Chapter 9 #3
“Do you know this woman? She lived here about ten years ago,” I explained, the waitress shaking her head.
“I’ve only lived here for three years. I can show the boss, if you’d like?” she offered, taking the photo while we started eating.
Rory’s leg bounced anxiously as we waited for the woman to return, but a man wandered over instead, the photo in his hand.
“You’re looking for Marla?” he asked, Rory’s back going straight.
“Yes. Do you have any idea where she is?”
“I haven’t spoken to her since she left. Why?” he asked suspiciously, and I wanted to stab him in the eye for looking like that at Rory.
“She’s my mom,” Rory said quickly. “She left when I was eight. She was supposed to come back for me, but—”
“You’re Aurora?” He sat in the booth opposite us, an array of emotions crossing his face. “She talked about you a lot. We were supposed to get settled somewhere safe and go and get you.”
“We?”
“You were the boyfriend,” I stated, eyeing him as I picked at my fries. “The one that knocked her up.”
“Did she have a boy or a girl?” Rory blurted out, her food forgotten.
“We never found out. One minute we were planning our future, the next, she was just gone,” he said tightly, looking out the window to compose himself.
“Why didn’t she take Rory to begin with?” I asked bluntly, ignoring Rory when she kicked me under the table. “Why did she leave an eight-year-old girl alone with a bankrupt man that abused her?”
“Skeet,” Rory bit out, and I shook my head.
“I know you love her, but how could she leave you behind? She knew he beat you and had no money left,” I snapped, a couple a few tables over looking in our direction.
“She had no—”
“She did have a choice,” I growled, the man wincing.
“She couldn’t just take Aurora with her,” he said carefully.
“Why the fuck not? A judge would never let a man like that keep a child over the mother. They always favor the mother,” I argued, his eyes sliding to Rory for a moment before he sighed.
“Marla would’ve been arrested for kidnapping. We were trying to find a place that was safe before taking legal action against Max.”
“There wasn't a court order in place. She could’ve taken me, Max couldn’t have legally fought it,” Rory said with confusion, realization dawning on me.
“Marla’s not Aurora’s birth mom, is she?” I asked, Rory’s head whipping around to look at me.
“What? Of course she is. There’s newborn photos of us together. She did all my baby books and stuff.”
The man looked super uncomfortable, rubbing the back of his neck. “Marla was Max’s mistress. Max’s wife died giving birth to Aurora, so Marla raised her as her own.”
Rory was mentally shutting down, her eyes staring at the table as she tried to process it all.
“Baby girl—” I started, but she cut me off.
“I need to go. Move.”
“Aurora—”
“Move, Skeet,” she bit out, glaring at me as she fought angry tears. I stood to let her out of the booth, my eyes following her as she took off out the door towards the lake.
“I’m sorry,” the man said quietly. “I thought she knew.”
“You honestly have no idea where Marla is now?” I asked, pulling out my wallet for some cash, but he put his hand out to stop me.
“Please, it’s on the house. I’ll box up the leftovers for you,” he insisted. “I looked for Marla myself, but she just vanished. Cops said she’d gone home to Max, but I knew something was wrong.”
“They told you she went back to Ashburn Valley?”
“Yeah. One of the Ashburn Valley cops went and did a welfare check. Said Marla was there.”
“You never went after her for rights to your kid?”
He was quiet for a second, glancing out the window to look at Rory’s retreating back.
“The kid wasn’t mine. Max came after Marla and assaulted her to remind her he’d always find her. She didn’t tell me about it until she found out she was pregnant. If she’d gone home to him, I had zero rights to that kid.”
“How do you know it wasn’t yours?”
“I know it’s probably pretty old school for you kids, but I was trying to romance her before getting intimate,” he said dryly, looking back at me. “We weren’t sleeping together at the time.”
“You lived together.”
“So? That woman stumbled into town traumatized. She wanted to take things slow, and I respected that. Living alone with no job or savings wasn’t going to happen, so I convinced her to live with me while she got back on her feet.”
Rory vanished from my view, and I went to walk out but he stopped me.
“Please, take the food.”
I nodded, waiting for him to box it up before leaving, finding Rory sitting under a tree staring at the lake. It was peaceful here, the sound of birds surrounding us as the breeze rolled through.
“She’s not my mom?” she asked weakly, not looking up.
“She’s the woman that raised you. That makes her your mom,” I replied, sitting beside her and placing the food next to me.
“Is that why she didn’t come back? She could finally have her own baby?”
“The baby was Max’s. He tracked her down and assaulted her,” I answered, not hiding the truth from her. “That’s why the boyfriend didn’t go after her. He asked the cops to find her, and they said Marla was back with Max. There was nothing he could do.”
“She never came back,” she whispered, and I sighed, putting an arm out for her to curl into me.
“We’ll find out what happened. Someone knows where she is. I hate to say it, but Max might have sold her.”
“We’d never find her if that was the case, right?”
“That would be if you don’t know who to ask. I’ll do some hunting around. We can keep asking around here, if you want? She might have spoken to someone else.”
“If she didn’t stay in contact with that guy, I doubt she spoke to anyone else,” she mumbled, pulling her cigarettes out and lighting one, silently staring at the water as she got lost in her own thoughts again.
I had to find her mom, but the grim reality was that she was probably nothing like the woman Rory remembered. If she’d been sold, she might not even be mentally in one piece anymore depending on who bought her.
I lit a cigarette too, thinking of all the people I had to contact when we got home so I could find some answers. At least I had a starting point now.
The Ashburn Valley Police Department.
Someone was fucking lying, and my money was on them.