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“I get it, Mama. You’re ashamed of me. But you know what? I can’t help that anymore. I can’t bring myself to care.”
“You will care. You’ll show me the respect I deserve as your parent. This isn’t how I raised you.”
My blood boiled over. “What about the respect I deserve? I’m a grown woman. I’m not a little girl anymore. You’re not my superior. Maybe you don’t like what I do for a living, but I run a highly successful business. I’m smart, and I’m talented. I know my own worth, and I don’t need you trying to bring me down. What I do, or who I stick penises to, is none of your business.”
Mama spluttered into the phone, and I could just imagine her pacing up and down her tiny living room. My father argued in the background, but nothing would stop my mother when she was on a rant. And her favorite thing to rant about was me, and how I’d failed at being her only daughter.
Her voice grew high and screechy. “It is my business when you’re slandering the name of a good man!”
I threw my hands up in the air. “Who gives a fuck about William Reed? That upstanding man you hero-worship? He tried to have me killed, Mama. How do you feel about him now?”
There was a stunned silence on the other end, but it only lasted a moment. “I don’t believe that.”
“Believe it. He had a gang member drive past my club and spray it with bullets.”
Mama gasped.
There was only the tiniest sense of satisfaction from it. “Now am I getting through to you—”
“No,” she yelled. “No! He would never do that, Eve. You’re his —”
“I’m his what?” His enemy? That was the only thing I was to William Reed.
My mother’s voice went quiet. “Nothing. Never mind.”
But I wasn’t ready to give up the fight that easy. She’d started it. I was going to end it. “No, what were you going to say? Tell me exactly what I am to William Reed, since you seem to know him so well, Mama. What am I? The thorn in his side? Good. I hope I am.”
My father huffed from the background. “You’re his daughter.”
I froze.
My mother let out a howl and a string of curse words I’d never heard her utter in my entire thirty years. She cussed my father out like a drunken sailor, screaming at him, the slaps of her palm against his skin echoing down the line.
But one by one, amongst the chaos, the pieces fit together. The reason my father had never really paid any attention to me. The reason I didn’t look anything like my brothers. The way my mother hero-worshipped a man the rest of this community couldn’t stand. “Is that true?” I asked, already knowing what her answer would be.
“Eve…”
“No, Mama! Is it true?”
A sob broke down the line. “I signed a contract never to tell you.”
My head spun.
A quiet cough came from the doorway. “Eve.”
My head snapped up, gaze clashing with Boston’s. He frowned, taking in my appearance, which was likely white as a ghost. He passed me his T-shirt. “There’s a swarm of protesters outside, and they’re none too happy about the party last night. It’s already making the mainstream media.”
“What?” I put the landline phone down on my desk, not caring that my mother was probably still blathering away into it. I didn’t want to hear anything she had to say anyway. Everything that came out of the woman’s mouth was a lie, a deception, or an accusation.
I was done with her. I was done with everything.
I pulled aside the curtain to see the size of the crowd building on the sidewalk outside. I swallowed hard at the sheer number of them, with more coming in both directions. I’d been so focused on my mother, I hadn’t even heard them.
Boston’s mouth was set into a hard line. “I don’t like that we’re the only ones here. We’re unprotected if they break in. I’ve called my partner in for backup, but I want to get you out of here now, before they get any more riled up.”
I nodded, my chest tight. I already felt like a canned sardine, claustrophobic with the walls caving in on me. The angry faces of William supporters—my father’s supporters—lit up in earnest when they saw me at the window. Their yells and chants grew louder, and a rock bounced off the shutter.
I dropped the curtain and picked the phone up, hitting the red cancel button and cutting my mother off completely.
