Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
And I’d been drinking.
And I didn’t like anyone but Family being able to trace me to my mother’s place.
“I’ll let you know what I find out,” I said as I made my way to the door.
Outside, I gave my brother a brief synopsis of what was going on, telling him to ask Lorenzo if he wanted more details, then I ducked into the SUV, and pointed him in the direction of my mother’s townhouse.
It wasn’t quite as grand an area as mine and Lorenzo’s place, but my old man had done the best he could to provide a nice, reasonably roomy place for us to grow up in, for my mother to make a home out of.
Made of brick, it had a warmth even from the outside.
I unlocked the door and let myself inside, as she wanted us to do.
This will always be home, honey. You come and go without ringing the bell.
“Ma, you here?” I called, walking past the center staircase, heading back toward the kitchen. Because, seventy percent of the time, that was where you were going to find her.
My ma, like most of the moms in the Family, showed her love with her food. With hours and hours of cooking and baking and serving.
With my sisters settled down and raising families, she was always dropping off prepared meals, saying she remembered how hard the early years were with small kids and a hungry husband, and she wanted to make it easier.
“Milo?” she called, coming into the doorway in one of her aprons, her dark hair pulled back, her face made up, as it always was. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her without ‘her face on.’
“Hey, Ma,” I said, pressing a kiss to her temple.
“What happened? What’s the matter?” she asked, immediately on alert. I would say it was a mom’s sixth sense, but I was pretty sure I was a walking black hole right then. Anyone could see it. “Come in, sit down,” she demanded, reaching for my wrist, pulling me into the kitchen, and pressing me into a chair at her booth table. “Honey, what happened?”
To that, I sighed.
“Remember the women you sent to my house against my will?” I asked, feeling the need to ease into this.
“Of course I do. I took weeks lining up those women,” she said, smiling. “It’s been killing me not knowing who you chose? Was it Mindy?”
“Mindy?” I repeated.
“The one with the beautiful black hair and tattoos?”
“Oh, no. No, I ended up hiring Avery,” I told her. “And that’s why I’m here. Shit happened. And I need to know her full name. Her paperwork got ruined by her coffee that day. What?” I asked as my mother stared at me, brows knitted.
“What name did you say again?” she asked.
“Avery,” I said. Then, knowing there had been a lot of applicants, and likely even more that had never made it to my living room, I went on. “Blonde, kinda round face, blue-gray eyes, skin that tends to get pink when she’s embarrassed, kind of a hot mess. Always tripping and spilling shit. Mouth like a sailor and always apologizing for it…”
“Oh, dear,” she said, reaching across the table, and resting her hand over mine. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?” she asked. Then, putting pieces together, “But you don’t know her full name?”
“No,” I admitted. “I paid her cash,” I admitted, starting to see in all the ways I’d fucked up. How easy I’d made it to con me. “And I didn’t exactly ask for her whole life history,” I admitted.
My mom exhaled hard at that, then got up from the table, going to the stove to mix something she had in a pot there.
My gaze moved around the space, familiar, but somehow different since moving out many years before.
I could see the hints of my mom everywhere. Her carefully stocked herb rack, several feet away from the stove because she had strong beliefs about humidity and the integrity of spices. There was artwork on the fridge from her grandbabies, little cards she’d received from friends, a rack of recipe books, even though she knew them all by heart at this point, one of those gem painting things she was currently obsessed with on the counter, likely doing a few rows inbetween cooking tasks.
Her hand reached into a drawer beside the stove, pulling out one of those criss-crossed potholders that my sisters used to make and gift to her every holiday. She still kept them, still used them, all these years later.
A lifetime of traditions.
Everything I had begun to believe I might have with Avery.
And look how the fuck that turned out.
I shouldn’t have let my guard down, allowed myself to believe there was some good and warmth left out there.
Especially when, time and time again, situations proved otherwise.
“Oh, my Milo boy,” my mom sighed, looking back at me after turning down the heat on the burner. “No,” she said.