"Leah." She says my name like she's been practicing it. Like she looked me up, learned the syllables, prepared for this moment the way a lawyer prepares for cross-examination. "Can we talk?"
I should keep walking.
I should walk past her, get in my car, drive to Coin's house ,or the clubhouse, or literally anywhere else.
I should not engage with the woman who abandoned her children and then handed their names to loan sharks and then showed up in my boyfriend's kitchen crying designer tears.
Boyfriend.
We haven't even had an official discussion, but I know we're not going anywhere.
"Sure," I say. Because apparently I don't learn.
She pulls off her sunglasses. Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy—she's been crying, or she hasn't been sleeping, or both.
Up close, she looks worse than she did at the kitchen table.
The Vegas lifestyle hasn't just caught up with her; it's running her down.
There are hollows under her cheekbones that aren't from contouring, and her hands—wrapped around her own elbows, hugging herself—are shaking the way they shook around that glass of water.
"I know what you think of me," she says.
"You don't know anything about what I think of you."
"I know you think I'm a terrible mother. I know Colton thinks I'm a terrible mother. I know my own daughter told me I'm not her mother at all." Her voice cracks, and the crack sounds real. Not performed. Real. "And maybe they're right.Maybe I am terrible. But I didn't come back to Morgantown to cause problems. I came because I'm scared, and I didn't have anywhere else to go."
"Okay," I say. Not agreeing. Just acknowledging. The way I acknowledge patients who tell me things I can't fix—I hear you, I see you, and that's all I've got.
"You're not what I expected," she says.
"What did you expect?"
"I don't know. Someone harder, maybe. Someone more like the club." She looks me up and down again. The scrubs, the sneakers, the lanyard with my hospital ID hanging against my chest. "You're a nurse."
"I am."
"And you're... with him."
"I am."
Something moves across her face.
Not anger, exactly—something closer to grief.
The specific grief of watching someone else live the life you threw away, and knowing you threw it away, and knowing you can't get it back.
"I was with him first," she says. Quiet. Almost to herself.
"I know you were."
"I was with him when Wrenleigh was born. I held her first. I was the first person she ever saw." Her chin trembles. "I know that doesn't mean anything now. I know I lost the right to—I know. But I was there. I was her mother. I was Sadie Jo's mother. And now I'm standing in a parking lot watching another woman move in my children's lives like she owns them."
"I don't own them."
"But they love you."
The words hit me somewhere I'm not prepared for.
