A month.
Five years.
Mom stares at me now over the bookshop counter. “Five years ago, Henry Zabka was still working at the university. Your grandmother was trying to pressure me to get child support out of him, and when I refused, she went behind my back and hired a private detective to look into him.”
A private detective … Briefly, my head fills up with the scent of Christmas that always wafts from the hand-dipped colonial candle store down the alley—and the empty door next to it with the bright redFOR RENTsign. Former office of Desmond Banks, private investigator.
“A detective? Like a PI?” I ask.
She nods. “And he uncovered … all kinds of nasty things about Henry Zabka.”
The argument.
The big blowup that sent us fleeing Beauty in the middle of the night.
The argument was a little bit about me, yes.
But it was really about my father.
I shake my head as tears fall. “No, no, no.”
“I tried to keep you away from it,” she says, taking off her glasses again to wipe at her eyes. “I tried so hard. I didn’t want you to hate him like I hated him. I didn’t even want to believe it myself. I thought it was just your grandmother trying to be controlling. She’s done that before with my life. This wasn’t the first time the meddlesome old bat tried to ruin my relationship with someone—”
Her voice breaks.
She swallows and starts again.
“However, I took a second look at what her private detective uncovered, and … it was pretty damning. A few months later, I contacted the university and got him fired. Well. Quietly dismissed—that’s what they called it. They promised he’d never know it was me who came forward, if I agreed not to sue. That’s when he went back to LA and his careerreallytook off. Which was depressing, honestly. It felt like he was being rewarded, and we were … left behind to fend for ourselves.”
“Mom—”
“So screw him. If you’re talented in any way, then I choose to think that you inherited that from me, not from him. Because once upon a time, I was talented too.”
I’m shocked.
Devasted.
I don’t know what to say.
The lines on my mom’s face harden. “So yes, I may be a terrible mother. And I know I haven’t been present. I hate myself forthat—I hate being depressed, and I hate that you notice it, because more than anything, I wish I could keep you in a bubble, nice and safe, so you’d never have to know any of these things, and you’d never be hurt or unhappy. If I could have one wish in life, I would spend it on that.”
“I’m not a child, Mom!” I say, exasperated. “I haven’t been for a long time. You could have told me this years ago!”
“Maybe so, but you’re wrong about one thing,” she says, pointing a finger in my direction. “You’llalwaysbe my child, and I’ll always be your parent. And see, that’s the difference between me and Henry Zabka. No matter how badly I’ve screwed up sometimes, I’m here for you, right now, and I’ve always wanted you, every single day you’ve drawn breath. So I’m sorry if that’s disappointing—I’m sorry I’ve dragged you around from town to town, and I’m sorry I wasn’t the parent you wanted. I’m sorry I wasn’t the famous photographer and just plain old cursed Winona Saint-Martin. But for better or worse, you’re stuck with me, aren’t you? Because if you try to leave me, I swear to all things holy, I will chase you down, Josie. You’re not an adult yet, and I’m still your mother, even if you hate my guts.”
Shaking and upset, she tosses the box of supplies back beneath the counter and yanks out another one, plopping it down by the register with a loud thud to angrily search through its motley contents. One of Grandma’s Nepalese postcards falls off its taped anchor and flutters to the floor.
All I can do is watch her in a daze, rocked to my core.Heartbroken. It feels as if she’s taken a rock and smashed all my dreams like I smashed the Summers & Co window. Only, no one can bail me out this time. Not even Lucky.
Funny that I thought once he might be a mirage. The real mirage was Henry Zabka.
I don’t have a father.
I don’t have a mentor.
Los Angeles is just a city, not a utopian place where all my troubles will fall away.
Nothing’s real. I’m stuck here with no exit strategy when the ticking time bomb goes off.
