Page 2 of Lovely Venom

She didn’t have to do anything else. She didn’t own any property. She only had a few hundred dollars in her checking account, thanks to the medical bills. She didn’t even own a car.

I’ve known people who made more arrangements to bury a pet.

So, I planned. Someone had to. With no family plot and no savings, I had to pay for a wake service and cremation. Now, Mom is moving in with me when I get her ashes back.

Dora stares at me and blinks like she wants to tell me something. Like she knew Mom was smoking and needs to get the guilt off her chest for not stepping in. I want to wring her neck for not dropping a hint all those times I visited. Or trying to talk Mom into slowing the fuck down.

Instead of an apology, Dora reaches into the pocket of her cotton skirt and takes out an envelope. Thinking it’s cash, a contribution to the funeral costs, I go to wave her off, but the thinness signals that if it is money, it can’t be more than a couple of bucks.

“Your mother wanted me to give this to you.” She slides the envelope toward me.

Staring at it, I say, “What is it?”

“The truth.”

My body goes cold. “The truth about what?”

“About who you are.”

I press my hands on the cheap plastic tablecloth full of burn holes as I get to my feet. “Who Iam? What the hell does that mean?”

And why did Mom make this woman I barely knowtell me? I spoke to my mother a week ago. In the hospital. On her deathbed. She could hardly talk, but she made sure to tell me where she hid her one piece of expensive jewelry, who to give her clothes to, and that she owed the kid on the fourth floor fifteen dollars.

“Dear, I don’t know.” Dora panics at my tone. “It’s sealed. Your mother didn’t tell me what the letter says. Just that I’m to give it to you after she passes.”

“Why do you think it’s the truth?” I still refuse to touch it.

“That’s all your mom said to me.” Dora pushes the letter toward me again and looks hungry for me to read it. “Raina needs to know the truth.”

What doesthe truthmatter at this point? Unless she didn’t tell me who my real father was because I’m the long-lost daughter of the Montenegro Royal Family, and Mom was a servant who stole me from my bed because she couldn’t have children.

Only that flies in the face of the story I got in the fourth grade when I had to make a family tree, and Mom came up with a cagey story about how my father was a young man she met while on vacation with friends right after high school. At nine years old, I didn’t need the mechanics of how I was conceived.

Years later, I pieced more together. My grandfather, a very conservative and prominent tailor in town, knew who my father was and forced Mom to keep his name off the birth records. When Mom and I applied for citizenship here in the US, she handed over my original birth certificate, which indeed has no father listed.

I had to present all kinds of paperwork from the INS to join the DEA. Then came the background checks. No one from the FBI paid a visit to tell me my father was rich and famous.

“Dora!” a man’s voice booms into the apartment. “Your phone is ringing.”

Dora stands and smooths her skirt. “I should get going. If you need help, my son can come by and give you a hand.”

The same guy Mom had been anxious for me to meet. And date. Maybe marry. She and Dora were besties and would have loved to be related.

But I don’t have time for a relationship.

“Thanks,” I say, sending Dora on her way with a dash of hope.

I follow her down the hall and lock the apartment door this time. Leaning against it, my head spins at the massive list forming in my head. Mom’s passing was the easy part. The funeral home picked up the body from Madison Hill Hospital, prepared her viewing, ordered the death certificate, and arranged for her cremation. The funeral director’s mother-in-law is a Social Security expert who started that whole process for me.

I stare at the envelope and shove it into my purse while I go hunting for more cigarettes.

A few days of digging later, I find out the lease has a few more months to go, but Dora’s son and his friend want the apartment. Yeah, that’s the guy I want to date, one who wants to live next door to Mommy.

But when he shows up to see the apartment with a buddy who is clearly hisboyfriend, and says they’ll take it furnished, it’s a huge burden off my back.

I watch them leave, happy to be starting a new chapter together, and decide it’s time for me to end this one.

I should cry. People expected me to cry. But I didn’t. I can’t. Not because I don’t feel sad. I learned at a young age that grief is weakness, and the world is trying to eat you alive. There’s also no point in crying without a shoulder. Mom was the one who got to fall apart. I was the one who had to stay strong and clean it all up.