Page 41 of Fierce-Jax (Fierce Matchmaking #18)

TRYING TO UNDERSTAND

“ I think you’re making a mistake,” her mother said two weeks later.

“You’ve said that a few times,” Dillion said. “But it’s my decision and I could have come alone, but I didn’t.”

She’d gotten the letter from Martha Cannon a few days after the thirty-day mark just as she’d expected. Not from an attorney, but listing an attorney’s name and stating that she’d like to meet and talk first, and if they didn’t, within three weeks she’d start the legal process.

She’d told Jax about the letter.

She’d passed it on to Trent.

Then she’d reached out to Martha via certified mail to meet this afternoon an hour outside of Durham for lunch.

She’d told no one what she was doing at first.

But she didn’t want everyone pissed at her and realized that it’d be stupid on her part to go alone.

“I would have kicked your ass if you came alone,” her mother said. “You have no idea what you’re walking into. Neither of us does. I’m scared. How come you’re not?”

She looked at her mother next to her in the car. “Do you think I’m not? It’s why we are sitting here and waiting for her to arrive to see if she’s alone or not. My letter said alone, mother to mother.”

“But I’m with you,” her mother argued.

“And you’re a mother. And Gianna’s grandmother. I don’t want Alec’s father here. If he’s with her, we aren’t going in. If it comes back to bite me in the ass for doing this, then so be it.”

“It shouldn’t. If you said only her and he shows up. But again, you didn’t say I was coming.”

“I worded it so that we’d be covered,” she said.

“I’m a mother. Got it.”

“There she is,” she said, pointing to the woman she’d searched for on social media to see what she looked like. “She looks to be alone and we’ve been sitting here for thirty minutes.”

“She’s early. We’ve got fifteen minutes. Are we going to stay here or go in?”

“We are waiting until exactly noon,” she said. “Just in case someone else goes in.”

She’d seen what Alec’s sister, Alison, looked like too on social media. Nothing alike in her eyes. But she figured with the three hours they’d had to drive, they would have come in one car.

Her mother’s foot was shaking the car it was moving so fast. “How can you be so calm?”

“I’m not,” she said. “But I’m not showing it. How would you like to go to the doctor and see them shaking and moving around the room full of nerves with a scalpel in their hand?”

“Good point,” her mother said, checking her watch for that tenth time. “Five minutes. Can we just walk in slowly at this point?”

“Fine,” she said, shutting the car off. They’d had it running with the air conditioning on full blast so she wasn’t sweating through her clothes.

Dillion wasn’t as cool as she was coming off.

The two of them climbed out and walked into the restaurant, said they were meeting someone and then were brought over to a booth.

Alec’s mother was sitting there and looked nervous when she approached and wasn’t alone.

“Martha Cannon?” she said.

Martha stood up. “That’s me. You said it was only us.”

“This is my mother, Leigh Patrick. She’s a mother too. And a grandmother.”

Martha looked uneasy but sat back down after they shook. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

Alec’s mother looked meek, kind of like Alec behaved at times.

She felt a little bad.

Only a little.

This was her and her daughter’s life being uprooted. Alec’s parents could have gone on without contacting her.

It’s not like they tried for years to seek out Alec if he’d been gone four years by the time they even found out.

“I want to know what you’re going to do,” Dillion said. “What you hope to accomplish. Alec told me he had no relationship with his parents. He told me what happened to him as a child. I have to protect my daughter.”

“Alec exaggerated things,” Martha said.

“That is your word against his and he’s not here to dispute your claim. The fact you haven’t been part of his life for almost two decades and just discovered he’d died proves you weren’t trying much either. It leads me to believe him.”

“What did he tell you?” Martha asked, frowning.

She looked at her mother. “That he was physically and verbally abused by his father and that you didn’t stop it. You let it happen.”

She secretly feared that Gianna’s temper tantrums revealed a touch of her grandfather’s nature.

An anger issue.

As a doctor, she wondered about her daughter’s genetics and what could have been passed on also, but she never spoke of those fears out loud.

Martha’s shoulders dropped. “Luke had a drinking problem for years. When he was drunk he’d get angry. He couldn’t control himself.”

“That’s not an excuse,” her mother said.

“It’s not,” Martha said. “But it’s the truth. Luke would sober up for periods of time and then relapse back again.”

“After he was arrested he’d relapse?” Dillion asked. She wanted it known that she had them looked into. That Martha should be aware of who she was dealing with.

“Yes,” Martha said. “But that was years ago. The last time he was arrested, Alec was a senior in high school.”

“He hit Alec,” she said. “Punched him in the face, didn’t he?”

She’d been told that one night when Alec had taken a sleeping pill to help him rest. He was half awake and had a nightmare and she tried to find out what was going on.

The next morning he denied it but finally caved and said it’d happened.

But did it?

One of those things she’d been doubting for years.

Until now.

Martha sighed. “Alec lost his temper first. He threw a baseball at Luke and almost hit him in the head. They’d been fighting about Alec’s friends.”

“Because Luke thought Alec was gay and often said that to him,” she said, lifting her chin.

She wasn’t pulling any punches here.

She wanted to see Martha’s reaction to what she’d been told.

To see how much truth there was to those statements.

“We never knew with Alec,” Martha said. “Luke was wrong to do what he had, but he didn’t understand Alec well.

It’s why Alison didn’t stay with us much and stayed with her mother more.

I should have protected Alec, but I didn’t.

Luke saved me when I was alone and pregnant and had nowhere to go.

I guess that was why I never fought back and accepted the treatment I received. ”

She frowned. “Is Luke not Alec’s father?”

“No,” Martha said. “But Alec didn’t know that. We said we’d never tell him. Alison was from a previous relationship of Luke’s.”

Which might explain why Alec hadn’t brought up Alison to her.

It was no wonder Alec was the way he was.

He’d been living a lie his whole life too.

“I’m trying to understand. What you’re telling me is a lot of why Alec didn’t want you in his life and you think I’m going to let you near Gianna?”

Her mother put her hand on the table. “Can I ask a few questions?” her mother asked.

The server interrupted them to bring over a few glasses of water and take their orders.

Dillion wasn’t positive about how much of an appetite she had, but she got a salad so she could pick at something.

“Please,” Martha said. “I’ll answer whatever you ask.

I just want to get to know Alec’s daughter.

I’m grieving the loss of my son all over again.

When I couldn’t find him on any social media I hired someone to look for him and that is when I realized he was a doctor and had died years ago.

When they said he had a child with you, it was even more stunning.

Your daughter is all I’ve got left of my son. ”

“I want to say I’m sorry for your loss again,” her mother said. “But if you wanted your son back in your life, you would have tried long before now. Why now?”

“I wanted to for years but knew Luke would fight me on it. They’d had some harsh words for each other when Alec graduated from college. I didn’t even know he was going to med school. He never told us anything about his life.”

She found that hard to believe that his parents wouldn’t know things like that.

“But he came home each summer, right?” her mother asked.

“Not the past few years of his undergrad,” Martha said. “After he graduated he just picked up the rest of his stuff, Luke and he fought again. Luke was drunk and regretted what he’d said.”

She fought the snort from escaping. Seemed to be the theme here and only validated a lot of what Alec had told her.

Imagine being punched in the face by the man that you thought was your father.

“What was said?” she asked

“I don’t remember it all,” Martha said. “It was so long ago. Alec never felt he would be good enough for Luke. He was always smart, but not into sports or drinking or anything that Luke was.”

“Different personalities happen all the time with parents and kids,” she said.

“They do,” Martha said. “But Luke wasn’t an easy man to be around.”

“Then why did you stay?” Dillion asked. “Or aren’t you together now?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Martha said. “You’ve got money and a place to go if you wanted to leave. I had nothing for years.”

What she didn’t understand was that if her mother was being abused also, she would have gotten her out. Once she had the means to support them both. She would have helped.

Alec had the means to do that and chose not to.

He blamed his mother, who was a victim just the same.

And that was where she was struggling here just as much.

That Alec’s character when it came to question, always took the easy way out.

“What about now?” she asked. “Are you still with your husband?”

“I am,” Martha said. “I threatened to leave every time Luke started drinking heavily again. He’d get clean for a long time.”

“And then fall off the wagon,” she said. “But you’re still there.”

“Luke has been clean for ten years. He’s a different man. I’ve not wanted to bring up Alec’s name for fear...”

“That he’d start drinking again?” she asked. “And if you think I’m going to let my daughter near this man, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“I know,” Martha rushed out to say. “Hear me out. Luke is the one that brought up Alec last year. That he had a lot of regret. Alison let him back into her life and he realized what I had given up with his behavior. I let it go when he brought it up in case he changed his mind. But he didn’t.

So then I looked for Alec and found out he’d died.

I don’t even know what happened and how he was shot.

He was so successful by the sounds of it and then to have his life taken from him randomly like that. ”

Her shoulders dropped.

Could she be honest and tell Alec’s mother what his life was like?

How he was killed and why?

That he was selling the drugs he’d stolen and had been shot by his supplier who thought he’d be busted too.

“What do you hope to get out of this?” her mother asked before she could say another word.

“I’d like to know more about Alec. What he was like as an adult. I’d like to know and be part of his daughter’s life. I don’t expect you to just hand her over to us for a weekend or anything.”

“No way,” Dillion said firmly. “Not happening.”

Martha nodded. “We will go to court if it comes to that, but I thought maybe we could just talk and start things slowly. I made a lot of mistakes as a parent that I have to live with. I lost my son twice in my mind because of it. I don’t want to lose the only thing I have left of him.

If it means I can get some pictures or information on her, it’s more than I had of my son. ”

“So you don’t want visitation with her?” she asked.

She was trying to understand what this was really about.

“I’d love to meet her. I’d love to see her and get a hug. Lots of things. But I also know that might not be possible while she is a minor. I’m more than willing to start small and compromise.”

“Which was your plan all along?” she asked.

“It was my hope,” Martha said. Their food was brought out and placed in front of them. “If you don’t mind, could you tell me more about my son and what he was like?”

Dillion looked at her mother and felt her heart soften.

It seemed unfair to let the horrible mistake that got him killed erase all his years of hard work putting himself through med school, his achievement of becoming a doctor, and the effective emergency treatments she’d seen him give to patients. “Alec was a great doctor...”