“Yes. Your coming out and welcome home party.” She grins. “Bought your favorite Publix cake, too. Marble cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. Pretty rainbows on it.”
I start laughing, she starts laughing, and I spend the whole ride back to her house crying and laughing and feeling like, for the very first time in my life, I can finally figure out who Jordan Remington Walshreallyis outside of my disguise.
And that’s how Mimi ended up showing me she had her own disguise.
She taught me that, sometimes, you have to play dirty and skirt the thing that’s legal to do the thing that’sright.
That playing dirty was easier when you had an innocent disguise to hide your movements, and to never let anyone know how dirty you can really play. Toalwayskeep that part of you hidden until you need it.
That when it comes to taking care of the people you love, you stop atnothingto protect them, even if it means spending years fooling people in the process and convincing them how innocent you are.
Even if it means doing hard, dirty work.
Even if it means lying and breaking the law to protect them. That when you truly love someone, you go to the mat for them and do whatever it takes to take care of them, to protect them.
It is a valuable lesson that will come in handy later in my life, in ways I could never predict back then.
