“Hello, girls,” Jo had said, twisting her sleeves in her hands like a teenager. “Sorry, I’m late.”
“To this meeting?” Nicole said with venomous sweetness. “Or our adulthoods?”
Jo’s expression, which had hovered between nerves and sheepishness, instantly changed. With her brows pinched, and her teeth bared, she was the spitting image of Sam. “Oh, that’s going to be your attitude?” she snarled. “You’ve brought me here just to tear me down like you always di?—”
“Shut up and sit down,” Nicole snapped. “You’re acting like a child.”
Her withering contempt was a hundred times scarier than Jo’s anger, and Tabby had been sure their mum would storm off. But she’d dropped onto the bench opposite the three of them, Sam’s sneer still fixed on her face. “Job interview, is it?”
Tabby shrank back into the booth, but Nix and Sam leaned forward.
“Not quite,” Nix had said, her voice still loaded with artificial sweetener. “Would you like a coffee?”
“I’d like a wine,” Jo said. “A bottle if possible. Just stick a straw in the neck. A metal one if it helps the environment in any way.”
She talked like her, Tabby had realised—the same choppy sentences. Always trying to be funny but avoiding eye contact so you were free not to laugh if you didn’t want to.
And no one did.
“That won’t be possible,” Sam said flatly. “Nix, get to the pitch.”
“Pitch?” Jo had flashed a smile at Tabby then, as though inviting her to laugh at the twins. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You’re about to find out.” Nix had opened her bag and produced a manila folder. Sliding it across the table, she said, “This is a legal notice I’ve had drawn up. If you sign it, you’re agreeing to not contact any of us ever again.”
Jo pushed it back across the table. “Don’t be stupid, Nikki.”
“That’s the thing,Debbie. If you don’t sign it, Sam and I will take you to court and sue you for unpaid child support.”
Jo went white as a sheet. “You can’t…”
Nix’s smile didn’t budge as she returned the folder to their mother. “I can assure you, the three family law consultants I’ve spoken to all say I can.”
Jo opened the folder, a sleeved palm pressed to her open mouth. Tabby had known this was the plan, but it had been so fucking hard to watch Jo scan the document. Especially since she kept glancing up at her as though trying to convey something Tabby was supposed to understand, but couldn’t.
“So that’s pretty much it,” Nicole said airily. “Sign the document, Deborah, and then we’ll leave each other alone.”
To Tabby’s horror, tears formed in Jo’s eyes.
“Don’t you dare,” Sam snarled, every syllable dripping with dislike. “Don’t you dare fucking cry like you have the right.We’rethe ones who should be crying.”
But that only made Jo’s shoulder shake even harder. “You can’t do this. I’m your mother. I came here to talk to you!”
“No, you didn’t,” Nix said. “If you did, you could have talked to us months ago when I first contacted you. But you ignored me and kept hovering around, trying to make contact with Tabby because you’ve still got this ridiculous idea that she’s yours.”
Just like that, Jo transformed again, her blue eyes narrowing to slits. “Sheismine. You and Sammy belonged to your dad, and you didn’t give a shit about me. But Tabby loved me. She was my little girl.”
Jo’s hand shot out, almost knocking over Tabby’s coffee.
Nicole pulled Tabby back into the booth and out of Jo’s range. “How dare you,” she snarled. “How fuckingdareyou try to touch her.”
Her middle sister’s voice was quivering with rage so palpable, Jo sat back in her chair, looking childish once again. “Sorry?—”
“Fuck sorry,” Sam spat, fire to Nicole’s ice. “You’re a fucking psycho. We liked Dad better because he spent time with us, and if you’d stuck around, you’d have watched Tabby go the same way. She only put up with you because she was too young to know better. You’re lucky you’re too incompetent to kidnap a kid because fucking off on your own was the smartest thing you ever did in your whole insignificant life.”
There had been an argument then, jabs back and forth that Tabby had entirely missed. Sam had said they had the right to cry, so Tabby had started crying. The café was so loud no one noticed, but she’d failed to hear much of anything as she wished she’d never agreed to meet up with Jo, that she’d gone to see Toby instead. Asked him to make all this hurt feel insignificant.
“Oh, Babby-Tabby,” Jo had said, addressing her directly and pulling her back into the conversation. “I didn’t mean?—”
