Jagged

Xenia got those, too.

In fact, if Xenia had had another twenty years or so, I figured she’d look a lot like Mom.

I made it to her table and asked, “Get you a drink?”

“Zara—” she started, but I pinned her to the stool with my eyes and she abruptly stopped.

I knew my face was hard and my eyes unfriendly.

I also didn’t care.

“Get you a drink?” I repeated.

She leaned into her hands on her purse and kept hold of my eyes. “Honey, please. I came here to talk to you and it’s real important you hear what I have to say.”

“Not to be a bitch,” I began, intending to be just that, “but, lookin’ back, I’m not sure you ever had anything to say that was real important.”

She closed her eyes through her flinch and I felt something I didn’t want to feel flow through me.

Guilt.

Guilt at hurting my mother and more guilt for doing it intentionally.

But she kept my nephew from me and I didn’t have it in me to let that slide.

Still, I hated doing it, so I needed to get out of there.

“Now, Mom, can I get you a drink?” I asked yet again.

She opened her eyes and I saw the effort it took her to straighten her shoulders before she announced, “Your father isn’t real happy you’re back together with that man.”

That man.

Dad had called Ham that back in the day, time and again, even though I’d corrected him dozens of times, telling him Ham’s name.

I hated it then and I hated it no less now.

“Lucky for me, just like back then, I’m of the age of consent and can choose who I spend my time with,” I told Mom. “Now, if you want to stay, you really need to order a drink. Ham’s the manager. His job is to sell booze and he frowns on people hanging out, taking up tables, and not spending money.”

“I… well, you know I don’t imbibe,” Mom told me and I did know that. I also never understood it. She wasn’t militant antibooze but I’d never seen her even take a sip of wine. And that was even before Xenia went off the rails. Truthfully, even knowing it was wrong to think, what with my sister being a junkie alcoholic, with the life Mom led with Dad, I figured she could use a drink or two to get her through.

“We have soft drinks,” I shared then I suggested, “Or the other option is you can leave.”

She leaned farther into me, taking a hand from her purse and stretching it across the table toward me, palm flat. I looked down at it like it was a snake about to strike but held my ground.

“Your father’s real worried about what you and that man have planned in regards to Zander,” she informed me, and I looked back to her. “Zander’s in a good place. He doesn’t need any upheaval.”

I felt my throat start burning with the effort to hold back the torrent of words that were getting caught in it.

“Are you kidding me?” I hissed and she leaned back, her hand sliding with her.

“Wilona never had kids,” Mom stated. “Couldn’t. She was over-the-moon happy she had her chance to raise a baby even if she did it later in life.”

“Aunt Wilona is a nasty bitch only one step down on the nasty level from Aunt Dahlia and you know that because she’s had not one nice thing to say about you in nearly forty years,” I reminded her. “You were never good enough for Dad and she let you know it every chance she got.”

And this was true. I’d heard it. Neither Aunt Wilona nor Aunt Dahlia had made even a vague attempt to hide these comments from Xenia, me, or Mom.

Even in the light of the bar I saw her face get pale, acknowledging this as truth before she said, “She may be a bit hard, Zara, but I promise, she’s good with Zander.”

At that, it was my turn to lean in. “If she was, then why has his aunt been livin’ a county away and he has no clue I exist?” I locked eyes with her. “And he doesn’t, does he, Mom? He has no idea his aunt has been as close as I am. Happy to spend time with him. Happy to tell him, when he was old enough to hear, which would be about now, how his Mom had a beautiful laugh. How everyone liked her. How she had a way with tellin’ a scary story and she knew a million jokes and she had a way of tellin’ those, too. How she had soft hair and shining eyes and she was lookin’ forward to bringin’ him into this world. And how tragic that the one thing in her life she looked forward to was the most important thing she ever had a shot at and she didn’t get it.”

“Please don’t,” Mom whispered. “You know all this is hard on me.”

Was she crazy?

“Hard on you?” I asked, my voice pitching higher and louder. “I lost my sister.”

“I lost my daughter,” she replied, her voice trembling, her eyes getting bright.

I leaned in farther.

“Well, I win because I lost my nephew, too,” I spat.

“Zara—”

“And something else I lost, not that I had much of it in the first place, was any minute amount of respect I still had for you. You knew the deal that was struck. You knew Xenia and I were close. You know what Dad’s like. You knew I wanted to be a part of my nephew’s life. You also knew he was livin’ not far away from me for the last nine years and you never told me.”

“Your father—” she began.

“Yeah,” I snapped. “My father would lose his mind if you went against his wishes and that might put you in a world of hurt.” I leaned back and threw out an arm, my tone turning sarcastic. “And we wouldn’t want that, would we? No way Amy Cinders would put anything on the line for her girls, or apparently her firstborn daughter’s son.”

Another flinch, this one I did not give one shit about, before she rallied with, “You knew how it was.”

“Yeah, I did. I knew exactly how it was for eighteen years because no one shielded me from any of that shit except my sister,” I shot back.

“Get out.”

Mom’s eyes flew over my shoulder and I turned to look, even though from that low, incensed rumble I knew what I would see and I was right. Ham was positioning himself close to my back but his infuriated eyes were locked on Mom.

“I got a right to refuse service,” he stated. “And I’m exerting that right. Get out.”

“Please, um… Mr. Reece?” Mom started and I looked back to her to see she’d slid off her stool and was looking beseechingly up at Ham. “I was trying to have a word with Zara and it’s good you’re here because you should know, too, that Xavier isn’t very happy about what you two might be—”

Ham interrupted her, repeating, “Get out.”

“Really, I need you to listen to me,” Mom begged.

“And, ma’am, I really need you to get the fuck out before I’m forced to eject you myself, and do not test me. I got enough years in bars, I won’t hurt you while I do it but that doesn’t mean you won’t be set out,” Ham returned.

Mom looked at Ham and then looked at me and saw she’d get no help from me so she reached for her purse.

Ham wasn’t done, however.

“Also, a warning, and you take this to your husband. Things are about to get ugly and I mean that legally. You do yourself no favors, and I’d share it with him, if you harass Zara anywhere, but especially at work. You do, we’ll be keepin’ track of that shit startin’ now and you might wanna think of what a judge will think of you keepin’ a boy from his aunt and then hasslin’ her when she decides she doesn’t like that much and does somethin’ about it.”

“So you are. You are gonna fight for Zander,” Mom breathed, eyes wide, face pale, terror written all over her features.

“Know the concept is foreign to you,” Ham replied cuttingly. “But yeah, we’re gonna fight for that boy. We’re