Don't Let Go(50)

“Not your business,” he said quietly.
“Not my business?” I said, scoffing. “He’s my son.”
Johnny Mack shook his head. “You gave up the right to call him that—”
“I said enough!” Noah said, making me jump. He came up to the bar beside me and splayed both hands wide on the counter. “Stop being an ass, Dad, it’s beneath you.”
Johnny Mack’s expression was priceless. Like Noah, not too many people talked to him that way. I watched his jaw muscles work and he sucked in a breath through his nose.
“I always assumed Jules had these pictures too,” Noah said. Why on earth didn’t you—”
“I know why you didn’t share them with me,” I said, cutting Noah off, tears burning my eyes and throat again. “You’ve made that quite clear through the years.”
I felt Noah’s hand come up to the back of my neck, and I watched Johnny Mack’s eyes narrow as he took it in as well. Just the fact that it bothered him gave me courage.
“How could you hate me that much?” I asked, my voice dropping to almost a whisper as I braved out the question I’d wanted to ask for years. Emotion shook my words as they left my mouth. “Do you even remember loving me?”
He looked like he wanted to chew barbed wire as his eyes made a quick dart around the room. “You threw that away when you let that boy go.”
“I was seventeen,” I said, louder than I intended to, tears tracking down my cheeks. “Doing what my mom and dad said was best to do. I didn’t want it that way, but I was too scared to say no. They sent me to that god-awful place to show me what being a teenage mother would be like, remember? I was fifty different kinds of terrified.”
“I would have helped you,” he said, sudden emotions coming to his face, mixed with the old anger.
“Until I told you no about something,” I said. “Until I pissed you off. You’re no better than they were. So I did what I did. And everyone left me.” I moved away so that Noah’s hand would drop. “I lost my son, I lost Noah, my parents went in denial, and you spent the next twenty-six years making damn sure I paid for my sins.” I slammed a fist on the counter in front of him. “And how dare you insult my daughter today.”
His mouth worked and then clamped shut before he sighed with irritability. “I was out of line with that comment earlier, I apologize,” he said, staring at coasters on the counter instead of looking at me. It sounded forced, but I didn’t care.
“Jules said the adoption was sealed, Dad,” Noah said, laying a hand on his open wallet. “How’d you pull that off?”
Johnny Mack grabbed a bar cloth and wiped the length of what he could reach, then gave up with a sigh, rested his hands on the cloth and met my eyes. “Your mother gave them to me.”

? ? ?

For the first time in years, there was no animosity in his eyes. No hate. Just—a giving up of sorts. Giving up my mother. Throwing her under the bus. It wasn’t possible. My mother was controlling and had done many questionable things in the name of “taking care of people,” but it was too far outside the realm of belief.
I shook my head as every nerve ending on my body woke up. “I don’t believe you.”
Johnny Mack shrugged. “That’s your choice, but it’s the truth.”
“How?” Noah said, moving closer to me again. As if he sensed my impending breakdown.
Johnny Mack met his son’s gaze and then looked off into the diner, avoiding my hard stare.
“Mary arranged that as part of the adoption,” he said. “That correspondence and two copies of photographs a year would be sent to her, and her only, until he was twenty-one.” He darted a look my way and then just as quickly feigned interest in his rag. “She always gave me the second one. I sent them to Noah.”
The trembling started at my core, like all warmth had left my body. I gripped the counter to stem it, but it just got worse.
“Why—” Noah began, his voice hoarse. “Why would they agree to that?”
“Mary set up a trust in his name in exchange for it,” Johnny Mack said, not looking at either of us.
“No,” I whispered. “That’s not—” I shook my head, unable to believe that she would have done that to me.
“Why didn’t anyone tell Jules about this?” Noah asked, voicing the question I couldn’t seem to push out of my mouth. “Or me, for that matter? I didn’t know any of that. Dad!” he yelled, when Johnny Mack didn’t answer, making the old man jump and turn to face him. “Why?”
“Because Mary didn’t think she could handle it,” Johnny Mack said with a snarl to his voice and lips. “Okay?” He turned and looked me dead in the eye with both irritation and pity. “I didn’t want to say that out loud, but there, you feel better knowing that? She made me promise not to tell you about the pictures or anything related to the boy. She said it was better for you to move on.”
My stomach roiled against its contents as every muscle contracted. I grasped Noah’s wallet and backed up, running into a customer who I heard offer apologies but I couldn’t see. All I could see was Johnny Mack’s face, looking at me with something related to remorse, as if saying it all out loud somehow finally highlighted the insanity of it.
Better for me.
I sucked in air as what felt like my mother’s final blow knocked the wind from my chest, and as I turned for the door, I suddenly felt weightless. Blackness tinged the edges of my waterlogged vision, sounds of chatter started to echo, and as I reached for the knob it disappeared.