Damn The Day I Met You

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Needless to say, I did move back to Tristan’s place. I don’t think I could have actually done anything else at this point. I have found it extremely difficult to stay away from either Bertina children. Instead of waiting around to deal with the rest of my family and media, Tristan and I booked it out of there. Well with Lucy of course. I decided that the media would say what they wanted whether I cleared things up or not, so I didn’t.

Peter moved out the following day. His wife was due back any day now so he decided to go prepare for that. Which left, once again, an empty room in the household. I offered to move into it and Tristan literally stopped me.

What I didn’t expect out of all of this was a knock one afternoon on our door. Tristan was still at the school studying and Lucy was still in school. The knock reminded me of the last time I answered the door here and it wasn’t a very pleasant ending. Pushing those thoughts behind me, reminding myself that Stephanie was put away for good, I pull the door open. Standing on the other side, duffle bag in hand is my mother.

“Mom?”

She smiles and pushes her way into the entryway. “Hi sweetie, how are you?”

“I’m good. What are you doing here?” I ask, staring at the bag, “and with clothing?”

Her smile falters but continues to be there, “oh, I’m leaving your father. Mind if I crash here for a bit?” She sets down her bag and walks around a bit. I quickly follow, still trying to connect the dots in my head.

“You’re leaving dad?”

My mother laughs. Laughs! As if this is all a joke. “Well not really sweetie but he doesn’t need to know that. Now, do you guys have coffee around here?”

“Mom, sit down and tell me what’s going on. And no, we don’t drink coffee here.”

She then rolls her eyes at the last statement and takes a seat at the table. Just when she opens her mouth to speak there’s a noise in the front room. “Honey I’m home!” Tristan yells when he enters just like every other day, “And we have exactly four hours until we need to pick Lucy up from…” His voice trails off as he enters the kitchen to find my mom.

I smile up at him and give him a quick kiss, “science club. I know.” Tristan wraps an arm around me and pulls me to him; ignoring the fact the mother was present.

“Hello Ms. Richards.”

“Hey Tristan. Say, Peter moved out recently, right?”

“Mom…” I groan, “You’re not pretend-leaving dad.”

Laughing, Tristan pulls back from me. “The room is upstairs, directly to your right. Stay as long as you need. Just don’t involve me; the guy already wants me dead.”

“Oh honey, that’s an understatement.” My mom says, “Now, about that coffee.” I glare at her, daring her to finish that question, “kidding!”

“Well, I’m going to go call up the guys, see if they want to shoot some hoops.” Tristan moves to leave the room but I stop him.

“Here, right?” I ask with puppy dog eyes. There was a perfectly good hoop by the garage and I didn’t want to be left alone.

“Haha, it’s a good thing your funny. I’ll see you in a few hours. Don’t worry about Luce, I got her today. You just hang out with your mom.”

I glare at his retrieving figure until he totally disappears. Sighing, I take a seat across from the woman who gave birth to me.

“Okay, what did he do?”

And thus began the two hour conversation on how terrible an overall human being my father was, is, and probably will be. All to explain, “So I’m pretend divorcing him.”