What was that, exactly? I wondered.
“I’ve been able to take care of you girls all these years. I’ve been able to take care of the men of the Order. At first I saw to their”—she rolled her eyes—“carnal needs. Men are so easy. I worked the parties that year and eventually just started staying on and taking on more and more responsibilities until I ran the household. Eventually they caught on about who was in charge.”
She winked at me, and I laughed out loud.
And then I just blinked. By “working the parties,” she meant… I connected it with my other limited knowledge of what Rafe had told me over the years… Orgies. She meant she participated in the orgies and sex games the Order organized as part of each Initiation. Mama H and… orgies.
Okay. I blinked. It might take me a minute to connect these two disparate thoughts and realities.
“So, when your mother was rejected, I showed her the ropes of how to play the parties, too.”
Wait, WHAT?
“What?” I screeched, jumping up from the bench. “Mom worked the sex parties for those old, saggy-balled bastards? As in like a prostitute?”
“Of course not!” Mama H said, sounding offended. “Your mother and I were never prostitutes.”
My mouth gaped open. “Then… why…”
Mama H got to her feet and she had a good two inches on me. She stared me down. “I’d hoped you were grown up enough to discuss this, but maybe I was wrong.”
She started to walk away. Shit.
“No. No!” I ran to catch up with her and put my hand on her arm. At least she didn’t yank away from me. Thank God for small favors.
“No. Mama H, no! I just… This is a lot to process, okay?”
She breathed out, her ruffled feathers calming. She nodded. “All right. Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?”
Hurriedly, I nodded my head. “Yes. No judgment, I swear. I just want to know what happened to my mother.”
Mama H’s face clouded over again. She held out her arm to me and I took it. She led us down the little path down closer to the riverbank. “Your mother was never meant for the Oleander lifestyle, not long-term. She enjoyed the Oleander for what it was, but she knew those parties were fantasy. She was always more interested in getting on with her real life. But it was hard to find work. She did what she could, and then on the weekends came and got lost in the most opulent pleasures.”
“God, Mama H, enough with the details. This is my mom!”
Mama H tut-tutted. “Your generation is supposed to be all about sexual liberation.”
I just squeezed my eyes shut. “Not when it comes to our parents.”
She laughed. “Anyway. Then you came along, and your mom decided it was time to get serious. I helped her get the job at Rafe’s family’s house and that was that.”
A horrible thought struck me, and I grabbed her arm. “Oh God.” I was about to be sick. Pieces started to click into place. “You’re saying Mom was having sex at the Oleander. And Rafe’s dad was there, and then Mom got pregnant with me—”
But Mama H immediately shook her head vigorously no.
“No, your mother never slept with Rafe’s father. Ever. I swear to you, as your mother swore to me.”
The panic was still alive in my chest though. “How can you be sure?”
Mama H just gave me the look. “Your mother’s not an idiot. She knew you were interested in Rafe as a teenager. I asked her the same question, but she said it was completely impossible. She never slept with Rafe’s father even once. In fact, he was the Initiate who rejected her as his belle. If anything else, his guilt at rejecting her, then someone else knocking her up was part of why he was so eager to give her a job. He’d given some other woman all her dreams and left your mother… well… as she was.”
I froze. “So, wait… are you saying one of the other Order members is… my father?” I wasn’t hesitant about grabbing Mama H this time. I grabbed both of her arms and demanded, “Who? Who is my father?”
“I don’t know!” she said. “I swear I don’t know which one of them it is!”
I let go of her and stumbled backwards. This couldn’t all be real. I was dreaming. No way Mama H had just confessed that she and my mother were rejected belles who’d then spent the next three months fucking various dudes in wild sex parties—oh and during one of those aforementioned gangbangs, some other rich, multi-millionaire fucker had knocked up Mom with me.
And then left us. No money. No support. Nothing. Whoever it was had left my mother defenseless; a single mother in an unforgiving world.