by Eva Ashwood
My stomach dropped. Is that where she got the car? Was it from him? A… gift?
How could she do this? Did my father mean nothing to her? Did the fact that he was in jail, that he might not even deserve to be there, mean so little to her that it was easy to find herself in the arms of another man?
It sickened me, made me ill and furious in a way I’d never thought I could feel toward my own mom. I wanted to scratch out my eyes, to scrub the image of her body entwined with his from my memory, but I knew there was nothing on earth that could bleach that sight from my mind. It burned behind my eyelids as surely as the sounds they’d made had seared themselves to my ears.
Eventually, the shower shut off. More muffled voices sounded down the hall, then two sets of footsteps padded toward the front door. I heard it open and close before a car outside revved its engine and took off down the street.
Silence filled the house. I sat still, feeling somehow both numb and angry, waiting.
I didn’t have to wait long.
A moment later, a knock came at my door, and I looked up as Mom opened it. She was freshly showered and dressed, wearing a tasteful outfit. She didn’t look like someone who’d just been caught cheating by her daughter. She folded her arms and looked down at me, leaning one shoulder against the door frame.
“Now, Cordelia, before we go any further, I think you owe me an apology.”
Fury lit up my veins like a spark of fire. I straightened, nostrils flaring as I glared at her.
“An apology? For what?”
“For your rude behavior just now. It was entirely uncalled for. You know better than to just burst into someone’s room—”
“You’re literally fucking someone while your husband is in jail!” My shout filled the room, echoed, and rendered my mom silent as she stared at me, shocked at the outburst. I lowered my voice to a hiss, rising from the bed to stalk toward her. “You’re fucking some other man, and the worst part is, he’s someone Dad knows! He’s someone you wouldn’t have even deemed worthy of talking to before all this shit happened, but now he’s good enough for you to spread your legs for? And you’re lecturing me on coming into your room? Are you serious right now? Please tell me you’re not serious.”
“You don’t understand, Cordelia.” My mom’s voice was even and cold, her face an unreadable mask. “You don’t understand, because you’re still young. You still believe in fairytales, even after everything. But life isn’t a fairytale. It’s hard and messy, and you do what you have to in order to survive.”
She came closer, putting her hands on my shoulders, holding me in place as I tried to shrug out of her grasp. I glared at her as she continued.
“Who do you think bought that car outside? Hm? Who do you think is going to make it possible for you to start having all the things you used to before your father landed himself in prison? Everything in life comes down to wealth and status, Cordelia. Without that, we have nothing.”
I couldn’t believe what she was saying to me. I gaped at her, honestly disgusted at what she was implying.
“Father’s in jail, and you’re blaming him, so to… what, get out of poverty, you’re screwing someone who’s half the man he is just to get a fraction of our old life back?”
“I’m doing this for us, Cordelia. I’m doing this for you.”
I scoffed. It all made sense now. The heightened attitude, the way she seemed to be floating on sunshine lately. It wasn’t that she was getting better, or that she was coping with our new situation. It was that she’d found a fucking sugar daddy.
“That’s straight bullshit, trying to make it sound like you’re doing this for us and not just for yourself,” I snapped at her. “Don’t lie to me.”
She rolled her eyes. There was a sharpness to her expression, an almost cruel inflection in her voice that I’d never heard before.
“And what about you, Cordelia? What about that friend of yours that dropped by? Bishop, or whatever his name was? You can’t tell me that his interest in you is just friendship.”
My cheeks heated—but not with embarrassment. With anger.
“That’s. Different,” I ground out. “I care about him. I care about Kace and Misael. I’m not using them. You’re a married fucking woman! You have no business screwing around on Dad and then trying to claim you’re doing it because you want to make life here better for us! That’s bullshit!”
“Well, you can think it’s bullshit all you want, Cordelia.” She pulled away, taking a few steps back and looking down her nose at me. “But after the winter holiday, things around here are going to change for us. I’m going on holiday with Mark—”
“Ah, so he’s Mark to you.”
She drew in a measured breath, pressing her lips together.
“I’ll be going on holiday with Mark. When I get back, I expect this little attitude to be gone.”
“You’re seriously spending Christmas break with him? He has a family—a wife and kids. How do you explain that?”
“I hardly think that’s any of your business, but I’ll be accompanying him on a business trip.” She had the audacity to sound offended that I’d even ask.
I shook my head, stepping away from her, tears of rage gathering in my eyes.
My mom might claim she’d been doing this for us, doing it for me, but for the first time, I could clearly see how little she cared about me. She was looking out for herself. Taking care of herself. That was all.
I was on my own here, more than I had ever realized.
If it weren’t for the Lost Boys in my life, I would’ve truly been alone. They were more like family to me now than my own mother was.
“Whatever. Do whatever you want,” I finally choked out, my voice harsh and ragged.
“I had planned on it,” she said. Before she turned to leave, she paused. “Your father doesn’t need to know about this. You understand that, right, Cordelia?”
I sneered.
“Sure. Why would I make the fact he’s in jail worse by breaking the news to him that his wife is sleeping with another man? That wasn’t exactly the Christmas gift I had in mind for him.”
Fifteen
Mom was gone by the time the first snow of the season hit.
I remembered how when I was little, she, my father, and I would sit in front of the huge bay windows in our largest sitting room, watching the soft sheets of snow fall and blanket the lawn. Mom was never fond of the cold, but Dad, before I got “too old for childish things,” would occasionally go outside with me and build snowmen and make snow angels.
It was a memory that I couldn’t help but question now. Had any of it been real? Or had it all just been the illusion of a loving family?
Because there wasn’t a damn thing I could think of to reconcile that version of my family with the one I was currently faced with. A father in jail, a mother having an affair that she tried to justify, and me—just trying to figure out where I fit into all of this.
I was certainly no longer the innocent little girl who’d played in the snow with her father, any more than my mom was the dutiful wife who stood by her husband’s side.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what Mom had said, about how I was doing the same thing she was by getting involved with the Lost Boys just like she was hooking up with Mark.
But that wasn’t true. She didn’t understand what the boys and I had been through. She didn’t understand that my relationship with them—
Well. It had started out pretty similarly, hadn’t it? I had agreed to be theirs in exchange for protection.
But I didn’t have a husband sitting in jail. I wasn’t doing this to make myself feel better and pretending it was some selfless act. Mom was using Mark, and he was using her right back. But the Lost Boys and I weren’t using each other. We were… giving ourselves to each other.
What I felt for them was real. More real than anything else in my life had ever been.
Maybe what Mom felt was real too… but it wasn’t love. She’d said it herself
. It was nothing more than a need for security and wealth. An attempt to cling to what she’d once had.
Shaking my head, I snapped the book I’d been trying to read shut. I couldn’t concentrate on fiction when my reality was already so insane I could barely handle it. Mom was gone for the winter holiday. School was out, exams over, snow was falling outside, and I was in here, moping.
I rolled over onto my stomach and grabbed my phone off the rickety nightstand.
ME: Hey, wanna come over? I’m bored.
It didn’t take too long before he answered.
BISHOP: Oh? You wanna be entertained? ;)
ME: Hush. Just come over. Bring the guys with you.
I pushed off my bed, fluffing my hair a little so it looked less like bedhead and more like “it’s messy because I did it on purpose.”
It didn’t take long for the boys to arrive; they’d probably all been at Bishop’s already. I let them in almost as soon as the knock came at the door, not even caring how eager it made me look.
“You know, I kinda half expected your mom to be here waiting again,” Bishop said lightly as they walked in, dropping a kiss to my lips. “But I guess her being MIA lately is a good thing for us. We gonna need to bounce later?”
I hadn’t told them about my mom leaving yet, and a fresh wave of anger rose up in me as I thought about how she’d just taken off, leaving me alone for the holiday. I shook my head.
“No. She’s not going to be a problem over break.”
Bish raised a brow as we all plopped down in the living room. “Oh?”
He was waiting for an explanation, but I wasn’t sure it was something he, or any of the boys, for that matter, would want to hear about. After all, drama with my mom wasn’t exactly something that most guys would want to listen to. They’d already done so much helping out after her overdose.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “She’s just spending the holiday… away.”
They exchanged a look. Misael poked at me from his place on the floor in front of the couch, where he rested between my legs.
“Come on. Somethin’s obviously on your mind, Coralee,” he said. “What’s going on with your mom?”
I hadn’t intended to tell them. I hadn’t intended to tell anyone. But with the three of them gazing at me, eyes warm and serious, I couldn’t stop myself.
I explained everything, from what I had come home to the other day, to how my mom tried to justify it, to the fact that she was spending the entire holiday on vacation with a married man. I told them how mad it made me, how frustrated and… sad.
“It’s like I don’t even know her like I thought I did,” I whispered. “It’s like she’s a completely different person from the woman who raised me—” I laughed bitterly. “Well. Never mind. It isn’t like she actually did much raising. Not like that matters. I just don’t know how I can look her in the face anymore. After her lies to me, her lies to my father? It’s disgusting that she would throw out years of marriage just for something like… like… like a car and a winter vacation!”
They let me rant, and I was grateful for that. I needed it. I needed to let it out, because my argument with my mom damn sure hadn’t satisfied my need to work out my irritation with her.
When I finally ran out of words, there was a long moment of silence. Worry dropped in the pit of my stomach, and I bit my lip.
“That was probably a lot to take in. I’m sorry, I—”
“No, it ain’t that. It’s just—damn, that’s real shitty, Cora.” Misael turned around to face me, sitting back on his heels and shaking his head. “I mean, what your mom is doing. What she said to you.”
Bishop pulled me into his hold, threading his fingers through my hair. I leaned into his touch, eyes fluttering closed as he brushed through the blonde strands.
“Y’know, when we first met you, we thought you would be like that,” he murmured. “Just using whoever you could to get what you wanted. Thinkin’ it was fine because of where you came from. But… Coralee, you’re nothin’ like your mom. We—”
He paused, his grip on me tightening slightly, taking on the possessive edge that I loved so much.
“There’s a lot that we coulda done different when we first met you,” Misael said, picking up the train of Bishop’s thought. “But… we don’t regret meetin’ you. And we sure as shit don’t regret having you stick around like you are. We need you. Even if you are a spoiled little rich girl.”
When I looked down at him, he was grinning at me, the tilt of his lips boyish, teasing, and tender.
I smiled.
“Yeah, but I’m your spoiled little rich girl, aren’t I?”
Christmas for the Lost Boys was as unconventional as could be expected for a group of boys like the three of them. For one thing—I learned that they didn’t actually have any plans to celebrate Christmas at all.
It was mentioned the first night the boys stayed over at my place, just a week before Christmas. I was in the kitchen with Bishop, whipping up a positively delicious meal of pasta and chicken.
“So, what do you guys want to do for Christmas dinner?” I asked. Buying presents was out of the question; even with Mom’s “special friend” giving her favors and attention, I knew I couldn’t spend too much extra money. But a nice, hot meal? That, I could do.
But Bishop looked over at me, his head tilted in curious confusion.
“Christmas dinner?” He chuckled. “I figured we’d just get, like… regular food.”
I blinked at him, somewhat disbelieving. “Don’t you do a special thing for Christmas dinner?”
Bishop shook his head. “Nah. Christmas has always just been another day, y’know? Sometimes we have work, but it’s never anything heavy. Pretty sure Josephine has somethin’ to do with that, to be honest. She makes sure Nathaniel takes it easy over the holiday.”
I hummed, thinking for a moment. I liked that. It made me happy to think of Josephine making sure that even Nathaniel, a crime lord who probably knew the darker side of humanity better than most, found time for love and light. I liked how she seemed to balance him out.
With that idea bouncing around in my mind, I stopped stirring the sauce in the pot.
“Do you guys… want to do a Christmas dinner?” I asked. “Like, a special one. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but we can make it our own. Maybe invite Liam and Jessica over…”
Bishop glanced over at me, smiling a bit.
“Hey, guys!” Lifting his voice, he called to Kace and Misael, who’d been hanging in the living room. They poked their heads into the kitchen a few moments later. “Want to do Christmas dinner with Liam and Jessica?”
Misael tilted his head, an adorable grin spreading across his face. “Christmas dinner? Like with a whole turkey and sides and stuff?”
I laughed. “Well, maybe not a whole turkey… but, yeah.”
Kace shrugged, his light green eyes glittering as his gaze landed on me. “If the Princess will be there, I’m there.”
The simplicity of his answer, and the truth in his voice, made warmth trickle down my spine.
I grinned, pleased at their readiness to indulge in something that was near and dear to my heart. My childhood memories might be based on lies, but they still meant something to me. I wanted to create new ones—ones I would be sure were real.
Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I shot a quick text to Jessica about getting together for Christmas and doing a whole dinner with her and Liam and the boys. Jessica, social butterfly that she was, of course said yes. We made plans to get together and buy groceries the next day to make said dinner.
For the first time, I found myself almost glad that Mom had left. If she’d been here, I was certain there would’ve been no Christmas dinner, and certainly not with the people I cared about most in the world.
Appreciate what you have, Cora.
Hold on to it and love it.
I had never cooked a Christmas dinner myself.
Mom and Dad had always had a huge list of
dishes for the ‘“Christmas feast,” as they’d called it. Our cooks would go to the stores and buy the freshest meats, vegetables, and other ingredients. Everything would be micromanaged, perfect, beautiful and elegant.
Cooking dinner this year, with six of us crammed into the tiny little kitchen over the fixings we’d managed to buy, was a far cry from a carefully coordinated Christmas feast, but it was the most fun that I’d had on a Christmas holiday in my life.
We had a small turkey cooking in the oven, green beans with salt pork simmering on the stove—because Misael said that you couldn’t just boil green beans in water; that was blasphemy, of course—along with box stuffing, sweet potatoes loaded up with cinnamon and marshmallows, and cranberry sauce chilling in the fridge. Jessica, to my surprise, was apparently a bit of a baker and had a pumpkin pie in the oven.
It was crowded and hot, and there wasn’t a lot of space to really do much without bumping into someone.
Music thumped through the house from where Misael had brought the boom box that we always had at the warehouse—melodic, bass heavy music that was far from anything resembling traditional Christmas music, but it had everyone in the house swaying their hips, singing, dancing, laughing when our movements had us bumping into someone else.
It was warm and vibrant, and in all the memories that I had of Christmases past, I couldn’t remember feeling so happy.
When everything was finished, we all sat in the living room with plates on our laps and plastic cups of cheap booze to sip on, with the TV playing Christmas movies in the background.
Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer and How the Grinch Stole Christmas were the only two movies they’d watched in foster care at Christmas-time, Bishop explained to me in a quiet voice, making it the only Christmas tradition that any of them truly stuck with.
Bellies full, and booze settling warm in our stomachs, we lounged in the living room with the mess of our dinner around us. Jessica and Liam cuddled up together on the floor in front of where Misael, Bishop, Kace, and I piled together on the couch, a warm bundle of mildly drunk contentedness.