Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  He turned to Greta to watch her moving quickly toward the kitchen to get to her coat in the mudroom.

  “Baby,” he called after her, his hand at his back pocket to get out his phone as he followed her.

  “I wasn’t kidding, she gets this, then it’s over,” Greta said, not looking back at him.

  “Not sure this is a good idea,” he told her.

  “There’s half a chance I’ll get back out there and she’ll be gone,” Greta replied, hitting the mudroom and grabbing her coat.

  Time to call Donna.

  This he did at the same time he grabbed his jacket and shrugged it on, following her.

  Donna answered, he gave her the details and he was doing this as he saw Tawnee hadn’t left.

  Greta moved out. Hix moved out after her.

  “Gotta go now,” Hix said into his phone.

  “Be there in ten, max, Hix,” Donna replied, reading the urgency in his tone.

  “Right,” he muttered and hung up.

  Tawnee had her gaze to him.

  “Reckon I’m about to be served, right, Sheriff?” she asked snidely.

  “Is that more important at this juncture than speaking to your daughter?” Hix returned.

  She glared at him then looked to Greta.

  “You got me, Mom. Last chance, after thirty-eight years, to finally give me the answers for why you broke Andy, why you broke Keith and me, why you tried to break Hix and me, eventually broke Keith and never faltered in your quest to do just that to me.”

  “If I could take back what happened to Andy, I would,” Greta’s mother said softly.

  “Well, that makes you about one-sixteenth of a decent person, but nothing happened to Andy except you. You happened to Andy,” Greta told her. “You did that to him so the appropriate words are, ‘if I could take back what I did to Andy, I would.’”

  The soft disappeared.

  “I paid for that, girl,” she hissed.

  Greta shook her head and turned to Hix who was standing just outside the closed door, murmuring, “This is meaningless.”

  He began to move to open the door for her but Tawnee cried, “No! Don’t! I don’t got nothin’, girl. I don’t got nothin’. ’Cept the two of you.”

  Greta gave her mother her attention. “Now give me one reason, one even infinitesimal reason that would make me feel you earned me giving that first crap.”

  She swayed forward like she was going to move toward Greta, and Hix coming forward to stand close to Greta’s back wasn’t what stopped her.

  She stopped herself, her gaze never leaving her daughter.

  “I’m your momma.”

  “You are. And?” Greta prompted.

  Tawnee shook her head. Fast, short, little shakes like she was trying to pry something loose to keep a hold on a daughter she’d never actually had.

  “I was supposed to have a different life,” she said. “Not be knocked up at seventeen and thrown out on my ass by your grandparents.”

  “Were you raped?” Greta asked unemotionally.

  “No,” Tawnee snapped.

  “So you had consensual, unprotected sex with someone, decided not to abort the baby, but instead, do your best to make the whole of her life a misery,” Greta deduced.

  “Look at me,” Tawnee exclaimed, suddenly angry, lifting a hand, finger pointed to her face. “The life I led wasn’t the life meant for me. I was supposed to have more. Be a model. Be a movie star. Be a singer, like you. You got that from me too, Greta. I got chops. Choir director at school said I had more talent than any student he’d seen. I coulda gone the distance. Maybe found a man who’d look after me, the real way, hold me close and not let me go. Then I got you and all my chances were shot to shit.”

  “So because you were attractive, you were supposed to live the big life, not work for it, not earn it, not find a way to be happy with whatever you worked for or earned, but what? Be handed it because you aren’t hard on the eyes? Then when I came along and ruined that, I had to pay for the fact you’re literally criminally conceited?”

  “It’s hard to bounce back from your dreams dyin’,” Tawnee bit out.

  “Sorry. I wouldn’t know about dreams, Mom. The way I grew up, I knew from early never to have any,” Greta retorted.

  At hearing that knowledge, Hix couldn’t beat back his snarl.

  “Well, it’s hard,” Tawnee shot back.

  “You had fourteen years before Andy came along to accomplish that,” Greta noted.

  “And Andy was supposed to do that,” Tawnee spat.

  “Yeah? How?” Greta asked.

  “His daddy was loaded. His daddy also wouldn’t leave his fuckin’ wife to make an honest woman outta me.”

  “Andy’s father is wealthy?” Greta whispered, and Hix put a hand to her hip as he felt a different energy coming from her.

  “Don’t get excited like I did, girl,” Tawnee advised, now sounding world-weary. “He was. He was also twenty-seven years older than me. And now he’s very dead and he gave half his money to that cow he called a wife, and since the bitch couldn’t give him kids, when I could, he gave the other half to some museum or somethin’ so you won’t get blood from that stone. Believe me, I tried.”

  “Did he . . . did he want something to do with Andy?” Greta asked.

  “He wasn’t gettin’ his shot at havin’ a son without puttin’ a ring on it, Greta. God, did I never teach you nothin’?”

  Hix didn’t snarl at that.

  He stared at the woman in shock.

  “So he did,” Greta whispered.

  “In the end, I told him Andy wasn’t his. Asshole believed that fast enough.”

  “What, after you did that, did his wife want DNA and you couldn’t assure he was the daddy?” Greta asked.

  Now the woman was offended. “You take me for a slut, girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus,” Tawnee hissed. “No. ’Cause lawyers like to get paid even before the big payout actually happens, least the good ones do. The other kind are shit and can’t get nothin’ done.”

  “So you actually harassed this poor woman whose husband you slept with in order to take his money, harassing her after the fact in order to take another shot at getting her husband’s money?”

  “Didn’t work,” Tawnee muttered.

  “You do know, Mom, that this isn’t making me feel real good about standing out in the cold listening to your crap.”

  “I was tryin’ to do right by you both,” Tawnee retorted.

  “That wasn’t the way to go about it,” Greta informed her.

  “It was the only way I knew how,” Tawnee snapped.

  Greta let that ludicrousness go and asked, “And my father?”

  “Your father what?” Tawnee asked back.

  “This is the first I’ve ever heard about Andy’s dad. So what about my dad? Who was he? Did you know him? Should I know him?”

  “He was a waste of space,” Tawnee answered. “A punk ass gettin’ his rocks off with an underage girl, and when that had consequences, he scraped me off. I was seventeen, Greta. He was twenty-two. I needed help. He didn’t have a lot but he coulda helped me. He wanted nothin’ to do with you and the fifteen thousand times I asked him to help after I had you, he still wanted nothin’ to do with you. Eventually got himself a wife. Made himself a family. I even showed at their place with you standin’ at my side, holding my hand, and that bitch shut the door in our faces. So fuck him. And fuck her. Because never, not once, did he show, askin’ after his girl. He knew where I was. Where you were. And he didn’t give a single shit. I’d even see their asses out in Denver and he’d look right through me. You were with me, he didn’t even look at you.”

  Greta had no response to that, she just turned her head away and Hix pressed closer to her back.

  “Greta, girl.” Tawnee leaned in and his woman looked back to her mother. “I got nothin’. I got some clothes. That car. Kicked out of my mobile home. Sold all my shit I can sell and I got t
hree hundred and twenty-two bucks in my purse and that’s it. That won’t even get me back to Denver.”

  “So you’re here to give Andy and me presents and ask for gas money,” Greta guessed.

  “I’m here to see my boy, and yes,” she bit off the last word, “my girl for Christmas.”

  “Mom, although you’ve never used this tactic, I’ll warn you now, pretending to be nice won’t work.”

  Tawnee’s voice was rising. “You broke my life.”

  “You broke your own life,” Greta shot back.

  “Then I broke his!” Tawnee screeched.

  Greta went still.

  Hix went still.

  Tawnee stood before them, panting.

  “Do you have any clue . . . any clue . . . ?” Greta’s mother’s head jerked to the side, her hands came up in fists, her head jerked back, and she whispered, “He was so beautiful.”

  “Yes he was,” Greta whispered back. “He still is.”

  “I would . . . I would . . . Sometimes I’d look at the two of you and think God got it wrong. God wouldn’t saddle me with that. God wouldn’t give me the ability to make somethin’ that beautiful and then weigh me down with it. The biggest diamond in the world could be the size of a boulder and you might want it, but you couldn’t wear it on your finger ’cause you couldn’t do nothin’ but that seein’ as it was weighin’ you down.”

  “So we were nothing but a weight,” Greta said quietly.

  “You had babies, you’d get me,” Tawnee replied.

  “I did have a baby, Mom, and the only time in my life growing up with you I felt light was when I was with Andy.”

  Hix got closer to her and slid his hand to her belly.

  “You took him,” Tawnee accused. “You took him and made him yours. You two were so close, even if I tried, I couldn’t get in. It was like I wasn’t even there. Put a roof over your heads, food in your bellies, and both ’a you acted like I was a piece of furniture.”

  “It’s odd to know right now that you felt the same as you made us feel,” Greta remarked coolly.

  “You aren’t gettin’ me. You took my life then you took my boy,” Tawnee stated.

  “You gave me life, Mom, and it was your responsibility to do everything in your power to make it a good one.”

  “You never went hungry, you had clothes on your backs and where’s the thanks for that?” Tawnee sneered.

  “That isn’t even half of it,” Greta retorted. “If you watched me with Andy like you said you did, you’d know.”

  “By then, it was too late. You two had each other and I was the outsider in my own home and there was no turnin’ back.”

  “How can you know? You didn’t even try,” Greta pointed out.

  Tawnee’s focus became acute. “And if I’d tried, would it have made a difference?”

  “We’ll never know since you didn’t,” Greta responded. “You did something entirely different. Do you even have a clue how much pain you’ve caused?”

  “What happened to Andy was an accident,” Tawnee spat.

  “What happened to Andy was an avoidable accident,” Greta returned.

  “You don’t think I live with that every day?” Tawnee asked. “You don’t think that doesn’t eat away at me? You don’t think that’s why it was tough to get up the nerve to go see him, because goin’ to see him meant seein’ right in front of my face what happened to him?”

  “You know, no,” Greta told her. “Until right now, the way you’ve behaved my whole life, Mom, that never occurred to me. But you’re standing here talking to me. You’re standing here trying to explain to me. We both know what you did to Andy was hideous and tragic. What I want to know is why you felt the need to torture me.”

  “You coulda been somethin’ too,” Tawnee fired at her. “You coulda used the looks I gave you, that voice I gave you to go places. You didn’t. But you did manage to hook yourself a man who was rollin’ in it. And what? Every time I came to you for help, you acted like I was a huge pain in your ass. And he was worse. He treated me like a snake in the grass. You ever been treated like that, Greta, you’d know. You’d get it. You’d get pissed about it. So if you think I should feel bad for playin’ with that asshole, you’re wrong. You say your momma didn’t give you dick, but I did, you just never paid attention. But I taught you that too, girl. People treat you like shit, you don’t let that lie. You treat ’em like shit right back and you do it ten times better.”

  “I think you might just be crazy,” Greta whispered.

  Tawnee studied her daughter a beat before she said, “You don’t understand me.”

  “No, I don’t,” Greta confirmed.

  “You’ll never understand me,” Tawnee stated.

  “No, I won’t,” Greta agreed.

  “You don’t want my present,” Tawnee went on.

  “No, I don’t,” Greta repeated.

  “Andy won’t want his either.”

  “No, he won’t.”

  “So we know. We know what I always knew. I’m standin’ here in front of you, tryin’, and you’re throwin’ it in my face,” she kept at Greta.

  Greta didn’t flinch or hesitate.

  “Yes, I am.”

  Tawnee’s focus intensified on her daughter’s face and her shoulders straightened before she decreed, “You also don’t understand I made you what you are. All you are, Greta. From your looks right down to your grit. I gave you all ’a that, girl.”

  “You’re forced through the seven circles of hell, you get to the other side, you don’t turn and thank the seven circles of hell for making you pull up the fortitude to endure. You take hold of what you earned after you got free and you get as far away from them as you can. Unfortunately, my seven circles live and breathe and can drive a car, so they keep following me.”

  “Well, that’ll be done now, Greta,” Tawnee spat.

  “Finally, something from you that I actually want.”

  Tawnee’s head jerked, her mane of fake, golden curls jerking with it.

  Before either of them could say more, Hix cut in.

  He did it because it was time.

  He also did it because Donna’s Ram had parked at the curb and she was out, making her way up his walk.

  “I think this has run its course,” he stated. “Now, Ms. Dare, you’re about to be served. If you break the protection order you’re about to receive, I’ll charge you with criminal harassment and I’ll talk with our prosecutor to see you serve time. The maximum is five years. The good part of that is, it won’t matter you only have three hundred and twenty-two dollars since your accommodation will be courtesy of the state. The bad part of that is, your accommodation will be courtesy of the state.”

  Donna had arrived while he spoke and she lifted up the envelope with the order in it that Tawnee automatically accepted when he stopped.

  “This protection order lasts fourteen days,” Hix continued. “The minute it expires, we’ll be requesting a permanent one from the judge. I can’t speak for him, but he’s not been feeling beneficent these days, especially about the fact that people keep fucking with Greta. So my guess is, he’ll grant it. You can’t be within one hundred yards of her. If you are, I’ll do everything I can to put you in prison. If you harass Andy, we’ll get a protection order for him too. And after your scene at Sunnydown, the photos the judge saw that you took of Greta, the effort you clearly put into that, and the statement he read from Greta’s ex-husband as to how you used those, I doubt Judge Bereford will deny that request. So my suggestion is, get out of Glossop, get out of McCook and don’t come back.”

  Slowly, Tawnee’s gaze went from studying the envelope to Hix.

  Then it went to Greta.

  Hix waited. He felt Greta waiting. Donna didn’t know what was happening but she also waited.

  He didn’t know what he expected. He didn’t expect much. The woman was what she was. She was also a mother.

  So he expected something.

  Greta probably expected noth
ing.

  And that was what she got when Tawnee turned to his steps, walked down them, right to her car. She got in, slammed the door, started it up, pulled out into the street and drove away.

  She didn’t even say goodbye.

  “Okay, that woman is, well . . . that woman,” Donna started after the silence of Tawnee’s departure stretched long. “But I’m not feelin’ even a low hum of Christmas spirit on this porch. What’d she do now?”

  “She gave me the only thing of value she’s ever given me,” Greta answered.

  Donna looked to his woman. “What’s that?”

  “She left,” Greta answered, pulled from his hold, walked around him and into his house.

  Hix looked to the door she closed behind her and then to his friend.

  “It wasn’t even half as much fun to serve her as I thought it would be,” she quipped worriedly, watching him closely.

  “Thanks for comin’ out, Donna.”

  “Think you best get in there and look after your woman, Hixon,” she replied quietly.

  He nodded.

  She turned to leave.

  He went into his house.

  Greta was standing in the doorway to the kitchen pulling the strap of her purse over her shoulder.

  “I have my coat on, might as well go get Andy,” she announced. “If we missed anything, I’ll go get it. Andy likes going to the store.”

  “Just a minute,” he replied, moved to her and got in her space, putting his hands to either side of her neck and bowing his back so he could set his face in hers. “You okay?”

  “Yep.”

  “That was rough,” he noted.

  “No it wasn’t. It’s just her.”

  Carefully, he reminded her, “Can’t believe it, we never talked about it, but it’s clear that’s the first time she spoke to you about your dad.”

  “I don’t have a dad, Hixon. Just a swimming bunch of cells that came out of some random guy I never met and never want to meet. It isn’t a loss, darlin’. Honestly. You can’t lose something you’ve never had.”

  “Babe—”

  “It’s done. To rejoice would give her time and emotion, which she doesn’t deserve. To be sad or angry would be the same. She clearly kept the trump of knowledge of our fathers close at hand, ready to use when she needed it, but that backfired because they gave us less than even she did, which is saying something. They gave up on us so easily, it’s clearly no loss.” Her shoulders shrugged. “And now, it’s over. I suppose when you finally swat the annoying fly that’s been bugging you for hours, you take a moment to feel the satisfaction of it being gone. Then you get on with shit. I’m getting on with shit. It’s Christmas Eve’s Eve. I’m gonna go get my baby brother.”