“Is that a question?” I asked flatly, my asshole persona falling flawlessly into place.

“No.” She scowled. “I just wasn’t sure if you knew who I was.”

I looked her over slowly, taking in her slender body covered in a Harley Davidson tank top and low-cut jeans designed for someone half her age. Every life choice she’d made seemed to have made itself known on her features, from her overly tanned skin to the wrinkles around her lips from puckering a million times around a cigarette. Yet, there was still something oddly beautiful about her.

“Yeah, I know who you are. Can I help you with something?” I was praying to any god that could hear me that someone, anyone, would walk in and interrupt us.

“I just wanted to talk to ya for a minute,” she said, stepping into the room without invitation, forcing me to take a step back.

I stood silently with a polite look of disinterest on my face and fought the panic building in my chest at our proximity as she looked me over. I’d been avoiding her for days, and just my fucking luck, the minute I got comfortable, there she was.

“You’re so beautiful,” she said softly. “I knew you would be.”

She reached up to touch me and I flinched away violently, my mind racing. What the hell was she doing?

“Um . . .”

“You’ve been giving your dad such a hard fucking time,” she said, gently scolding me with a shake of her head as she pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket with shaky hands. “It’s—”

I cut her off midsentence. “He’s not my dad.”

“Honey, your birth certificate didn’t lie, and neither do those eyebrows and that chin you’ve got pointed to the sky. Hell, you looked just like him when you were born, though you’ve got the look of your mother now.”

“What?” I asked in confusion. Was I in the fucking twilight zone? She’d seen me as a baby? I couldn’t grasp what she was trying to say, and my fingers began to tingle.

Oh shit.

She looked around the room, almost as if she couldn’t meet my eyes as she started to speak.

“I was pissed as hell when your dad told me he’d knocked up some club whore. God, I could have shot him with his own damn gun. Ya wanna sit?”

I shook my head woodenly as I locked my knees. No, I did not want to fucking sit.

“I’m gonna sit,” she told me with a nod, perching on the side of Cody’s bed. “Story’s a fucked-up one, but I think you need to hear it. Your dad sure as shit will never tell ya, and even though he never says nothin’, I know he worries about ya. He’s always worried about ya.”

I fought the lump in my throat, determined to stay standing and coherent as she sat awfully close to my wedding ring quilt. If I hadn’t been so afraid to get near her, I would have snatched it off the bed before her vanilla perfume could contaminate it.

“Knew your mother. Didn’t like her. She always hung around back then, scoring coke off the boys however she could. Didn’t know she was fucking my husband, not until later, but I knew something was off about her. Something was missing.”

“Don’t touch the fucking coffee table, Farrah! You knock any of my sugar off the table, I’ll beat your ass!”

No. Nonononono.

“When I found out she was pregnant, I wanted to kill her. Seriously considered it a time or two. But your father, well, we’d been trying for a long-ass time by then, and still no babies. He tried to act like he didn’t care, but I knew a part of him was a bit excited by the whole thing. Couldn’t help himself.”

“That’s your daddy in the picture. See him, Farrah? Handsome motherfucker, huh? He didn’t want you, so he sent us away. Like we were trash, just tossed us out like garbage. Shoulda never gotten pregnant.”

“As much as I wanted him to, he couldn’t ignore what was happening. He was afraid your mother’d keep you coked outta your brain and starvin’, so he set her up in a little house on the other side of town. Paid her bills and shit, made sure she was eating, and tried to keep watch on her through the boys so she couldn’t go out and score.” I vaguely registered her voice catching on the last word. “Eventually she realized Slider wasn’t going to leave me for her, even though at the time, shit wasn’t good between us for obvious reasons.”

“Coulda stayed with your daddy, you know. He didn’t want kids, though, so once you came along I was screwed. Hand me mama’s dollar over there, yeah, that one. You remember that, Farrah, I chose you. So you be a good girl and don’t you make me regret it.”

“She told us that we could adopt the baby, and for a price, we’d never have to see her again.”

Vera sniffled, but I still refused to look at her. My vision was starting to have little spots in it as I tried to quietly pull air into my lungs.

“It wasn’t easy for me, I want you to know that. I didn’t want nothin’ to do with her kid at first, the proof of my husband fucking around on me. But eventually I seen what it was doing to Slider, and I knew that I had to dig deep down inside me to find if I was willing to overlook a baby, the man I love’s baby, just for the sake of pride.”

“Your daddy’s cunt wife was gonna kill ya, Farrah. I saw it. I knew if I didn’t get you away from there, she’d do it and she’d get away with it. She wanted you dead, I had to protect ya.”

“Less than a month before you were due, we agreed to take you.” She made a hoarse sound deep in her throat, making me cringe. “I loved ya before you were born, knowing you were gonna be mine. Haven’t loved anyone more in my entire life, and that’s the God’s honest truth. By the time you came, I had a little room all set up for ya, lots of clothes and toys you wouldn’t be using for months. I got everything just perfect.”