“Why?”
“I can’t relay that information on recorded prison lines.”
I sigh and shove my foot harder on the ground. The swing sways with asqueeeak squeeeak squeeeak, taking me back to childhood, when I used to escape the fighting inside my house by going to the park down the street.
At least, until my parents divorced and my father moved to Jersey, where he, too, has gotten himself into legal trouble.
ThankGodDean’s show was small enough that the desire for gossip about us was fully satiated by made up details about our divorce.
Now that I’m out of the picture and there’s constantAre they or aren’t they shagging?speculation about him and hisnewcostar, everyone’s forgotten me.
“Did I hate you when I was a teenager?” I ask Mom, needing to find a safe subject where she might be helpful. And shewasa good mom. It’s been fascinating to realize that she can be both a good mom and a criminal. “I don’t remember hating you as a teenager.”
“No, you saved that all for your father. But you’ll have it different with Junie. For one, she’s half Dean. That puts you at a distinct disadvantage.”
“Mom.”
“It does. Your father was a piece of work himself, but Dean? He’s a serious pill at a whole other level. Do you know he was in Cedar Rapids at the high school yesterday for some publicity stunt tied to supposedly updating the lights in the theater over the summer? While you and Junie were finally following that moving truck across the country, he was acting like a local hero, telling people you took his daughter from him and that he knows she’ll come back and work for the family business when she turns eighteen and doesn’t have to abide by the custody agreement anymore.”
Three days ago, even with all the turmoil, I would’ve said my daughter wouldneverpick her father over me.
Today?
Today, my stomach hurts.
“He can say what he wants,” I tell her, as if Junie abandoning me when she turns eighteen isn’t one of my biggest, most terrifying fears. “I don’t have to justify my choices to him anymore.”
“And he’s a manipulative asshole,” she says cheerfully. “But, baby, your father left us for that casino whore in Jersey.”
“Mom.Can you please not?” While my first stepmother wasn’t my favorite person, she was smart enough to divorce him as soon as she realized he was only trying to get his hands on her family money.
Mom huffs. “Yes, yes, we were both victims of his charms and should be soul sisters. You and your rose-colored glasses. But the bigger point here—you made Junie leave her father behind. You need to tell her he didn’t want her.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Maisey—”
“I know how that feels, Mom. I willnotdo it to my daughter. And—” Nope.
I cut myself off before I can sayShe blames you too.
Not helpful.
Mom fucked up. She fucked upbig time. But running an illegal homeowners’-association ring didn’t make her a bad mother.
Yes, it made her a bad role model in some areas. For sure.
But shewasthe parent who got me to doctor and dentist and orthodontist appointments. She was the parent my friends came to when they couldn’t ask their own parents questions about puberty and periods and sometimes even sex. She was the parent who’d let my friends hang out at our house all weekend long, providing pizza and junk food and driving us to the mall to hang out whenever we asked.
Yes, she did something wrong, and she’s in prison for it.
But that doesn’t mean she’s bad in every area of her life.
“Life hurts sometimes,” she says quietly, still the voice of reason even when she’s in an orange jumpsuit hundreds of miles away. “You can tell her the truth and support her through it, or you can be the asshole who makes her find out all on her own when she’s thirty-six and divorced with a kid of her own.”
I let that pass and change the subject. “How’s the food this week?”
“About like you’d expect prison food to be.”
