Page 110 of Almost Beautiful (Beautiful 3)

The recliner squeaked when I shifted against its cushions, but Mom didn’t seem to hear it over her instant annoyance at my question.

“That’s an odd thing to ask your mother, don’t you think?”

“Not if she left without as much as a note a few months before my high school graduation.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, pulling a cigarette box from her purse and fumbling with the flip-top lid.

“You can’t smoke in here.”

“I can’t?” she asked, pulling a cigarette from the box and lighting it. She didn’t lose eye contact with me as she took a puff and blew it into the air.

My lips pressed together in a thin line. I stood up, opened the door and waved my hands through the cloud of smoke. “Whyare you here? If you need money, you’re out of luck. We’re doing good just to pay our bills.”

Her eyes lost focus as she stared forward and took another drag. “Oh. I haven’t had luck shine on me in a long time, Abby.”

She’d had that same defeated look on her face when she’d stand in the doorway of the kitchen, watching Mick teach me how to play poker.

I’d always wondered what thoughts were behind her hopeless eyes. If she blamed me, too, for Mick’s winning streak going as dry as the desert that surrounded our trailer home.

“So,” she said, cupping her palm and ashing into it. “I hear you’re a married woman, now.”

“Better be careful, Mom, you’re starting to sound like you actually care.”

Mom narrowed her eyes at me, but she didn’t break character. For the moment, she was cool, aloof, calm Bonnie. Five minutes later, she could be in tears, screaming, or laughing. It was hard to tell.

Regardless, it was surreal to have her sitting across from me after so much time had passed with no word. Not even a fucking birthday card.

“I heard about the fire,” Mom said.

“What about it?”

“I’m glad you’re okay. Mark and Pam said America was terrified that you’d be there.”

I shrugged. “They didn’t know that we’d eloped to Vegas.”

Mom nodded. “I see. Interesting, that you’d pick Vegas. You couldn’ta went to the Justice of the Peace, or Reno, or—”

“You can get married in Vegas any time of day, and we didn’t want to stress over the flights or itinerary.”

“Sounds like you,” she said, blowing more smoke into the air.

I stood, snatched the cigarette from her mouth and drench it in the sink before throwing it into the trash. The calendar on the wall worked well enough to waft the smoke out the door, but I knew Travis would still smell it when he got home.

“That was rude as hell,” she said, watching me try to work the smoke outside.

“Not half as rude as you smoking in my apartment without permission. Now,” I said, slamming the door shut. “You’ve seen for yourself that I’m okay. Anything else?”

“I just … I wanted to tell you I love you.”

“You … what?”

“No girl—no matter what’s happened—should go through life thinking her mother doesn’t love her. I know I walked out on you. I know I was drunk more often than I was sober, I know I was a shit mother, but it wasn’t because I didn’t love you. It was because I didn’t love me.”

“What is this, some kind of twelve-step apology bullshit?”

Mom stood. “Nope. I’m still a drunk. I told you, I heard about the fire, and this was just something I felt like I needed to do. You can believe it or not, give me the finger, tell me to leave and never come back. Hell, I’m surprised you opened the door. But you did, and I’m here, and I said what I needed to say. I love you. I always have. Always will. You were the perfect child and you didn’t deserve who you got stuck with as parents. I don’t expect you to want to start spending holidays together—I have no expectations, really—I just wanted to say that. Probably hard to believe after dealing with Mick all these years, but that’s all.”

“I can believe it. You left the first time with just the clothes on your back. After that, you never asked for money, even after the news articles came out.”