I nod. “She’s never been anything other than that already.”
“Good.” He slams the gavel. “Then we’re fucking done here. I’m hungry and over talking about this shit.”
As am I.
FIFTY-THREE
JENNA
“You don’t look too concerned,”Darla observes, settling into the armchair beside the sofa. “Aren’t you worried about what they decide out there?”
Anna plays a two-person game on the iPad with Molly, oblivious to the elephant in the room.
“How should I look?” I ask, pushing up from my reclined position to sit. “Would you rather I was on my knees, begging for my life? Pleading they don’t go after his? Because I hate to disappoint your assumption of me, but I don’t have a close relationship with my father.”
“Close enough to let him manipulate you into working for his club.”
Yes, I told her a little since confessing to Mary-Beth’s murder in the hope it would help Darla and Kathy understand. But all it’s done is create more suspicion.
“I didn’t think I had any other option.” Whatever the Kings of Anarchy decide is fair punishment, I’ll take. It’s the least I can do after all the shit I’ve put them through.
“You didn’t think to look up the details of medical debt yourself?” Darla asks, incredulous. “You just trusted what he told you?”
“The debt wasn’t with the healthcare provider,” I grit. “I already told you that. It was a loan to pay the gap Mom had to cover before her benefits kicked in.”
Darla leans back, elbows to the arms of the chair and hands clasped before her. She sighs, shifting her gaze out the front window.
I stay quiet to let her process her thoughts and lead us in the direction she needs us to go to satisfy her curiosity. “He’s still your father, Jenna. Flesh and blood. You’d be okay with them going after him?” Her gaze returns to mine, testing, probing.
Waiting for me to say something that confirms her thoughts about my apparent bloodlust.
“First of all,” I say, leaning in a little. “I don’t think they’ll bother with him. Not yet, anyway. He’s a small player in a big operation. And second, I’m pretty damn sure he gave up the right to call himself my father, dad, guardian, or parent, the second he fucking sold me to cover his bills.”
Anna glances up from her game.
I lean back, lowering my voice. “No parent does that to their own blood.”
“Apparently some do.” Darla softens a touch.
“So tell me again why blood matters so much.”
She exhales out her nose, avoiding my stare.
I forge ahead, hoping to wedge a divide in this goddamn defensive wall she’s put up. “What exactly is it about what I’ve done that makes you feel so jaded toward me? What part of it was wrong? When I defended myself? When I did what I thought was necessary to help an absent father who’d recently entered my life? The part of me that longed for a parent who loved me again when I’d only just lost the only one that ever mattered?”I hesitate, gathering my growing rage into something malleable. “What part of it makes me so much lesser than you? Can you honestly tell me that, in the same position, you would have done none of it? Never had a single thought the same?”
Darla swallows, seemingly allowing the tension in the room to ease before she answers.
“You didn’t know her,” I say in hushed tones before she can respond. “I did. I knew the threat was real, and I did what I had to in the moment, none-the-wiser to the truth: that they already knew who I am. Neither of us had the benefit of hindsight at the time or a safe place to work things out reasonably.” Anna remains invested in the game, although I don’t doubt she’s listening, attempting to make sense of it all. “I’m not proud of my actions, Darla, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to suffer a lifetime because of them.”
She turns her head to regard Anna a moment as well. “She never mentions her,” Darla whispers, leaning toward me. “Never asks where she is. At first I thought maybe she knew, and that’s why she didn’t want to talk about it, but the longer we’re here, the more I wonder if she even cares at all? That she’s missing. Gone.”
Anger still clutches a fist around my heart, but I push the sensation aside for Anna’s sake. “Has she mentioned Eleanor?”
“Only once. But it was in passing. Nothing concerning.” Darla sighs, looking down at her hands. “You’re not lesser than me, Jenna. That’s not how I meant to make you feel.” Her jaw works stiffly to one side. “I felt betrayed by somebody who was supposed to be as innocent in all this mess as I am. I trusted you, and you proved me wrong.”
“You can still trust me,” I say. I’ve never shown any aggression toward her. Never given Darla reason to shy from me.
“You lied to us,” she reiterates. “You told us you knew nothing when you knew plenty.”
