She pops peanuts into her mouth. “Nope.”
“Would you tell me if he was?”
“Uh-uh.”
I lean my back against the bar and rest my elbows on it. “You could be lying to me about my mom coming here to meet her brother.”
“I could. But I’m not.” She glances around. “Where’s Denny?”
Abby’s completely deadpan. There are two sides to the chick: full of shit and lethal. Either way, she’s hard-core. “He’s in the back with a delivery truck.”
“Did he leave me food?”
I reach behind the bar and hand her a foam container. Her eyes light up. “Spaghetti!” Abby twirls the noodles onto a plastic fork, then motions toward the swinging door. “You actually are handy. Impressive.”
I push the door again, awed by the sense of pride. “My dad will be disappointed I didn’t fuck something up.”
She humph-chuckles at my statement. “Your father is rather bitchy. By the way, Rachel might come home soon.”
Abby gains my full attention and my hands sweat. I want Rachel home. She needs to be home, but... “Her legs?”
“She’ll move around again, but with or without assistance, they don’t know.”
I rub at the muscles of my neck, somewhat relieved, somewhat devastated. Rachel should be maneuvering around the hood of her car, not constrained. When she’s home I’ll have no choice but to face her and I’ve got to find a way to make this up to her.
I watch as a new guy walks in. He has blond hair, like my mom. Blue eyes, too, but he’s rough as hell. “That one?” I ask.
“Not telling,” she mumbles through the food in her mouth.
“You didn’t even look.”
“Because I wouldn’t even answer.” She drops her voice to try to mimic me.
“Why would Mom lie? She told us she was an only child and that her parents died.”
“You can’t get it out of your mind, can you?”
I shake my head.
“Trust me, you don’t want to know more. It’s the stuff of nightmares. It even gives me cold chills if I think about it at three a.m.”
A sickening darkness curls in my gut. “It’s my mom, Abby.”
“And if she wanted you to know, she would have dropped the bomb during one of your swanky dinners.” Abby tears off a piece of a roll and shoves it in her mouth. Is Rachel aware how often Abby goes without food?
“Don’t do it,” she says to the noodles. “You’re in my world because Rachel loves you and I love her. Just ’cause Daddy took you back, it doesn’t give you the right.”
?
??The right to what?”
She peeks at me from the corner of her eye. “Feel sorry for me.”
The guilt that I pitied her slices through me. “Then I’ll go back to hating you.”
“Good. Did you do it?” she asks. “Did you give Matt what he wanted?”
“Is it a medical condition that causes you to talk in riddles?”