Keep Me If You Can (If You Can #3)

27. Fucking Excuse Me?!

Chapter twenty-seven

Fucking Excuse Me?!

W hen all was said and done, it was the government that sold me out.

“Don’t mess with the tax man,” my mom said, laughing as I stared at her incredulously.

“But I never even filed any taxes,” I said.

“Well first of all, you should have,” she said. “And second of all, yes you did.”

“I think I would know if I filed taxes, Mom,” I said.

“I think I would know if I prepared your tax return every year and you signed it without looking even though I’ve always told you not to sign anything without reading it,” she shot back.

I opened my mouth with the assumption that I’d think of a response, but I didn’t.

“The first red flag was that you never got a T4 for the job you apparently had,” she said. “But your father also called to discuss the tuition credit, so—”

“Dad called you?!” I asked.

“Well, Pierre called,” she said. “I haven’t spoken to your father for years because he knows I’ll hang up on him. So he gets Pierre to do it, since Pierre is slightly more tolerable. Though I wouldn’t necessarily piss on him if he was on fire, either.”

“So you knew,” I said. “The whole time.”

She nodded.

“You never said anything.”

My mom nodded again. “I thought about it. Trust me. After Pierre called, there were a few times I almost rented a car and drove myself to Ottawa to scream at you. And you know how I feel about driving. But once I’d calmed down, I thought about how you’re my daughter.”

I must have looked confused, because she snickered and put her hand over mine.

“You know what I did after I got pregnant and my parents said they’d never approve of me marrying Max because he was bad fucking news?”

“Married him?” I guessed.

“Married him,” she repeated, nodding. “And what did you do when I made it clear you should never ask your dad for money?”

“Asked Dad for money,” I whispered.

She smiled wryly. “I spent over a decade fighting to prove I’d done the right thing like I hadn’t been second-guessing myself from the moment I let your dad put a ring on my finger.”

“You never loved him at all?” I asked.

It makes me nauseous to admit, but I… did .” She made a disgruntled noise that sounded a bit like a retch. “I loved him in a way. But when I finally gave in and admitted I should’ve never married him, I told your grandma I was leaving and you know what she said?”

“She told you so?”

“Yep.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Ugh.”

“There’s a reason I haven’t seen your grandparents since.” My mom looked down at her hands, tapping her fingertips on the table. “I love you more than I despise your father. I wasn’t about to do something that made him the reason you walked away from me.”

I stared into my glass of wine, not sure what to say.

“I know I messed up when I refused to let you ask him for help,” she said. “Am I thrilled you lied to me for four years? Of course not. But seeing as I would’ve done the same thing, I can’t say shit, Daughter of Mine. I just wanted what was best for you and part of me didn’t want to remember that while he might’ve been my husband, he was your father . There’s a big difference.”

“I would fucking hope so,” I muttered.

My mom cackled, sipping her wine before grabbing the bottle and topping both of our glasses up. “Look, I’m never going to like the man. What happened with us was too deep. But being ten years removed from it all makes it easier to look back and see that he tried, in his own way. He just… he didn’t know how.” She paused to sip her wine, so I took a sip too. “You know, I always thought his dad murdered his mother.”

Wine spurted out of my mouth. My mom handed me a napkin, continuing even as I coughed.

“I don’t know for sure, and obviously your father would’ve never known. He was young. But it was one of those suspicious ‘accidents’ that never got looked into, and then his dad remarried within months.” She shrugged. “I met his stepmom once, at his father’s funeral. I swear to God, they based Cruella de Vil on the woman. And his dad was no better. Your father never forgave him for—” She stopped, frowning. “This probably isn’t something we should be talking about.”

“I mean, maybe it is,” I said.

She twisted her mouth to the side, then sighed. “Look, it’s one of those things that even sitting here, knowing how much I despise him, I can’t help but hurt for him. But at least when I knew him, he always— always —used it to justify not being better than he was. And I don’t want to tell you this if it’s going to guilt you into accepting anything less than full respect from him.”

My stomach clenched as I thought about earlier that night, when I’d thought JP was doing the same thing to me. “It won’t.”

There was another moment of hesitation, but after taking a long sip of wine, my mom told me the story.

And no, it didn’t excuse how my dad treated me.

But if it wasn’t for the fact that he was my dad, I might have felt empathy for what he’d gone through.

Because he’d learned when he was younger than me that everyone had a price. And he’d learned it after his high school girlfriend had gotten pregnant—since apparently all the problems in my dad’s life revolved around him not being able to keep it in his pants, which was kind of horrifying to think about considering where all my problems were currently stemming from—and his father found the amount of money it would take for that girl to end the pregnancy and leave my dad.

Even though he’d loved her.

He’d wanted to be with her.

So much that he was going to give up everything to run away with her.

So yeah, I got it. And yeah, it explained a bit of his reaction earlier that day.

But it didn’t take away how much it hurt.

“When I finally said I couldn’t do it anymore, he was desperate for me not to take you,” my mom said as I polished off my wine. “But I told him he had eleven years to prove he could be better than his father and I couldn’t watch him use you to try to fix himself. And maybe that wasn’t what he was doing. He’s misguided, but he tried to do what he could with what he had. And really”—she paused to take a sip of wine—“that’s what I tried to do, too.”

“Yeah, except I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t call me a stupid slut in front of a bunch of people because you found out I might be pregnant,” I said because I was tired and emotional and a little too drunk to think properly.

“No, probably not,” my mom said, surprisingly nonchalant. “But to be fair, I told you this whole story before just now remembering that he’s about as appealing as a turtle shit dildo and also, fucking excuse me ?!”

My eyes shot up as her voice rose in both volume and rage. “Wait, I—”

“He called you—wait, are you—” She didn’t even finish speaking, just lurched forward and yanked my wine glass towards her, some of it sloshing out from the force of her movement. “You can’t drink when—”

“I’m not ,” I said. “I just thought I might be and Dad… Dad found out.”

My mom looked at me, patches of red on her cheeks and a doubtful look on her face before she slowly slid the wine glass back to me.

“Nellie,” she said calmly. “I need you to please explain right now what. The. Actual. Fuck .”

And so I explained what the actual fuck, that my period had been late and I’d freaked out and I’d called someone to bring me a pregnancy test, only my dad had seen them leaving it for me and found it before I could, and he’d lost his shit on me in front of everyone.

Which didn’t give much more context than what I’d first blurted out, so unfortunately, my mom had follow-up questions.

“Who… I mean…” She tapped her hands on the table. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No,” I said.

She lifted an eyebrow. “So who—”

“This guy. That I had an arrangement with.” My face was burning. “It’s over now.”

She folded her arms. “Some guy? How did you know him? Because if you were only going to Montreal for stuff with your dad, there are only so many types of men you’d be seeing, and—”

“It’s not like that,” I said.

“He’s not some rich little fucker who wouldn’t treat you the way you deserve to be treated?”

I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. “He… I mean, he’s a good guy.”

“Nellie—”

“It was JP. JP Marchand.” I rubbed my thumb against my forefinger. “From next door.”

That didn’t seem to be better than whatever she was picturing. “The little mini brown-noser version of Jean-Luc?”

I snorted. “He’s not like his dad.”

“No? He didn’t become some big-shot lawyer working at his dad’s firm like they’d always planned?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Nellie!”

“He just quit because he didn’t agree with his dad on a pretty nasty client.” I folded my arms. “Also he stood up for me to Dad.”

She nodded slowly. “Alright. And you and JP are…?”

“Just fri—” I stopped myself. “Nothing.”

“Nellie.”

“It was just supposed to be for fun,” I said. “He caught feelings, so it’s over.”

She frowned. “Why is it—”

“I don’t want to talk about JP,” I said.

She lifted a hand in concession. “That’s fine. I have other things to focus on. Like waking Jack up so he can drive me to Montreal to kill your father.”

I tried not to laugh. “You can’t kill him.”

“I can do anything,” she said.

“You’d leave a baby fatherless?”

“Hon, I know it’s hard to hear, but you’re a couple weeks away from twenty-two. You’re not a baby anymore.”

“Not me,” I said. “The other baby.”

My mom paused, then lifted her glass to her lips and drained it. She stood up, but instead of going to wake Jack so she could go to Montreal and kill my dad, she went to the fridge and got another bottle of wine. Returning to the table, she twisted the cap off and the sound of liquid glugging from the bottle filled the kitchen. Once her glass was full nearly to the brim, she set the bottle down, put the cap back on, and lifted her glass again to take a long swig.

“The what now?” she asked after setting it down again.

“Dad’s fiancée is pregnant. Except she might be leaving him over this whole thing. Actually, I think you’d almost like Kimberlee.”

When all was said and done, we went through two bottles of wine and even though she stopped threatening to kill him, I had to stop my mom from trying to call my dad three times. I don’t know if she actually would have, but it didn’t matter; the fact that she was willing to do it at all healed something I wasn’t fully aware had been scarred. And between that and the wine, I finally broke down and sobbed about everything while my mom hugged me.

And wasn’t that really the whole reason I’d been drawn there?

We ended up sleeping in my room, I think partly because my mom didn’t want to wake up Jack—who was obviously sleeping in her room—and mostly because she wanted to tell me about Jack, now that I knew about him.

“Persistent little fucker,” she slurred as we curled up in bed. “Told him eighty bazillion times he was just a baby and now look at me. Smitten like a fucking school girl.”

He was indeed the owner of Jack’s Cafe in the same shopping complex that my mom’s liquor store was in, despite being only twenty-seven. It had always been his dream, he’d said, and when he came into some unexpected money, it was the first thing he thought of.

“He makes me feel pretty,” she mumbled.

“He better, or I’ll kick his butt,” I replied.

“ Shh ,” my mom hissed, giggling. “These walls haven’t gotten any thicker since you moved out. He might hear you and he has to work early tomorrow. Or, well… today.”

“I can hear you,” came a muffled but sleepy response from the other room. “And don’t worry. I’d kick my butt, too.”

We giggled ourselves to sleep and it wasn’t until the next morning, when I woke up feeling better about life in general and worse than I would have if I hadn’t gone through two bottles of wine with my mom over the course of a huge, life-altering conversation, that I thought of something else I wanted to talk to her about.

“Hey, did you ever think I might have ADHD?” I asked my mom after Jack had dropped by with breakfast and coffee for us, earning my absolute but still somewhat conditional approval to keep dating my mom.

My mom snorted into her poppyseed muffin. “Oh, God. This again?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Again?”

“Oh, some teacher thought you had it when we were still in Montreal.” She took a bite of the muffin. “She had it out for you. You were just being a kid who was going through some stuff at the time and she didn’t like that you wouldn’t sit down and listen.”

I picked at the croissant I’d been dipping in my coffee, not looking at her. “I’m getting assessed in a couple of weeks.”

She sighed, tearing off another piece of muffin but not putting it in her mouth. “Nell, you know I’m always gonna think you’re extraordinary, but medically, you’re perfectly normal. You were a normal kid who had normal behaviour problems and found normal solutions. Just because you have some quirks here or there doesn’t mean you’re sick in the head.”

“It’s not a sickness,” I said.

She waved it off. “Whatever. I mean—”

“No. Not ‘whatever.’” I frowned down at my croissant. “You’re making it sound like there’s something wrong with me when it’s just how my brain works.”

“You don’t even know if that’s true.”

“Mom.” I looked up at her. “Even if I don’t have it, it’s not how you should refer to it.”

She lifted her hands in surrender. “Fine. But regardless, I mean that I don’t want you to be disappointed if you don’t get the answer you want.”

“I don’t want any particular answer,” I said. “I just want an answer .”

“Well, I’m no doctor, but my answer is you don’t have it. You know why?”

“Because you don’t believe in it?” I asked, trying not to sound dejected.

She shook her head. “Whether I do or not doesn’t matter. What does is that you and I are like two peas in a pod.” She popped the rest of her muffin in her mouth. “And if I don’t have ADHD, Daughter of Mine, you don’t have ADHD either.”