Page 38 of Guitars and Mistakes
My life would change, and I’d owe it all to Lila Potter.
Then the door opened and a stick-thin woman with enormous eyes, stringy hair, and sagging skin was standing in front of us, a cigarette dangling from her lips and a sour look on her face. The eyes, foggy with drugs or alcohol or something else, looked up and down my body and then snapped to Lila, who she glared at.
“Who the fuck are you?”
I remembered that voice. I remembered the way she snapped at me every time I’d done something wrong.
I remembered her handing me to the man at the orphanage.
And I knew nothing had changed. No matter how much Lila wanted to believe it had.
“Mrs. Shine?” Lila asked hesitantly. “My name’s Lila Potter. I believe someone has been in touch with you? Told you we were coming?”
The eyes glanced at me one more time and then turned to Lila, the sneer on the mouth growing even more pronounced. “Lila Potter? The girl who says she has my Rivers with her?”
Lila pushed me forward a bit. “Right. Here he is. I wanted to bring him in person so you could... So you could...”
The woman—my mother—jerked herself away from the door and into the dimly lit trailer, and Lila’s voice faded away. Maybe because she was realizing that this wasn’t going to go the way she’d hoped it would.
My heart broke for her a little bit, because I knew exactly how it felt when my mother told you one thing and did another. Lila had lived such a bright, sunny life that it had probably never occurred to her that your mother could care so little for you that she’d give you up without a second thought. She’d probably never imagined any parent would refuse to love their child.
She’d grown up in an entirely different world than I did.
Still. There was a part of me that wanted this just as badly as Lila did. So I stepped into the room, vowing to give the woman a chance to make things up to me. Maybe she just didn’t like strangers, or maybe she needed a moment to think.
She could still do the right thing.
She whirled around and threw herself into an armchair that looked like it had been made in the 70s. And her glare finally turned to me.
“So you’re Rivers,” she said, sounding annoyed, like we were imposing on something important. Her eyes traveled from my eyes down to my feet and back up. “I guess I can see the resemblance. Some sort of rock star now, aren’t you?”
“I guess you could say that,” I said hesitantly.
“All rich and famous and successful.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a sneer.
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” I said, trying to inject some humor into the situation. How the fuck were you supposed to handle something like this? Was there a rule book somewhere that I just hadn’t gotten?
She snorted. “Richer than you would have been if you lived here, that’s for sure. You come around to ask me for something? Or did you finally figure out you had family that needed help?Richard!”
She shouted the name like it was part of the conversation we were having and I jumped. What the hell? Who was Richard? Did she have Tourette or something?
A second later, though, a guy roughly my age emerged from another room, looking... far, far too much like me. I could see it in the eyes and the nose. The sharp jawline. The dark, ruffled hair.
That person was related to me.
“Your little brother,” she snapped. “Richard, meet Rivers. Your big brother. He’s here to help us. Finally give us some of that money he’s been making for years.”
Wait. I had a brother?
We stared at each other, our mouths hanging open in what had to be nearly identical expressions. The image of something like my face staring right back at me was so surreal that I went back to thinking I must be dreaming all of this. It was all too strange. How old was this kid, and when had he been born? I knew from the records that I’d been three when my mom deserted me, so he must be at least three years younger than me. His dad and mine might be the same person. We might have been friends.
Except that she kept him.
And deserted me.
I swung my gaze back to my mom, all the confusion of that boy flooding back into me, and saw her smirking up at me.
