Today, I’m coming to her for answers. I need her help but I can’t ask her for it directly.

She is the type of person who will take every advantage and if she knew that I needed her for something, she would make me pay dearly for that information, partly to get me back for abandoning her and partly just out of spite.

I show up without warning. If she’s surprised, she doesn’t let it show when she opens the door.

Instead, I walk right into the middle of the conversation with her telling me about the next door neighbor and how obsessed she is with her tree.

They had a friendly relationship up until now but apparently my mother’s healthy tree somehow got in the way. The neighbor has decided that the tree is a hazard and needs to be taken down but my mother hired a tree doctor and confirmed that it is, in fact, healthy and should live for decades more. When the neighbor insisted that she take it down anyway, my mother fought back.

I wasn’t aware of this argument but she quickly catches me up while insisting that I heat her up a frozen dinner of macaroni and cheese. We fall into our old traditions so easily that I have to physically stop myself from folding her laundry and putting it away while we talk.

“Listen, I need to talk to you about Owen’s ex-girlfriend.”

“Oh, you mean the one that Owen thinks your boyfriend killed.”

I feel anger start to rise up to the surface, but I take a deep breath to keep it at bay.

“Why don’t you tell me more about what happened in California?” she asks.

14

Olive

When I ask her for help…

She thinks this question is going to take me by surprise but, of course, it doesn’t.

I knew that she would never give me an answer free of charge, so to speak. If I want something from her, I have to give her something in return.

“I met my biological mother,” I say sternly, looking straight into her eyes.

“So, I guess you know now,” she says with a smirk. “And you’re what, mad at me?”

“Not so much mad but disappointed. Why did you keep this from me?”

“I needed your respect. Kids need to respect their parents and there was no way you were going to listen to anything I said if you knew the truth.”

I search her face for any inkling as to whether or not she is telling me the truth. Is she being serious?

“You lied to me about being my adoptive mother because you didn’t think I would respect you?” I ask. “Don’t you know that you get respect when you earn it?”

“Well, that’s where I went wrong with you. I was always too lenient and that’s why you turned out the way that you did.”