My Mother's Secret - A Sequel To The Summer of 1993

Robert Morgan Richards

     Robert Morgan Richards was born on February 6, 2022 at ten in the morning.    He had dark hair and dark eyes and looked nothing like my husband Sam.   Sam was blonde.   He looked like me and whoever my dad was.   He had dark hair, dark eyes.   He was nine pounds two ounces of beautiful.   It made me wonder who he was.   I had an inkling. Mom said he was a roadie from Pearl Jam and he was fat.   Mom said she was "drunk and high at a party" which was hard to believe.   My mom was sort of a prude, except she was sort of proud she was fat or she didn't care.   I think she didn't care.   She'd sit naked with it all out in front of dad and us, her boobs resting on her belly and this bush that was passé. Steven Morgan Bryan was sort of a shy man, an alcoholic, but he was the only dad I knew and he did treat me the same as Jackie my sister who had red hair, but when drunk really was mean to my mom.

Mr Quandt called me "Edward Scissorhands" in my high school literature class.   I was pale with dark hair and very shy. However, Steve was the only dad I knew, and honestly, my mom could have done better. She would get upset when I mentioned who my dad was or finding him, but even though Steve adopted me, I always felt a little lost. Jackie had her blood relative. I did not and I wanted to set on the quest to find my biological dad. It began when I went home on February 8, 2022 to our small little house in a quiet neighborhood, It was mine. I bought it with my hard earned money. I bought it at 25. I saved. Mom was never financially secure and I did not want that life for a child. Finally at 52, she was making okay money with the county as a clerk. However, she worked fast food until 2008, when the sheriff at the time hired her for a part time job in the jail as a commissary clerk. Now she worked in the Election Division as a voter registration processor. She was cute, She could have been married to someone much more and been much more, but she was my mom and she always loved me. I wasn't doing this to hurt her.

      My mom came to the hospital.   She looked at Robert and started crying.  Dad sat in a chair not talking.   "Oh my God, it's Johnny!"  She said.  Dad was a dick about how mom "slept around" before him. "Whore". sometimes came out of his mouth, especially in the old days in the small house on Colorado Blvd my mom bought for $15,000 in 2006.

     "Johnny?"
"Um, the fat roadie, you know?"
"Really?" Dad had that look in his eye,
"Yeah."

  
     Steve looked out the window.  Did he know? 

    Robert was beautiful.   I just stared at him all day long.   We took him home on a cold, snowy day.   We came home and I was exhausted.   Sam was sweet.  He looked just like Austin Butler.   At twenty seven, Sam said, "You know, you kind of look like Lily Rose Depp if she ate." I blew it off.  I was fat, tired, my boobs were leaking and I was trying to get used to this new normal.   My mom came over with supper.   She held him again and looked into those brown eyes.  She blinked away tears.  

     "Mom, are you okay?"
"I-I am just so happy," she sobbed.  
"Mom, be honest, who is my dad?"
"I told you, Johnny Davis, a roadie for Pearl Jam."
"Are you sure?"
"I am."
"What if I get a DNA test."
"You wouldn't do that!  Anyway, you are not working and you don't make much on your husband's salary.  Plus, your dad loves you very much."
"But I am curious,mom.  You can't fault me for this."
"No, but you would disrupt someone's life.  He has two kids."
"How do you know?"
"Social media"

She changed the subject. She talked about when she had me and Jackie. "Two of the best days in my life," she trailed off. Jackie loved her new nephew and to be honest, I was ready to have another one. Jackie was a a schoolteacher. She taught fifth grade. Me?  I worked for the county auditor processing payments. We were boring people. However, our lived were going to change. When my mom left, Sam got real.

"We aren't poor. Construction is just slow, but if you want to do your DNA, I think we can swing it. Plus, gives me more time with you and the baby." Sam was a romantic. "Look, I am ordering the kit for you."
"Sam, you don't have to."
"I want to. I want to see you happy and I want you to have the answer to all the clues you never had. You feel lost, don't you?" I nodded. "It's paid for. I want you to find out about you, I think it's too raw and hurtful for your mom. I think she still loves him. I thunk she always has loved him."
"I think she wanted to stay in LA and carve out a life with whoever. She told me she was a maid, he got attracted to her, they had sex, and I was conceived. I was my grandparents bastard grandchild they raised until she married Steve. Steve was her manager at Arby's and he basically ruined mom's life."
"Oh, baby. I am going to have Steve over tomorrow to fix a few things. I guess he is driving your mom nuts."
"I am sure,"

Mom was strange around a certain actor, "but she would have never," I thought to myself. I was sorta thick like my mom, but Steve was tiny and Jackie got mom's curves. Jackie and Tom came over to see Robert. Jackie gave me her blessing. "I think you should. You have always wanted to know and dad, you know, is dad." Dad lost too many brain cells to drinking. That was the sad fact. That was the only blessing I didn't have. Even Grandma Barbara and Steve's sister Jane said "DO IT!!!" "You'll always be my beautiful brown eyed girl," Grandma reassured me. Grandma Susan, I did not even ask. "That boy ruined a good lawyer!" She would say. "Sinful." I was going to lunch with my Aunt Jamie in a few days. Maybe she had some answers....