Downplay| Jordan Clarkson & Quincy Brown

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Curling her fingers around a wine glass, Denise sighed as she looked at her niece before sipping her mimosa. Yara was still her baby but the four year old that had showed up on her doorstep was now her own woman. In the week she'd spent time with her in Colorado, she knew that something had happened but she didn't push. Yara was forthright, when she wanted to talk about something she opened her mouth and did so.

Gregory Underwood walked out onto the porch and kissed both women's foreheads breaking the silence.

"Alright, I'm headed into the office. You two please behave. Yaya make sure your aunt stops at two mimosas before 12?"

Uncle Greg affectionately tapped his wife's shoulders while Yara gave him a soft smile in compliance. He had always been the father she'd never had. He'd taught her how to ride a bike, spent hours upon hours explaining calculus and scared off all her boyfriends.

As she watched him retreat, she couldn't help but notice how her aunt looked at him. They were always so in love, if Yara didn't have the background she did watching them may have sold her on fairytale romances.

"I wish I could want that." Yara sighed before she laid her head in her aunt's lap. Denise instinctively began to comb her fingers through the woman's hair.

"Want what , sugarplum?"

"Love, you and Uncle Gregory have always been so enraptured with one another. I've never felt that, and I don't think I ever will."

Denise pondered the statement before she laughed softly.

"You will, I thought that too before I'd met your uncle. I know you have a lot of resentment for your father and mother, you always have but we tried to show you how things should have been. Is it that you can't have it or you don't want it? Hmm?"

Yara didn't move to answer the question so Denise poked.

"I've seen you with that young man with all those tattoos. I passed a lot of things to you, but you always preferred bad boys. That's definitely Elizabeth."

"I'm nothing like her."

Yara's voice was fierce as she sat up. The action was so swift that she startled Denise. There was a storm brewing in her eyes, something had happened, and Denise was determined to find out. Yara had asked for her mother every month during the first year she stayed with them. After her fifth birthday , the woman had become a distant memory and she'd never asked about her again.

Now, the mention of her name had incited a flame Denise wasn't sure how to put out.

"What happened sugar? You've been here for a week , moving around like a ghost. Declining calls from the same young man you apparently don't love and now you're bristling at the name of your mother when you've never done that before."

"We never talked about her before and there's nothing wrong."

"Yara Elizabeth Underwood..."

Shaking her head, Yara took a sip of water before she caved in.

"She sent me a box of my baby things, she wants to reconnect, but I don't care to. My younger sisters came to visit, well one of them, and begged me to give her a chance."

"And did you give her a chance?"

"Absolutely not. She is not my mother; she gave birth to me but she is not my mother. She lost that right when she left me on my grandmother's doorstep. The only parents that I know are you and Uncle Gregory. If it took me years to call you mom, she damn well doesn't deserve it at all."

Denise reached out to Yara and pulled her in for a hug. She'd always been so tough, her strong little girl had become such a hardened woman. However, deep inside Yara was soft, she just wanted to be loved securely and Denise knew that.