“So you thought adopting a few puppies would solve the problem?”
“A hundred and one puppies, to be exact.” Her lips peel back into a grin, one that looks closer to a grimace beneath all the Botox, “A number that’s sure to make a splash and get those hippies off my back. And the marketing material will be just delightful. Listen to this:Barking mad for Cruella’s Closets, or better yet,a spot for every occasion!”
Cruella slaps the table and lets out a laugh, “Do you get it? Spots because they’re Dalmatians? Oh, I am just too clever sometimes.”
The kitchen table separates us, but it’s not the stainless steel beast sitting in Colonel Hellman’s new home. It’s a rickety wooden thing, one that’s got a metal leg because we couldn’t find the proper one at the garage sale we bought it from. A table that would wobble every time we put something down and splash liquid all along the ceramic tiles of our old kitchen floor.
It’s like someone took a spec from my childhood and let it play out before me. A mother and her son chatting over a cupof tea. Neither had much going for them, their pockets were empty and their bank accounts more so, but at the end of the day it didn’t matter.
We had each other and that was enough for me.
But it wasn’t enough for Cruella.
Her fashion career took off and soon the string of boyfriends turned into wealthy husbands. Men who could capture her attention with luxurious trips and gifts that only the rich could afford.
She craved attention like she did fame and fortune, the kind of lifestyle that doesn’t take kindly to a child being dragged from place to place like a piece of unwanted luggage.
It’s a feeling you never want to get used to.
“Truth be told, it’s for the best. The Colonel isn’t a fan of animals.” Cruella sniffs, disgust wrinkling her made-up features, “At least not the ones who live indoors. Far too hairy and dirty for a dignified household.”
“Funny, I don’t remember that being a problem in the past.”
The pressure in my chest worsens as the elephant in the room makes itself known.
Casting her eyes up to the ceiling, the world’s most infamous fashion icon can’t bring herself to face her only child.
“You just couldn’t wait to bring that up, could you?”
“Considering it’s the reason I’ve been living on the street for the last ten years, yeah. I thought it was time to bring it up.”
Bottomless, pitch-black eyes slowly descend back to my face. She scrutinizes me, a look I was once so familiar with nowforeign and distant as she takes in the layers of ink covering my body.
“You were the one who left me, Christopher. Not the other way around.”
I stare at her, waiting for the sorrow to emerge. Waiting for a hint of remorse to bleed through her picture-perfect exterior.
I don’t see a fucking thing.
A bitter, humourless laugh flows out of my mouth, “You didn’t care, did you? You didn’t give a damn that your fifteen-year-old son was struggling to survive on the street.”
“No one told you to stay away. You could have easily come back at any time.”
“Did you even try and look for me? After I left that night, did you take one fucking second to look for me?”
I could lie and say the worst part is the truth ringing through my mum’s sudden silence. The look in her eyes that tells me everything I need to know.
No. The worst part is the lump growing in my throat.
The hope that was supposed to have died a long time ago.
“Right. In that case, I’ll be off.”
A screech fills the air as Cruella’s expensive taste in chairs fails to protect the foundation holding this house together.
“Christopher-
“If he had killed me, would you have stayed?”
