know, it never got out, so they must have paid him quite well. I don’t know their side of things. We’ve never had a good history, and I’m estranged from them.”
“Why are you here now?”
“I know that, biologically, I’m your mother, but I can’t call myself that. I want to though. God, how I want to. It was my dream in life to have a child, but after what happened, I never did. I never married. I chose to foster children instead, giving them a life while in limbo, and it’s been part of my saving grace, taking care of others. But I have a child. I have you, and I want to be someone you can see as a mother figure. I want to know everything about you and make up for the time that was stolen from both of us.”
My head spins as I take in all of this information. I stare down where her hand reaches to grab mine in her earnestness. I let her squeeze mine as she looks up at me, and part of me relishes in the feeling of her contact. But the truth is, I don’t know this woman. I don’t truly know what she wants. Everything in me says she’s being honest because what would I have to offer her? She’s not trying to get anything out of me. But still, it’s hard to trust after growing up the way I have.
“I need some time,” I say, and she nods, dropping her hand.
“I figured you might,” she says with a soft smile, her eyes glistening with tears again.
I don’t want to hurt her; I need to figure all of this out.
I walk to the door, hand on the knob when I feel her grip wrap around my arm.
“Your father used you for money, Corbin. Please don’t think that I didn’t want you. I didn’t know about you, and now that I do, I fully intend to make up for lost time, if you will let me.”
“That’s nothing new. My father has been using everyone his whole life,” I spit out, anger coursing through my body as I think about my sperm donor and how much he hasn’t done for me or Abe.
Abe.
So, if this woman is to be believed, Abe is only my half-brother. I stop dead, the blood draining from my face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I grit out, not sure I trust this woman yet or not. It seems a little far-fetched that she didn’t know I was alive my whole life. That she wouldn’t have checked to see for herself. “I have a lot to think about now. I’ve got to go.”
I throw the door open, and Brock stands from where he was leaning against the wall across the hallway.
“Hey, you good?” he asks and steps toward me.
I’m sure I look wild. I feel wild. My body is jittery, and I run a hand through my hair.
“I’m fine. I need to get out of here for a bit,” I say and start to head out before he grasps my arm.