Second Thoughts (26 page)

The frown disappeared from my face when I saw his face.

“Patrick, what are you doing here?”

“You know, I’m actually not sure,” he said.

He kissed me on the side of my face and walked into the house. He stood in the foyer with his hands in his pockets. He looked to his left towar
ds the kitchen, and then
in the direction of the living room, but the partial wall blocked his view of my uninvited guest.

“Is Grandma here?”

“Wait, you knew she was coming?” I walked back into the living room. Patrick followed. “Am I to expect any one else?” I asked my mother.

“You know, Colleen,” she paused. “That is the name you’re using these days, isn’t it?”

She got up, walked over to Patrick and began fixing the collar on his short-sleeve button-down shirt. There was nothing wrong with the collar on his shirt. It had been turned down just the way it was designed to.

“You know, son,” she continued. “I want you to take a good look at that woman.”

“Grandma, what are you talking about?” Patrick laughed. “That woman is my mother. I know how she looks.”

“That woman is nobody’s mother. She’s a lying, conniving bitch. That’s what I’m saying.”

She patted Patrick on both shoulders and then turned around.

“Oh hell no.  You are NOT going to disrespect me in my own house, and definitely not in front of my son.”

“That’s the last time you’re going to claim him as your son. After finding out what you did,” she shook her head. “I’m done helping you lie to this boy, or to Chance.”

“Mom, what is she talking about?”

“I don’t know, and neither does she,” I answered and then turned to leave the living room.

“You’re probably right,” Georgia agreed, “but you remember Rachel Hall, the nurse from Dr. Gensler’s office?”

I neither admitted nor denied knowing her. I stood there with a quizzical expression and waited for her to continue.

“She knows, doesn’t she?”

Patrick looked at Georgia searching for truth in her words and her eyes, and then looked at me.

“Mother, what is Grandma talking about?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Patrick,” I answered, keeping my stare towards my mother. “I don’t know a Dr. Gensler, or any nurse named Rachel whatever-her-name is.”

“It’s Hall, honey. Sure you do, Colleen. You do remember Rachel, from the fertility clinic. You met her when you and Kenneth went to prep for the implantation.”

“Fertility clinic? Implantation?” Patrick stood in front of Georgia with his hands in his pockets. “Why were you visiting a fertility clinic? And who the hell is Kenneth?”

My mother leaned to look around Patrick since he was obstructing her view.

“You know you can take over anytime,” she said, smiling at me.

I could only imagine the satisfaction she was getting from this.

“Oh, honey. Surely you’ve learned something from me. I’ve told you about keeping secrets and telling lies.”

“I’ve told Patrick everything he needs to know.”

“Yes. And I’m going to tell you the same thing I told you the last time you used that line,” Patrick spoke. “It doesn’t mean you’ve told me the truth.”

“Patrick, did she give you those letters Omar sent to you?”

Georgia walked to the chair and sat. She placed her bag in her lap and listened to the silence. It was like the calm before the storm. I tried to maintain my composure, but underneath this veneer, I was a nervous wreck.

“You mentioned those letters a few months ago,” Patrick said. He looked over his left shoulder towards me. “You said you destroyed them. You lied to me?”

“No, I’m sure she didn’t lie, Patrick,” Georgia broke in. “At least not about those letters. She destroyed them because they came from Omar. I would have destroyed them, too, knowing they came from the man who raped you. What she thought was in those letters was only half the truth. The words in those letters weren’t from Omar.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I interrupted.

“You should trademark that line. Better yet, you should have that line written on your headstone.” Georgia walked and stood looking out the large window. “But I’ll give you that. I still wouldn’t have known what I’m talking about if I didn’t get this letter from Omar.”

She held the letter in her hand. She stared at it as if it were the ninth wonder of the world. She stopped her stare and looked at her watch.

“Who are you expecting?” I asked Georgia, but before the words fell completely from my mouth, the doorbell rang.

I walked slowly to the door, but kept my focus on my mother.

“Hello Mother,” Chance greeted when I opened the door.

He stood at the door with his hands in his pockets. He kissed me on my cheek like he always did whenever he came over. When he walked in and saw Patrick and my mother, the expression on his face changed.

“Did someone die?” he asked with a serious look on his face.

“Not yet,” my mother yelled from the living room.

“No one told me this was a family meeting.” Chance walked over to Georgia and kissed her on both cheeks. “Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Your mother destroyed those letters because she thought Omar was writing to tell you what she did. She didn’t destroy them because she was protecting you. No, that would mean this bitch actually cared about someone other than herself.”

“What letter is Gram talking about?” Chance questioned.

“You’re not going to stand in my own house and talk to me that way,” I warned.

“I’m going to stand in your house and talk to you any which way I damn well please,” Georgia continued. “Who’s gonna stop me? You? You took my child from me.”

“Mother, what is Grandma talking about?” Chance asked.

He began removing his red and white fitted Wizards cap.

“Don’t waste your time asking her anything, Chance. She’s only going to tell you I don’t know what I’m talking about. She’s been singing that song since your brother got here. But soon, she’s going to realize I know more than I act like I know. I’ve just been waiting for the right moment.”

“Grandma,” Patrick began. “You said my mother took your child away from you. Are you talking about Aunt Lexi?”

“Yes. Colleen took your mother away from me,” Georgia affirmed.

“Grandma, I think you made a mistake. You said Colleen took…,” Chance said. He looked in my direction and waited for me to react. I remained stoic.  

“I said it right, and you heard it right. Colleen, that woman, that impostor, purposely drove Lexi’s car into a tree because Lexi had decided she wasn’t going to hand off her baby to her. Only she didn’t know the baby she carried, you Patrick, was never hers to begin with. She murdered your mother and your father,” Georgia continued. “It was God’s grace that saved you, and unfortunately, her.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked my mother.

I didn’t know whom I should have been focusing on. Though he was listening to Georgia, Patrick kept his eyes on me. I watched them become moist with tears. He shook his head in disbelief.

“You better tell me she’s lying, Mother,” he begged. “Tell me she’s lying.”

“She can’t, Patrick,” my mother assured him. She moved from the window and walked closer to me. I was still standing by the door, where I’d stood after letting Chance in.

“Had she read the letters, she would have realized Omar only sent you what Nurse Hall sent him, and of course, she sent me a copy, too.”

“What did the letter say, Grandma?” Patrick asked.

“Are you really…” I began.

“Shut up,” Patrick interrupted. “You’ve had your opportunity. You’ve had thirty years to tell me the truth. Every time I asked you if there’s something you need to tell me, you gave me the same bullshit response that you’ve told me all I needed to know. I needed to know you were not my mother. Did you tell me that? I needed to know that it wasn’t my father who raped me? Did you tell me that? No. You kept that to yourself because you were so sure no one knew what you had done. You don’t have permission to speak. Stand there with that dumb-ass expression on your face and listen like the rest of us, you spiteful bitch.”

“Patrick,” Chance chimed in. “You can’t talk to Mom like that.”

“She’s not our mother.” Patrick’s statement stung. “Go on, Grandma.”

“Like some women in this world, Colleen can’t have children of her own. She really wanted children, and I understood that. So did Lexi. Lexi agreed to be implanted with Colleen’s eggs after Kenneth’s sp
erm had fertilized them. When Colleen went in for the implantation, a pregnancy test─which is standard in this situation─came back positive, which meant Lexi couldn’t be implanted.  According to the letter, Lexi, your mother, then called Colleen, who was r
unning late because she was stuck in traffic, and told her she was sorry she had missed the implantation, but that Colleen could come to the house the next day when Lexi took a home pregnancy test. Nurse Hall said she was paid money to change Colleen’s contact information in the system so all calls would come to Lexi until she figured something out.”

I stood listening to my mother as she read both the letter from the nurse and the one she had received from Omar. In the letter, Omar told my mother that once Lexi told me about already being pregnant and therefore couldn’t do the implantation, I was determined that if I couldn’t have this baby that I thought would be mine for the last seven months, no one was going to have it.

“My only question is,” I said to my mother, “why didn’t you just call the police?”

“And have them just send you to jail?” she said, laughing. “As far as I was concerned, even your own death would have been too soft of a punishment. No. I thought about it and then it finally came to me. Nothing would hurt you more than losing the two boys you cherished, neither of whom really belonged to you.”

“How could you?” Chance asked

“Are you really going to stand there believing anything she says?” I asked, looking at Chance.

“Just admit it,” Chance continued. “Grandma is right. You’re selfish, and everything has to be a goddamn secret. Why didn’t you tell me I was adopted? Why was that such a big fucking secret?”

“You told him?”  I said, turning to Patrick.

“After twenty-two years, don’t you think he deserved to know?”

“I did it to protect you,” I said, turning back to Chance.

“Excuse the disrespect, Mother, but damn you and your protection. Let me tell you what your so-called protection did to me.”

Chapter
31

Chance…

I Guess I Should Say Thanks

Since I’ve known myself and the woman who has
been masquerading around as my mother, I have never been disrespectful to her
⎯
not even in jest. But I was tired of her lies. I was tired of her secrets. The woman who had promised to protect me had made it possible for Omar to hurt me. I
didn
’
t
want to he
ar her deny the truth, and I damn sure
wasn
’
t
going to give her the opportunity to fill my head with more of her lies.

“I don’t remember having much of a life before you and Omar came into it; my saviors,” I mocked. “But that was the life I wanted to go back to. I’m sure it had to have been better than having my hands wrapped around some man’s dick.”

I wiped the tears from both eyes with the back of my left hand.

My mother flat-lined at the realization she had failed to protect the men in her life that she had claimed as her sons, though she only had legitimate claim to only one; me. I stood unable to shed a tear for my mother because the wicked act that was being spilled from my grandmother’s mouth had introduced me to the real Colleen Leslie Parker. My grandmother read Omar’s words, and the words of Nurse Rachel Hall, as if she had written them herself. 

I watched as my mother became defenseless. She concentrated less on my grandmother’s charges and everything else that was revealed in Omar’s letters and more on the hurt on Patrick’s face and mine.

“I just wanted you to know that someone wanted you,” Colleen explained.

“And what the hell made you think I felt unwanted?”

“Chance, I love you and your brother, very much.”

I laughed at my mother’s admission. I leaned against the wall and stared through her. I guess she’s never wondered why after hearing those exact words from her so many times before, I’ve never returned the sentiment. I would usually respond “Ditto”. For a long time, “I love you” meant nothing to me. Though my mother always said it, that admission had become known as the words that came from my father’s mouth just before or right after I had assisted him in pleasuring himself.

“So all this time you’ve been lying to Patrick and me because you love us?”

“I didn’t lie to you,” Colleen clarified.

“But you lied to me,” Patrick exclaimed.

He stood behind the chair where my grandmother sat, unobtrusively listening and watching the exchange between Colleen and me. My grandmother kept her gaze forward.