Page 156 of The Other Side of Green

“You’re going to see a bad side of me now.” I frowned at the lights on in the house.

“Oh my love, I’m going to see the very best of you.”

I marched for the front door letting myself in with the key. A plume of smoke smacked me straight in the face and I coughed announcing my arrival.

A small shape almost crawled into the hallway, hair in draggled knots, skin gray and covered in a sheen of sweat.

How fucking dare she do this shit in my Grams’ house.

The final straw snapped.

“Look who it is.” She pushed at an oily strand of hair, but it flopped right back in her face.

“Get up.” I marched forward, grabbing her arm, and hauling her onto her feet. She crumpled again.

“You gonna give me money, baby.”

I stared at her in disbelief. “You threw me out. Told me this wasn’t my home. Told me you hated me.”

This was my fight. It coursed through me.

“Who’s my father, Mother? Do you even know, or do you just make up shit in your fucked up head and then believe it’s real?”

She looked at me blankly for a long whole moment. It stretched, stretched, stretched and then she laughed. “I don’t fucking know.” She turned, staring at the wall. “Did you hear that? She asked me who her father was… Stupid bitch. Doesn’t she know I don’t know.” She laughed, obviously her rhyming catching her own fancy.

I glanced at Jack who shrugged back at me. She was officially talking to a wall.

“Ahhh, what you staring at? Get out. Get out of my house. Go back to college. You’ve always been too good for us, Little Miss High and Mighty.”

“I thought you wanted money?”

She stopped, eyes wild. “You got some for your momma?”

God. I hated her.

God forgive me but it was true.

Luca forgive me for what I was about to do, but we needed to be free of the destruction of the pain. That would be the only way true dreams could be made.

“Here.” I reached into my backpack and pulled out the envelope Jack and I had got from the bank the day before. We’d cleared out the last of the money he’d paid into my bank account.

Her eyes went round like saucers. “For me.” She went to snatch it, but I lifted it high above her head.

“This is my house. And you aren’t welcome here no more. This time you leave and you don’t come back.”

Her mouth fell open, but then her lips twisted into a sneer. “I knew that bitch would leave it all to you, her golden child. The day you were born she told me she was never going to make the same mistakes again, that she would make sure you were nothing like me.” Spittle flew out of her mouth and landed on her chin.

I stepped forward, leaning into her stench filled space. “And I am nothing like you. Nothing. Now go, leave me and Luca alone. I’m going to speak to Grams’ solicitor. I’ll arrange a payment for you, bigger than this one, but if you take it and sign you can’t ever come back. It will be us or the money.”

I thrust the envelope at her and folded my arms, knowing full well who she would choose out of Luca and I or the money. She stared at me, and for a heartbeat I thought there could be a sorry in the breeze. But this was Bernice Lennox and sorry wasn’t in her vocabulary.

She stood up straighter and then walked toward the door, hand balancing on the wall.

Maybe I shouldn’t have let her go out in that state.

Maybe I was a total bitch.

Maybe…