Chapter 26 Ivy League of the Midwest
TWENTY-SIX
Ivy League of the Midwest
Mabel
Sunday afternoon, the rain was steadily coming down, the day was gray and misty, and I was in the best place anyone could be on such a day (or maybe on any day).
Propped up again on Hutch’s naked chest (I was naked too), baring the last of my soul.
That being what I considered the worst of my tales of woe.
My mom accidentally killing someone.
Over the years, to the people I trusted with this information, the reactions varied widely.
Some thought it was what I thought it was: my mother escaping a messed-up home (yes, the kind that created a chip off the old block in my uncle), doing it too young to have formed her own personality or moral compass.
As such, she never really grew up or understood responsibility, and by the time it was necessary to do so, she was hopelessly lost.
Others looked at me funny, even if I had nothing to do with it, and not only didn’t condone my mother’s choice of occupation, but hated it, and found ways to escape too (mostly through schoolwork, school clubs and activities, volunteering, and a hot and heavy relationship with my boyfriend whose family semi-adopted me).
So I was worried what Hutch’s take would be.
“You got a relationship with her?” he asked, not even a flicker of distaste moving through his brown eyes, his fingers linked in mine, and he was absently playing with them in a sweet way.
“She tried to reunite after she got out of prison the second time. I told her that I appreciated her attempts, but I’d rather we didn’t go back to an unhealthy place, that being, me having anything to do with her.”
He said nothing, but I still defended myself.
“I’m sure that sounds harsh, but she was never a mom or a mother, Hutch.
She treated me like a roommate when I was just a kid, doing this to a child she bore in her womb.
Then, when I got older, it was the same, but she wanted to be girlfriends.
A fourteen-year-old doesn’t need a girlfriend.
Mona and Kacey have great relationships with their moms, and their grandmoms. They’re friends now.
But when they need mothers, their moms are mothers. I don’t think my mom has that in her.”
I blew out the kind of frustrated breath talking about her always built in me and kept sharing.
“If she was in my life, I think she’d be a user or she’d lean on me in some way, boundaries be damned.
I think she’d be the seventeen-year-old she never grew out of being, and she’d make me take the role of her mom, which was what I did when she got me back.
And I can’t be certain, but I honestly think it’s why she wanted me back at all.
I cooked. I cleaned. I made the grocery lists and made her get in the car to take us to the grocery store.
That was before I got a license. After, I did it myself. The whole thing…it just wasn’t fun.”
“I didn’t say anything, baby,” he murmured gently, and then asked. “Do you know where she is now?”
“I did. The only compromise I made is that we always exchange birthday cards. And I send her a Christmas one, she sends me a Yule one. That’s it.
But I didn’t tell her I moved. And I’m still debating, eight and a half months later, if I should.
She writes bright, happy, bullshit notes in her cards, I simply sign mine.
This sounds harsh as well, but she doesn’t add anything to my life.
She was just a womb that bore me and then exposed me to a lot of nasty shit.
She never apologized for it, never took ownership of it, never even acknowledged it, and that’s it. ”
“She move around?”
“No, she’s been in the same place for a while.”
“So, you make that decision to let her know where you are, she’ll be there. If she isn’t, I’ll find her for you.”
This offer was startling.
“You will?” I asked.
His lips tipped up. “Okay, I won’t. But I have a friend who’s a PI.”
“Oh,” I mumbled.
“She know you got Frank Groove’s money?” he asked.
“I very much didn’t tell her that for so many reasons, it’s mind-boggling.”
“Number one is, she’d be all over you to give her some of it,” Hutch surmised.
“Actually, number one is me being pissed as shit she never told me that man was my birth father.”
I made the face any mention of Frank Groove deserved: utter revulsion.
Then I said, “Knowing what was happening in that house, it wouldn’t take an act of clairvoyance to know he was eventually going to get caught with a girl who was underage.
By the time he did, he was in his late fifties.
It’s not only illegal, it’s gross normally.
That makes it skeevy-gross beyond recognition.
I shouldn’t have been blindsided by that.
But bottom line, I should have known from the beginning who my father was. ”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “You should.”
Yeah.
I should.
“None of those other kids were your brothers or sisters?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe Frank didn’t know or those women didn’t know. I completely lost touch with them when I was taken away. I have no idea where they are. And they all had flakey names, like I did. If they got away, they probably changed them, like I did.”
Oh yeah.
I’d told him about all my name changes too.
“Do you wanna know?” he asked, like it was an offer to find them.
I shook my head. “First, if they’ve moved on with their lives and they don’t want a reminder of how they started, I don’t want to give it to them.
Second, we were little-kid close. We didn’t grow up together like brothers and sisters, going to each other’s games or celebrating each other’s birthdays.
At times, we played together. Sometimes we fought like brothers and sisters do.
Most of the time, I was up in my room playing by myself, or reading when I learned how, or exploring Frank’s garden.
I don’t know if my life made me a solitary person, or if being around Frank and the way he lived did.
But at the end of it, I’m a solitary person, and always have been. ”
“Yeah,” he repeated.
“In other words, even after I was first taken away, I didn’t really miss them. I only missed my room, the home I knew. Even though my life in LA was effed up, I preferred it to the one in Tennessee.”
“Bet you did,” he said low and rumbly.
I read the low rumble.
“It’s long over, baby,” I whispered.
He took a breath.
And then stated, “Quid pro quo.”
I stiffened. “Hutch, just because I—”
“Quid pro quo, May,” he said inflexibly.
I shut up.
“The second one’s name was Danielle.”
Ah, shit.
“Couple of years after Molly,” he went on.
“I was older. I was wiser. I’d been burned.
I was also a few years away from getting out of the Navy.
Finding my patch of land. Starting my training business.
She was the whole package. Made Molly dim in comparison, and Molly was nothing to sneeze at.
Danielle was so fucking funny. I think the first thing I fell in love with about her was how she seemed to always be having a good time.
Not wild shit, like what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
She just dug the good out in everything. ”
“Okay,” I said.
“But she was also smart. Sophisticated. She had great style. Upwardly mobile. Ambitious.”
I sensed where this was going.
“So she didn’t quite fit in your get-a-patch-of-land-and-live-quiet dream either.”
“Oh, she did,” he contradicted. “Said more and more people were beginning to work remote. Said you were actually more productive in a home office setting. Said she could find a kickass job anywhere, and if she didn’t, she’d open her own marketing company and kick that ass.”
“All right,” I said carefully, because I wasn’t getting the issue. She seemed pretty rad.
“With her, the fall was slower, but steadier. And in the end, along with knowing I was in love, I felt I’d given it the time to really get to know her.
Understand her. Click with her. Most of all, I was convinced we were on the same page for life in that now, and in the future. So I got her a ring.”
Oh God.
“She accepted,” he continued. “So fuckin’ happy. Wanted a long engagement because she wanted a big thing for our wedding, and she wanted time to plan. I just had no idea what she intended to plan.”
And here we go, dammit.
“Would I be way out in left field to guess that what she was planning was how to finagle her fiancé into doing what she wanted, and that was something he didn’t want?”
His lips quirked. “No.”
Blech.
“What did this one want?” I asked.
“She wanted me to be an admiral in the Navy, like her dad.”
“Oh, Hutch,” I moaned.
“Yeah. But Danielle had style. She had finesse. Her moves were so fucking subtle, it was like a superpower. She’s planning our wedding.
She’s planning our lives. She’s inviting me to her mom and dad’s dinner parties because they were her mom and dad’s dinner parties, so obviously, we’d go.
But also, I’d meet all the right people.
I just didn’t know that last part. And it didn’t matter who she talked to, she’d introduce me like, ‘This is Hutch Hutchison, he’s a SEAL.
’ Always the emphasis on SEAL. Like she survived the training. Like she went on the missions.”
It was just a nuance of a change, but now I was playing with his fingers.
And Hutch continued speaking.
“She, her father, her mother, all of them were into pedigree. This meant my athletic scholarship and the fact I played Big 10 ball got trotted out a lot too. And I’m a proud Boilermaker, but she went to Brown, and whenever she slipped my college career into a convo, which was often, she’d say shit like, ‘Everyone knows, Purdue is like the Ivy League of the Midwest.’”
“Isn’t it?” I teased.
“It so is,” he replied.
We smiled at each other, and I so liked this was such a lighter conversation than the last one, no matter there was heavy in it.