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“No,” he said, running his hands through his hair.
“You think you had it bad, but you had a mother than cared. That loved you. You had siblings willing to help out and make life easier for you, but we never had that. Karl, he needed attention so badly that he was swayed to follow in my mother’s footsteps. That is his biggest downfall. He’s turning his life around, but he’s tried before. Quinn and Brett keep in contact, but not much. Brett, he met Annie in a group home.”
“The same situation?” he asked.
“Similar enough. She got pregnant and they moved in together and they work their asses off to just make ends meet. Quinn is always sending them things and they don’t want them. They want to make it on their own even if they can barely do it. I was the lucky one.”
“It doesn’t appear it from the reports I got,” he said.
“Because you and everyone else just want to believe what you read and not hear it from the person who lived it,” she said, slapping her hand to her chest. “Did it ever occur to you that I don’t talk about it not just because it was embarrassing but because I don’t want to remember? I don’t want to go back to that time.”
“No,” he said. “I just wish you would have told me. I would have been prepared.”
“Prepared for what?” she asked. “What happened? Someone found out about me and now they think I’m using you? Is that what this is about? And because you feel blindsided by the truth you feel I’m out to get your family money?”
“No!”
“Don’t lie to me, Braylon.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I wanted to say you were lying to me, but it was pointed out I never asked specifics about your life for you to lie. You say just enough to keep it truthful and I’ve not asked out of respect.”
“That’s right,” she said. “You were being respectful then but not now. I’m not sure what changed it and don’t care.”
“I care,” he said.
“Maybe it’s too late,” she said.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked. “How do you think it felt to have this thrown in my face that I didn’t know this about you? It makes me look like a fool.”
“Glad that is all you got to feel out of it. You don’t have to worry about everyone knowing how you were raised or where you came from. Of course, the world knows it and thinks you’re all a feel-good story. My life is hardly anything to feel good about. I think you should leave.”
“We need to talk this through,” he said.
“I’m done talking.” She pointed to the door. “Leave. Now!”
He turned and walked out, slamming the door as he went.
Lily went to the couch and sat down to bawl her eyes out, not remembering the last time she cried like this or felt so much despair for things out of her control.
30
WHAT NOT TO DO
“Ihear you messed up big time,” Braylon heard the minute he answered his phone when he got home Friday night.
He should have figured his mother would have found out what was going on. Had to be from Laken or West.
“So it seems,” he said.
“I thought you would have learned your lessons from your brother on what not to do.”
He snorted. “So he was the one who told you what was going on?”
“I talked to him not that long ago,” his mother said. “I wanted to see how things were now that the article was released. Seems everything is great except for what is happening with you. I gave your brother hell, by the way, for what Thomas did.”
“I’m sure he told you that Thomas was terminated today,” he said.
Braylon had come into work and been informed that Thomas’s office was being cleaned out and Thomas would have no access or contact with anyone in the building going forward.
