Jackson
It took me four hours to go through everything and re-read the letter a few more times.
My mom left boxes and boxes of journals that she wrote in every single fuckin’ day, never missing one, just for me.
What hurt the most were the unopened, returned birthday and holiday cards, and letters to my dad begging for a chance to see me.
There were also family photos that looked like she had a photographer take. Every single one of them had my mom or Willow holding a framed baby picture of me. They included me in a family that I was never able to meet, more than my dad ever did.
The feeling of anger and betrayal has been multiplying with every item I pull from the boxes.
I’m not even just pissed at my father anymore.
I’m pissed at Andrea, for always being a cunt and ripping apart my family.
I’m pissed at the old Pres for letting this shit happen.
I’m mostly pissed at Red. He stepped in as a father when he realized that mine sucked.
He knew about my mom, and he never told me.
Not even when I was old enough to decide for myself.
I don’t give a shit if he thought he was putting his Brother first. I’m a Brother, too.
I look around at everything spread out on my bed and atop all available surfaces of my room.
With a tick of my jaw, I pace the room. It’s time to talk to my dad, Red, and Flame.
Flame will find out anyway, and this way, I don’t have to go through everything twice.
I take out my phone and text the three of them.
Me
I need to have a meeting in Pres’s office
Flame
At the garage. I’ll be there in 30
Dad
I can be there in 30
Red
Already in my office. Come when you’re ready
I put my phone in my back pocket and gather up the things that serve as proof that no one could argue with. I don’t want Dad or Red to have a chance to try to twist her story. I couldn’t find anything with Willow’s contact information. I had no idea about my mom, or that she was Willow’s mom, too.
Even if I hated the version of my mom that had been fed to me over the years, I still insulted the real version of her mom that she knew and lost, and I need to apologize for that.
I’m not sure if we’ll be an instant family. I haven’t had the best experiences with “family.” The best one that I have is currently being challenged with everything that I learn about the past, about my past!
I close my door and jiggle the handle, making sure it’s locked. The last thing I need is for a club girl to walk in to “clean” it and mess everything up. For some reason, having anyone from our world touch anything of my mom’s seems like an insult to her.
I head downstairs, and when I reach Red’s office, I knock twice.
“Yeah.” Red’s voice is casual from the other side of the door. I open it and walk in. It looks like I’m the first one here, so I take a seat.
“What’s up?” he asks, eyeing the things I have in my hands.
I shake my head. “I’ll wait for Griz and Flame to get here so I only have to go through this once,” I reply while looking at the wall behind him.
I’m barely able to speak to him and contain the rage that has been simmering for the last few hours.
He is still my President, and I can’t just disrespect him by saying all of the fucked-up shit that I want to.
He takes the hint and goes back to looking at his computer while we sit in a tense silence.
I take this chance to calm myself down. I look around the office that I know like the back of my hand after all the time that Flame and I spent in here hanging out with Red growing up.
This was one of those places that Red didn’t let his wife touch.
It has the old, tacky-looking styles of the Presidents before him that didn’t match him at all.
I think he kept it as a tribute to the history of the club.
The walls are covered in wood paneling, and the carpet is original and has stains that have accumulated through the decades, no matter how many steam cleanings it got.
The rest of the office is spotless. This is the one space closed off to the other club members, so it stays that way.
Pictures of the club throughout the years are scattered on the walls. The main focus of this office is respect and loyalty to the Brotherhood. I stifle a scoff; it makes me want to laugh or punch every single picture on that wall after everything I learned today.
The door opens, and Flame walks in, giving his normal greeting of a head nod to me and Red before taking the empty chair next to me. “What’s up?” he asks when he sits down, turning to look at me.
“Smoke wants to wait for Griz to get here, too, so we’re waiting,” Red replies.
I’m sure Flame can hear the annoyance in his voice, too, but we both stay silent and continue to wait for Griz. I have always been able to speak freely with Red, and the waiting is starting to piss him off.
Good. He should share in my anger since we’re a “Brotherhood.”
The door opens again, and my dad finally walks in. He makes his way over to the chair in the corner that sits on the same side of the desk as Red.
“Okay, now what’s up?” Flame asks again.
I finally make eye contact with Red, since he is the one I feel most betrayed by.
My dad’s always been a shit father; I’m not surprised he had this in him.
Red acted like he thought of me as his other son.
I know I never had a prime example, but I thought fathers didn’t lie to their kids for their entire lives.
Taking a deep breath, I try my damnedest to not let the disdain in my voice come through.
I need to be as direct as I can be. “I got a call last week from a law office. They said my mom was sending some paperwork for me. They asked if I could meet somewhere and pick it up,” I say as I take turns making eye contact with the three of them, then turn back to Red.
He keeps his straight face, and that’s what I need to get through this without saying some shit that I can never take back.
“I decided to go and see what she could want after all this time.” I continue to replay the entire encounter with Willow, leaving out that she is my sister. I’ll leave that fun fact for the letter. I want them to hear Mom’s story in her own words, not mine.
“Lilly’s dead,” Griz says in a resigned voice.
I don’t say anything, knowing he’s saying it to himself.
It’s weird, but some emotion is coming through his eyes, which I can’t remember seeing before.
He has always been a cold and distant asshole, even violent when he drank too much, but it’s too late for him to feel bad, in my opinion.
Red still isn’t showing anything, and Flame’s sitting quietly, waiting for me to continue.
“I brought back the things that she left me and went through everything. I think you should read this to them,” I say, handing the letter to Red while giving him a challenging look.
He pauses for a second and takes the envelope.
He carefully opens it, thankfully. I know I didn’t get a chance to know my mom, but I want to keep as much of her intact as I can.
I still have to read the journals. But from what I’ve read so far, she was a person worth saving, so I will do what I can to preserve the little bit of memory of her that she’s given me.
Red reads the letter out loud, and I watch as my dad’s shoulders cave in on themselves with every word.
He isn’t making eye contact with anyone, just staring at the top of the desk in front of him.
As Red finishes, he carefully re-folds the letter, slides it in the envelope, and gently passes it back to me.
I just sit there looking between the VP and President of our club, waiting for them to say something and acknowledge how their past actions ruined my family and the childhood that I could’ve had.
Flame’s the only one to speak. “I’m sorry, man. That’s rough.”
I nod in response. He has nothing to apologize for; he was just as lied to as I was.
“I didn’t know she was pregnant,” is all my dad says, still deep in thought. That didn’t help the calm that I was trying to keep.
Emotion threatens to overtake me, and my voice raises an octave.
“Would it have changed anything? Or would you have just taken Willow like Mom thought you would? You broke her! You promised her that you would be there, and instead, you fucked around, knocked up a bitch that was a small step up from a club girl, and took her kid! You abandoned a girl that was barely legal with no options and left her to die!” I clench my hands into fists, fighting my instincts to punch him in his fuckin’ nose.
“And the part that I don’t understand is that you didn’t even pay attention to me after you took me.
You just gave me to your side piece and let her play ‘Mom’ while you walked away with your new title that you weren’t even supposed to have.
You only got it because you knocked up the VP’s daughter.
” My knuckles crack under the strain, and my voice cracks with the weight of my words.
“She came back for me, and you sent her away because you didn’t want to deal with the fact that you’re a shit person that made mistakes. ”
He opens his mouth to start spewing some bullshit about how what he did was “best for the club,” since that is his go-to defense whenever someone questions him. But I’m on a roll at this point, and I’m not in the mood to hear about how he is the “savior” of the club.
“This is how I see it. Now that I know everything, you’re strictly a Brother.
You checked out from being my dad the second you got the position you wanted.
You never cared about being a dad. So, I’ll just let us both off the hook for that one.
I’ll have your back like I do all my Brothers, but that’s it.
You can keep the Step-cunt and Maggie away from me, too,” I finish in a cold, indifferent tone.
He doesn’t deserve anything else from me.
“Let’s calm down for a minute,” Red jumps in, trying to de-escalate the rising tension in the room.
“I’m sure Griz had his reasons. He couldn’t have known everything.
He had to make a decision, and he chose.
It was the wrong choice, but we can’t go back and fix it now,” he says in a calm tone, but I can see the guilt etched onto his face.
“A bad decision? My mom’s dead! She wanted me the whole fuckin’ time!” I snap, forcefully shoving the photos of her family with Willow holding the picture of me, one of the journals, and a few of the letters on the desk in front of us.
Griz looks at the photos, slowly picking one up. If I didn’t know the cold bastard, I’d swear I could see his hand shaking slightly. He stares down at it in silence. We all see the anger on his face slowly morphing to confusion, and settling on guilt.
“I understand that this club’s based on trust and loyalty of the Brothers.
I joined, just like everyone else here. That means you should’ve shown just as much loyalty to me as you did Griz.
You could’ve told me about my mother when I was old enough to understand.
Fuck! You could’ve told me on my eighteenth birthday or when I patched in.
But no! I think you kept that to yourself so you didn’t have to feel like shit for keeping her away.
I think you even tried to lie to yourself.
Maybe convince yourself that she was a shitty mom and that I was better off without her, even if you knew I wasn’t wanted around my ‘family’ here.
You’re my Pres, and I’ll follow what you say and be loyal to the club for the rest of my life.
I’m dropping this topic. But you, Griz, and the rest of the club that knew what was going on, need to realize that you fucked over a ‘Brother’ because you were embarrassed and selfish,” I finish in an indifferent tone.
Standing up, I gather my things and hold my hand out in front of Griz. He looks up to my outstretched hand from the picture that he was staring at for the last part of the conversation, placing it on my palm. Flame stands up with me, having my back like always.
“We’ll table this discussion for later. I need you guys to know that the fuckin’ Blitz is going to be visiting with his family.
He just called to let me know that he’ll be paying a visit since he is in town.
I hope you can hold your shit together, just until he leaves, and we can talk about it more after,” Red says as we turn to the door. We all stop and look back at him.
“Why’s the National President in town? He’s in Tennessee,” Flame asks. It’s not normal that we get a visit from National. Usually, they only do that when a chapter needs to be straightened out.
“He just said he was in town to visit family and figured he’d stop by for a few days for a visit,” Red replies, going back to looking at the computer, ignoring Griz completely.
I just nod and turn back to the door, dismissing myself with Flame a step behind me. When we get to my door and I open it, he looks at everything laid out around my room. “You need help?” he asks while taking it all in.
“Nah, I need to do it. Thanks, man,” I reply while I gently put down the things that I brought to the office with me.
“Yup. I’m going back to the shop to finish up. Hit me up if you need something,” he says as he turns and walks away, knowing that I need a minute after the shit that just went down.
Looking at everything, I walk to my bed and get comfortable, picking up the first letter that Mom wrote my dad. I may as well start from the beginning. I’m not sure how long I have before the party to welcome Blitz starts, but I’m sure the ‘Ol Ladies are planning something for him.