Page 54 of Sinful Promises

If the truth was meant to set me free, this did the opposite. I was still trapped in the nightmare. I squeezed my eyes shut and images of the dozens of men Mother had paraded through our trailer over the years flitted across my mind like prison-offender photos. “Was I conceived during an orgy?”

Her jaw dropped open. “Is that what he told you?”

“Yes.”

She placed her hand on her heart and with a wracking sob, her tears flowed. It was an emotional performance I’d seen her do way too many times. Mother should have put her energy into being an actress.

I was not falling for it this time. “Stop it,” I hissed.

She gasped.

“Tell me the truth or I’m walking out of here.”

She scraped the tears from her eyes. “It was the early nineties. It’s what we did back then.”

My gut twisted. Get up and walk out anyway. Nothing she said from this moment forward would provide relief.

Go, Daisy. Save yourself.

But I couldn’t move. I had to hear every sordid detail. So, I waited. And waited.

The silence stretched out between us like a deserted road in the middle of Australia, and I’d seen enough of those to know how desolate they could be.

“It was a Thursday night.” Mother’s voice was as brittle as cracked China. “Every second Thursday was the day the miners finished their shift at the coal mine.” She scrunched up her forehead, creating deep lines. “I can’t remember where they came from. Anyway, they’d fly into town with fists full of money and be ready to party.”

My heart slammed into my chest and I gasped. “Were you a prostitute?”

“What? No! Of course not.” Her eyes nearly popped out her head. “How dare you?” Her voice boomed, showing no sign of her apparent sore throat, and the horror crawling across her expression gave me a strong indication that she was telling the truth.

Thank God. But I had no intention of apologizing. The question had been justified. “Okay then,” I said. “So why was their money important?”

She did a little jig with her head and smirked. “Because they bought me drinks, of course.”

Relief washed through me. Mother was many things. Thank Christ I didn’t have to add prostitute to the list. “Okay then. So, the miners would come into town to drink and party. Then what?”

She squinted at me, all defiant as if I’d accused her of the most heinous of crimes. But I wasn’t sure if the rest of her story would bathe her in a more innocent light.

“I don’t know.” She lowered her eyes to her fingers that were twisted so tightly together, her knuckles bulged white. “I guess things got a little out of hand. We drank a lot. Danced a lot. We partied hard. The pub threw us out early in the morning and I invited the guys back to my place.”

“Four guys.”

Her eyes narrowed. She was calculating her response.

Lies came easily to her. Telling the truth did not.

Instead, she raised her chin and met my gaze. “Yes. Four men.”

“Was . . .” I stalled. All my life I’d called him my father. I will never call him that again. “Was Rob one of them?”

She paused as if weighing up the consequence of her answer, then said, “Yes.”

“So, let me get this straight. You invite four strangers, men, back to your trailer, and you just flop into bed with them.”

“You make it sound so sleazy.”

“It was sleazy.”

“It wasn’t like that. It was beautiful.”