And there it was.
The sound of the shit hitting the fan, also known as Jon’s regret for
not making the news more of a priority. He’d
kind of known it wasn’t right to continually put it off but, in his defense, he
also hadn’t realized he’d be forced to drop it like a lead balloon in a hypersensitive
moment.
On a positive note, Delaney didn’t retreat from him. She stayed inside the circle of his left arm,
but she sure as hell wasn’t happy. He
knew that for a fact, because her eyes dispatched a hail of lightning bolts
that would make Zeus proud.
“Finding her was the main reason I went to Chicago,” he
explained calmly, hoping to set the tone.
“She bartends at a place called O’Toole’s and I stopped by during the
afternoon lull to talk to her.”
Zeus himself may as well have fueled the next barrage of
lightning. It couldn’t have been any
more proficient in telling Jon that tone-setting was not his department. She was pissed – and in case he was dumb enough to miss that
little tidbit, Delaney clued him in with a frostiness that should've been preceded by a winter
storm warning.
“I’m sorry. Are
you saying you went to Chicago to find my kid and didn’t bother discussing it
with me either before or after? What the
actual freep kind of idiot are you?”
His positive note went negative when she scooted back out
of his embrace to fire her lightning shots from the corner of the couch. Too bad the distance didn’t save him from the
frigidness of her arctic, “Only a fracktard would go behind my back and pull a
dumb anus stunt like that!”
Swallowing a fireball of temper that would melt them both,
he gritted his teeth and accepted that round of verbal blows with good
grace. He deserved that much for not
coming clean sooner, but she held a share of accountability here.
“If you’d answered me any of the million fucking times I
asked about her and what happened, then I wouldn’t have had to,” he shot
back. “Petra practically begged me to
do whatever I could.”
That didn’t go over any better than the first lead
balloon, and Delaney’s jaw jutted forward with agitation. “Since when are you on board with anything
Petra deems important, for freep’s sake?”
“I’m on board with anybody who’s trying to help you, so get
used to that right fucking now. Keeping
secrets doesn’t do anything but eat you alive.”
She was fully unimpressed by his psychology insight and
cocked a haughty head to one side.
“Let me get this straight. I’m supposed to just rush headlong into ancient
history and spill my entire life within a hot minute of us sleeping together? And be careful with your answer,” she
cautioned. “Because I don’t recall
hearing the shite details of your 2013.”
Okay, so this was very quickly going from cold to hot. Hotter than he really wanted, but Jesus she
could be maddening. He made a place for
the laptop on the coffee table and put it there, lest he end up throwing the
damn thing to the floor to vent his frustration.
“That’s because I worked through my ‘shite’ and moved
past it. You’ve made improvement this
week, but you’re still a festering wound that refuses to heal and don’t even realize
that it’s contagious. Your friends and
family are still hurting because you won’t fucking deal!”
“I’m dealing at my pace!
I lost children, not a childish man you can call or see any day you
want. Your job changed, and while I’m
sorry you had to go through that, my life
changed, Jon. Irreparably and
forever! Don’t you dare judge me until
you’ve lost all your kids.”
“You didn’t lose Poppy, you walked away,” he countered,
not bothering to defend himself from her bullshit judgment barb. He wasn’t judging jack, and it was so asinine
that he refused to address it in the midst of a conversation that might finally
unearth whatever secret she hid.
There were no individual bolts of lightning by this
point. Her eyes were glowing with a
blinding, silvery ferocity, which was barely controlled in her quavering
voice. “Like H-E-double-hockey-sticks I did. You have no idea what I went through with
her. None.”
“That’s my whole fucking point. Nobody
has any idea! You won’t talk about what
happened when you went to
Chicago. The only thing anybody seems to
know is that you refused to ever go back.”
“Because it was humiliating and heartbreaking!” It was
the first time that she actually yelled during this entire “discussion”, and
upon hearing how it echoed against the walls and windows, Delaney immediately
backed down to a tone infused with quiet bitterness. “Why didn’t you ask my daughter? I’m sure she would’ve been happy to fill you
in.”
“I did ask, but she told me that if I you wanted me to
know, you’d tell me.”
With that revelation, all the fight left her in a single swoop. The
shadows smudging the delicate skin under her were proof of a long night
partying and added to the sense of weariness and fatigue that was now palpable. Her stubbornly tilted chin descended under a
slow blink and soft, “She really said that?”
“She really said that,” Jon affirmed gently, waiting to
see where she was going next. “Basically
told me it was none of my goddamn business and, that if we were as close as I
implied, I’d already know the answer.”
Wistfulness twitched at the corners of Delaney’s
mouth. “That sounds like her.”
“She’s so much like you, Mou. Stubborn as hell. Smart.
Fearless.”
“How did she look?
Not too skinny?”
Gone was all the heat and cold she’d been using to argue,
and in its place was a vulnerability that didn’t quite suit the woman he
thought of as invincible. He’d caught
glimpses of it in her interactions with Stephanie, but the ever-present warrior
persona and mask hadn’t allowed for much more.
This was Delaney unmasked, and even without a big display
of emotion, it tore at him like rusty metal.
He silently thanked God for Pearl. Had Jon been in that cemetery when Delaney
finally broke, he would’ve lost any stereotypical masculinity that he might
possess and cried like a baby – both with and for his beautiful fighter.
Now’s not the time
to get sappy. Be glad she’s stopped
chewing your ass and tell the lady what she wants to know.
“Not too skinny. More
mature than the picture on your dresser, but otherwise the same.”
“What color is her hair?”
“The ends reminded me of Petra’s, but the rest is dark.”
The wistfulness made another appearance, this time
quivering the corners of her mouth in a faint smile. “She always threatened to go auburn. Guess she finally tried it.”
“I guess she did.”
With Delaney lost in her thoughts and seeming too fragile
for him to push, silence took up residence in the room and Jon just let it hang there. She was entitled to some time for
acclimation, so he’d given her a few minutes.
Then he’d nudge again.
A nudge turned out to be unnecessary, as she turned solemn
eyes on him and spoke of her own volition.
“I went for her birthday.
I figured, you know.... Surely a
year was long enough to make me pay for what she viewed as my crimes. I’m her mother, for God’s sake. She had to talk to me eventually, right?”
“I would think so,” he agreed neutrally, wanting like
hell to pull her close but not daring to disrupt the tale that had finally
begun to spill.
“Yeah, me too,” she sighed, drawing her legs up onto the
couch and turning sideways to lean against the back cushions. “She didn’t quite see it that way.”
“What happened, Mou?”
Vulnerability didn't stop the fighter he knew and
loved from arching one eyebrow at him. “This
goes no further than this room.”
“Swear to God.”
Nodding, she picked at the pristine polish on her
fingernail until it began to flake. “I
went to her apartment, which happened to be in the seediest part of town. In hindsight, I guess I’m wondering if it’s a
drug hub or something, but at the time I just saw it as a crappy student
apartment. She’d stopped accepting my
money and would take very little from Geoff, so it wasn’t like she could afford
to live in luxury housing.
“The minute she opened the door, I knew it was going to
be ugly. Her eyes turned cold and icy,
filled with hatred as she tried to slam the door shut in my face, but I was too
fast for her. I got my foot stuck in the
door and made her let me inside. I told
her she had to talk to me. She disagreed loudly and in my face. There was screaming, there was fighting.”
“What was said?”
“Same old song and dance.
I was to blame, she was a spoiled brat, I was a cold-hearted witch, she
made me that way. When I refused to
leave or back down, things got physical.”
Delaney rubbed at her left cheek with absent fingertips. “She slapped me so hard that it spun my head,
and I reflexively retaliated with a shove.
I’ll never understand why that it surprised her, but she stumbled and
fell, hitting her head on the corner of an end table.”
“How bad was it?”
“Bad enough. It
bled like crazy, and she went nuts.
Pulled a gun out of the end table drawer and said if I didn’t get out,
she’d kill me.” Doleful eyes met his as
she rested her forehead in the palm of her hand. “What was I supposed to do? I’m her mother. I stood my ground and looked for a towel to
clean her up. Next thing I know, she’s
shoving the gun into my hand and calling 9-1-1 telling them that she fears for
her life.”
“Oh, fuckk.”
"Exactly," she laughed without humor. “And that’s how I got my police record, a night in jail
and a restraining order.”
He'd known it wasn't going to end with happily ever after, but jail? The girl put her mother in jail? Poppy was lucky he hadn't known that going into his visit with her. The tone would've been completely fucking different if he had.
"Jesus, baby." Unable to let her remain separate any longer, Jon scooted close to pull her into his arms, where she sagged with a sigh.
“Now do you get it? Do you understand why I never went back or
talked about it?”
"What's to say she won't do the same thing all over again?"
What was to say? Nothing, really, other than Jon's instinct. The young woman he met wasn't someone who would put her mother at gunpoint and incarcerate her. As pissed as he was, he still believed that.
"I didn't know her before, but I guarantee she’s changed. These years can't have been easy on her. She's been festering just like you have. She’ll talk to you this time.”
“And what if she doesn’t?” she mumbled into his
shoulder.
"She will, Mou. She will."
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