35. Harper
Chapter 35
Harper
I knock on the pool house’s door.
“What?”
Not exactly an invitation. If I wasn’t so desperate to get to the bottom of this, I’d have left. But fuck it—I want answers.
I deserve answers.
As soon as my mother spots me, her face falls. “What are you doing out of your room?”
“I need to talk to you.”
She shrugs, pursing her lips as she turns her back on me. I stand in the doorway, my guts growing cold. But then I see she’s topping up her glass of wine, and it just happened to be standing behind her.
When she faces me again, it’s with a hard frown. “So talk,” she says, gesturing with her brimming wine glass.
“Can I have a glass?”
We’ve never had a drink together. I guess it says a lot for our relationship that at eighteen, I’ve had more to drink with my stepfather than my real mom.
“That would be illegal.”
I blink a few times and then shake my head. “Illegal,” I parrot.
“You’re not twenty-one.” Mom cocks her head. “Do I need to explain why that matters? No wonder you’re failing.”
My heart’s in my throat. Even my fingertips have gone cold.
I wasn’t expecting a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek or anything, but this? It’s as if I’ve become my mother’s own worst enemy.
“What’s your problem?” The words slip out before I can stop them, but then I’m glad I said them because my mother’s chin moves back and her stare hardens.
“That’s how you talk to your mother?”
“I’m not even sure I am talking to my mom.” I wave a hand in her direction. “You’re like, some alien clone or something. What the hell did I do to piss you off?”
She takes a big sip of wine, and her throat moves as she swallows it. “It’s always about you, isn’t it?”
I take a step back as if I can somehow gain clarity by taking in more of this moment.
“Me?” I say through a laugh, touching fingertips to my chest. “I’m not the one who can’t keep a man long enough for her own daughter to finish out a grade.”
Her mouth curls into an unfriendly smile. “You think we kept moving because they dumped me?”
They included more guys than I can count on both hands. And those were just the ones she actually had a relationship with. I was convinced she was a prostitute at one stage, except I never saw money exchange hands. No folded bills left on the dressers.
Mom comes around the bar, her wine sloshing but never spilling. “Remember Harry?”
I shake my head. Who the hell could keep track of all the guys Mom’s boned?
“He’s the sweetheart that let us live in his trailer for those few months after I lost the gig at the diner. We had to leave after I hit him over the head with a frying pan.”
My mouth falls open. I shake my head.
She’s delusional. She’s gone and lost her goddamn mind. “I—that didn’t happen. It couldn’t?—”
“Oh, you didn’t see it,” she says glibly, giving me another cold smile from behind her glass. “I made sure you were in bed already.”
“Why the hell would you?—?”
“I’d had enough of him staring at you through the crack in the door while you were showering.”
“What?” I laugh. “He never…”
Is that why I’d always felt eyes on me when we lived there? Not just when I showered. He didn’t live in the trailer with us, but he was around an awful lot. I thought it was just because he was boning Mom, but he’d been there sometimes when she was at work, too.
School was too far, so I spent the whole day in the trailer. I’d play outside sometimes, but Mom had told me it would be dangerous if I went too far. That’s why I was grateful for the big, meaty guy who always hung around. I knew he and Mom were friends because she was always so friendly around him.
“Then there was dear old Gerald. Remember him?”
I freeze. Him , I remember. He was the white-haired man who Mom dated a few years after she’d started working as a receptionist at the sawmill. He owned the farm a few miles away where we rented a room.
“What did he…?”
“Oh, him?” She purses her lips and waves a limp hand. “He was a sweetie pie. Treated us like fucking gold.”
There’s a fire in my chest.
“We’d probably still be staying there if it wasn’t for his son.”
His son. I try and bring up a memory. Sandy hair, green eyes. Attractive, in a rugged way. He worked at the sawmill with Mom. He’d drive her home sometimes if she missed the bus.
On those nights, she’d always come home pissed and reeking of beer.
“The one you used to go to the bar with?”
She glances away as she lets out a dry laugh. Not a stitch of humor there.
“You mean the one who offered me a hundred bucks so he could fuck you? And then threatened to kick us out every time I said no?”
“What?” I give her a confused smile. “That doesn’t?—”
“The only way I could keep him happy, keep us there until I had enough money to rent a new place, was to let him fuck me whenever the mood struck him.” She cocks her head. “Better than letting him have you, right?”
The ground goes soggy under my feet.
“You’re making this up.” I look away, shaking my head. I feel like crying, but I think I’m all used up. There’s nothing left in Harper Dam—no tears, no emotions, no trust .
Her acrylic nails bite into my arm. I flinch and try pulling out of the grip but she yanks me so I’m facing her, turning the barstool and my body in one go.
“Your dad said you were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen,” she whispers.
Hot prickles dance over my skin.
Mom never— never —talks about Dad. All I know is that he left us when I was really young. To this day, I don’t know why. As I got older, the reason soon became clear. Mom slept around so much that it didn’t matter that he had a daughter of his own—he left us both and never looked back. Maybe he thought I’d turn out like her, and couldn’t bear to be around when that happened.
Mom leans in even closer. Like a car wreck, I can’t look away from her red-veined eyes or her trembling eyelashes. It’s weird, but suddenly I’m looking at her— really looking—at her. And I don’t remember her being this old. I don’t remember those lines around her eyes. She’s wearing so little makeup these days. I guess they don’t like the whole five-dollar-hooker look down at Wayne’s company.
“Nothing ever pleased your dad. I certainly couldn’t, that’s for sure.” Her bitter laugh paints my face with a warm, wine-tainted breath. “Should’ve known it was a curse. So pretty, no one could keep their hands off you.”
“Mom…”
She ignores my broken voice, my desperate plea.
Don’t take away my last vestige of a normal life. I’d grown up thinking everything had been fine until Dad had left.
“I’ve been watching grown-ass men stare at you like a piece of meat my entire life.”
“Mom, please?—”
“You know what, Harper? I’m done.” She pushes back her shoulders and lifts her chin. “The next time a boy burns up your shit because you wouldn’t screw him? Ask him what the hell makes you so special.”
She gives me a cruel, condescending once-over that leaves me dead inside. “Because I sure as hell don’t see it.”