She nodded. “Yup.”
“How do you know?” Justin asked.
“Maria told me. I called to check in this morning. She said Neil came home yesterday and Maria told him everything that happened. Saw the video footage of the whole thing, and he still didn’t kick her out. I guess he had this come-to-Jesus with her, told her he’d help her and pay for whatever program she needed, and Amber got all pissed and said no. Then he told her if she wasn’t gonna get treatment, she couldn’t stay.”
I sat back in my chair, defeat washing over me. I don’t know why it surprised me. It didn’t really.
I shook my head. “She doesn’t have to pay rent, she doesn’t have to work,” I said. “He offered to take care of everything. I don’t get it. It’ll never be this easy again for her to get help.”
“You can’t help someone unless they want to be helped,” Justin said.
“Neil told her she has a week to find someplace to go,” Maddy said. “He’s going to put a down payment on an apartment for her if she wants. Maria’s like, super fucking happy.”
I grabbed a Wendy’s napkin off the table and folded it in half and then folded it in half again.
I already knew what came next.
She would vanish.
I squeezed my eyes shut and put my forehead into my hand. The roller coaster was never ending.
A part of me was relieved she was going to leave. The other part was scared for what would happen when she was gone. Because how long could she live like this? How long until her options ran out and she was too old to bounce from man to man and job to job? What would happen to her if she got injured or came down with a chronic illness or the games she used to manipulate people stopped working?
She would fall into my lap.
My whole life I was waiting for her to come back for me. And when she finally did, it wouldn’t be for me at all. It would be for lack of other options. It would be for her.
She wouldn’t try therapy. She wouldn’t accept help even when it was paid for in full and being handed to her on a plate.
Resentment bloomed in my chest. I don’t think it had ever been so clear to me before that Mom was responsible for her own circumstances. I always gave her an out. I always argued in her favor. She had bad credit, she had no support, no money, no help.
Only this time she did. And she didn’t want it.
“Did you ever get the results of the DNA test?” Maddy asked, breaking into my thoughts.
“Yeah,” I said glumly.
“You did? What did it say?”
I sniffed and sat back again. “I’m Irish and German. A little of a lot of things.”
“And relatives?”
“I didn’t look,” I said.
“Do you want to look?” she asked.
Justin peered at me.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Maddy leaned in. “It’s your birthday. I’d say today is a great day to let people know you exist.”
“Mom always told me I wouldn’t be wanted,” I said.
“Oh yeah?” Maddy said. “She also lies a lot.”
I let out a dry laugh. Then I looked at Justin. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s a big decision,” he said. “You can’t undo it once you look. It’s possible that it might cause problems for someone.”
I sensed a but. “But?”
“But it’s been twenty-nine years—almost thirty really, if you count the nine months she was pregnant. Chances are if she’d been seeing a guy who was married, they could be divorced, or one of them or both of them are dead. It’s an old transgression. It happened a lifetime ago.”
“But Mom said he didn’t want kids.”
“You’re not a kid,” Justin said. “You don’t need raising. You don’t need money. I think a lot of people who don’t want kids don’t want the responsibility. You’re not a responsibility at this point.”
I bobbed my head. “True.”
“I think it would be worth looking to see if you have any siblings or cousins. To find out where you came from,” he said. “I can’t imagine not knowing who my dad was. Plus the health history is important. What if there’s something that runs in the family that you should know about?”
I looked at Maddy. She nodded.
Any other day I probably wouldn’t have had the courage. If I wasn’t so exhausted from Mom’s breakdown, I might have had more mental headspace to overthink it and chicken out. But today I didn’t.
I took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
