Reaper's Property(19)

I stood and hugged her.
“Hey, Mama,” I whispered into her hair, which looked fantastic even though she didn’t have any styling stuff or anything. How did her hair look better in jail than mine did after two hours fixing it? Just another part of the mystery that was my crazy, loving, incredibly-difficult-at-times mother.
“Hey, baby,” she replied, holding me tight. She smelled a little like cigarettes, which I know a lot of people find disgusting but I find strangely comforting—so long as it’s not totally filling our trailer with smoke. It made me think of when she’d come home late at night after work when we were little. She’d walk into the bedroom I shared with Jeff and kiss us both good night. That little hint of smoke was the smell of comfort and safety.
We separated and took seats.
“So how’s it going with you?” she asked. I’d put on lots of foundation to cover my bruises but her eyes flickered across them. “Gary?”
“Yeah,” I said, flushing. “I was stupid, went back there alone to get some stuff. He was drunk.”
Her mouth tightened, eyes filling with tears of anger or frustration, I couldn’t tell which.
“I wish I was out of here,” she said. “I’d kill that bastard.”
“Mom! Don’t talk like that, they’re probably listening—they’ll think you mean it.”
She cocked an eyebrow at me and I knew she meant every word. Mom had a temper, no question. That’s what got her here in the first place. But I loved the fact that she always protected her chicks, back when we were little and now too. My mom wasn’t perfect, but the woman could be an avenging angel when she needed to be, something more than one school bully had learned the hard way.
“He won’t be bothering me again,” I said quickly. “A friend of mine had some words with him.”
“Friend?” she asked.
“Um, actually a friend of Jeff’s. He’s a biker.”
“I see,” Mom said. “Since when does Jeff hang out with bikers? Gamers are more his speed, I’d think.”
“Ever since I moved back to the trailer,” I replied, shrugging. “He’s doing some kind of work for them. I don’t know the details.”
“They good bikers or bad bikers?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
I laughed nervously.
“Um, they’re good to me. Kind of rough and they can get scary, but I’m okay with them.”
Her eyes narrowed, studying me. I shifted nervously, blushing again. Mom always saw right through me.
“Just ‘getting along’ or something more?” she asked. I shrugged again and she smirked.
“Well, be careful. Bikers can be great, but the hardcore guys are living in a different world from us.”
“Yeah, I picked up on that,” I said wryly. “It’s nothing serious, mostly just flirting.”
She didn’t need to know all the details. Does anyone really want to tell their mom about their best orgasm ever?
“I’ve got news of my own,” she replied with a gleam in her eye. Uh-oh, I recognized that gleam.
“What?” I asked, unnerved.
“Well, I’ve reconnected with someone,” she said. “A man. We’re getting serious.”
That caught my attention.
“How on earth are you doing that from jail?” I exclaimed. “I swear, you’re like a magnet, how do you get so many guys after you?”
She giggled, looking years younger than her age.
“Well, I may be getting old but I’m not dead yet,” she replied. “He came to see me not too long after I got in here. In fact, he’s been visiting me a couple times a week.”
“Who?”
“John Benson.”
“No way,” I muttered, stunned. “John Benson, our landlord?”
”Yeah,” she said, looking sheepish. “You may not know this, but he and I had a thing a long time ago…”
“I know,” I replied. “I also know he was married.”
She had the grace to look embarrassed.
“Well, I’ve made mistakes. But you should know we both felt guilty. That’s why we ended it. His wife never knew. She’s been dead for about three years now, car accident. John and I had been avoiding each other for so long it became a habit, but I guess when he read about me in the paper he started thinking about me.”
Only my mother would end up finding love by trying to run over two cops. Clearly, John Benson was an idiot.
“He wants me to marry him.”
I shook my head, unsure what to say. Finally I managed to speak.
“Well, I guess that’s good, Mom. How does he feel about what happened?”
“He knows I have my issues, but I’m sober now, which has helped me sort things out,” she said. That was true—she’d joined AA even before her little incident. We’d confronted her about her drinking after Jeff found her passed out outside the trailer in the snow last winter. It was a miracle she survived. “I’ve realized now that I need to deal with my emotions or I get…upset.”
That was the understatement from hell.
“Aren’t you supposed to stay out of relationships your first year of AA?”
“It’ll be almost a full year by the time I get out,” she replied. “I’d get out a little earlier for good behavior, but they’re not cutting me any slack because of the cop thing.”
We looked at each other, both thinking back to that day. She sighed.
“I never do anything halfway, do I?”