“I know you lied,” I blurted out. “Tessa texted me. You haven’t been to Alyssa’s house in weeks. So start talking.”
He looked at his hands.
“Where did you sleep?”
He muttered something.
“Higher up.”
“Grandma’s house,” he whispered.
“Explain.”
My brain stopped.
“My mother died,” I said slowly.
“She doesn’t,” Jordan said quickly. “Dad’s mother.”
My whole body tensed.
“Explain,” I said.
Jordan was breathing heavily.
“He said she was sick.”
“He moved here,” he said. “About a month ago. He’d show up after school. I was waiting by the door.”
“He came to you at school,” I said, my voice sharper than I intended.
“Outside,” he said. “Not at school. She said she was my grandmother and gave me her address. I recognized her from the pictures. She said she moved to be closer, that she missed me, that she knew you hated her, but that she wanted to meet me before…” He paused.
“Before what?” I asked.
“Before she died,” Jordan said softly. “She said she was sick.”
“I didn’t want to ruin things for Dad again.”
My throat felt dry.
“So you just… you went with her?”
“The first time she took me out for ice cream,” Jordan said. “She was crying a lot. She said she’d made mistakes with Dad. That she was stupid and proud and would do anything to make it right. She begged me not to tell you again because she didn’t want to ruin things for Dad again.”
“Jordan,” he said, “Do you have any idea what evil is this?
“Sometimes I stayed at Alyssa’s house.”
“Lo se,” I say, llorando hora. “But I was so alone, mom. The apartment is small. It was late and I wanted to choose animated discussions and teach me photos of little dad. She’s the only abuela I have.”
I looked at myself with a mixture of guilt and hope that destroyed me.
“What about pijamas parties?” he asked.
“Sometimes I was at Alyssa’s house,” I say. “But on other occasions, the abuela sent me a message and I wondered if I could come. I told her that I went to Alyssa’s house and then took the bus to Alyssa’s house.”
“Know that you could stay with someone stable, right?”.
Look for the eyes.
My mother exposed me and we have history.
When we started to go up, we got a lot more money than I did. I proceeded from a ruined family and all the work until the community college. She never let me forget it.
He said something like: “Know that you could stay with someone stable, right?”.
Or, “We didn’t pay for your education so we could hold someone else’s debt.”
He had reasons.
At our engagement dinner, he “joked” that I was “getting married.”
My husband didn’t agree. He told him that if he couldn’t respect me, he didn’t understand.
He left. I followed him. That was pretty much the end.
When Jordan was born, there was one last argument—some nasty comments about “our genes” and “what kind of family we’re creating”—and he shut it down completely.
So, yes. He had reasons.
