Her mom is polished, with jet-black hair and that salon look that women her age sometimes have. She has strong features—high cheekbones, bright eyes. But she’s ugly to me, and it has nothing to do with the way she’s shellacked so much foundation under her eyes to hide that she’s clearly not sleeping well.

Good. The bitch deserves to never sleep.

“Harley, my love,” she says, and pulls her daughter into an embrace. It kills me inside watching Harley hug her back, but I know she’s only doing it not to make a scene. I can sense the distance between them.

Then her mother offers a hand to shake. So professional. So poised. And it takes all my resistance to swallow the words, the profanity-laced diatribe that I’m dying to spit out at her—How could you, you scumbag bitch who deserves to be dunked into a tank of piranhas? Instead, I take her hand, and it’s soft and smooth. She probably rubbed lotion on it earlier. For some reason, that makes me mad because the right to wear lotion, and use a fork, and walk upright should be taken away from someone like her.

“What a pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you,” she says.

Harley narrows her eyes. “You haven’t heard anything about Trey. Why would you say that?”

“Why, I could have sworn you’d told me so much about him.” Her mom sits, and gestures for us to do the same. Her eyes roam over Harley, but she’s not showing much, and the sweater she wears hides her bump pretty well.

“No,” Harley says. “We don’t really talk much, in case you haven’t noticed.”

I try to suppress a smirk, because I’m so damn proud that she’s holding her own against her mom, that she’s not being sucked back into the vortex.

“And that’s such a shame, and I hope we can rectify that, starting tonight,” her mom says, punctuating her pathetic attempt at an olive branch by snapping open her white linen napkin and spreading it across her lap. She clasps her hands together, and looks from Harley to me. “So, tell me everything about the two of you. How did you meet? How long has it been?”

Amazing how she can go from acting as if she knew everything to freely admitting she knows nothing.

Harley glances at me, and raises an eyebrow playfully. I squeeze her leg under the table. I bet she’s thinking of the night we met, when she walked into my tattoo shop, and straight into my heart. If she’d gone to any other shop in the city she might not be mine. But then, I bet fate always had her picked for me, and me for her.

But before Harley can answer, her mom goes first. “Wait. No. Don’t tell me he’s a . . .” She lets her voice trail off, but I can still smell the lingering salaciousness of her tone, and I clench my fists so I don’t deck her right now.

“No, Barb,” Harley says sharply. “He’s not a client.”

“Whew. Thank god.”

I want to fucking smack this woman.

“We actually met at church,” I say, piping in. It’s close enough to the truth, since the SLAA meetings are held at a church, but mostly I just want to get a reaction from her.

Harley squeezes my leg back, and I know she likes my answer.

“Church?” Her mother arches an eyebrow.

I nod several times. “Yeah. We have a lot in common in that regard, it turns out. We pray to the same god.”

“How interesting,” she says, and I wonder how long Barb can keep up this facade of interest. “I had no idea you’d become religious.”

“You can worship in all sorts of ways at some churches,” Harley says with a smirk, because the joke is on her mom. “He’s also a tattoo artist, and he inked my shoulder for me.”

“Oh? You have a tattoo now?” Her voice rises.

“I do.”

“What’s it of?”

“It used to be a red ribbon. Now it’s a heart and arrow.”

“How sweet,” her mother says, and I can tell she’s trying to rein in her surprise, to keep her reactions on the level because she wants to win back her daughter’s affection. I half want to tell her that’s a pyrrhic pursuit, but it’s far too much fun to play cat and mouse with her.

After we peruse the menus, the waitress arrives.

“Do you want your usual rainbow roll, darling?” her mother asks pointedly, like she’s trying to prove she knows all of Harley’s tastes. But she’s not eating raw fish these days.

“Just a veggie roll and some udon noodles,” Harley says.

“You always order a rainbow roll.”

“I don’t feel like it tonight.”

After we order, her mother holds up a water glass in a toast. “To my lovely and beautiful daughter. I am simply thrilled to see you again. And to her handsome new beau.”

Harley clinks glasses and I do the same, following her lead.

After a few more minutes of small talk, a serving of edamame, and a glass of wine for Barb, Harley gets down to business.

“There’s something I’m curious about, Mom.”

“What is it, dear?”

Harley reaches into her purse and takes out some of the birthday greetings. Barb’s eyes widen ever so briefly as she sees the evidence of her deceit laid out like a deck of cards before her. She sets her wine glass down, and it wobbles once. She quickly steadies it, and there’s a moment—so fast, it’s truly the blink of an eye—where her mother appears like a dog caught with his head in the cat food bin. But then she recovers, and I realize I am witnessing a master at work. A master fucking liar, and it chills my blood.

“I found these at your house. Nan and Pop sent them to me every year on my birthday, and every year you kept them from me. Why would you do that?”

Her mother takes a breath, purses her lips together, and then speaks. “I’m sorry. Did you say you found these?” She sketches air quotes.

“Yes.”

“Found them where?” Her mom stares at her, like she’s caught Harley in a trap. But my girl is undeterred.

“You know where I found them,” Harley says crisply. “Where you hid them from me. In your bathroom cabinet.”

“So, you were actually snooping?”

Harley blows out a long stream of air. She stares at her mother, eyes wide open, and nods. “Yes. I was snooping. Because I saw the first card the day after my birthday, and I went back looking for more, and guess what? Where there’s smoke, there’s a lot of fire. Because I discovered you did this, year after year. Why? Why would you do that?”

“I think the more germane question is why would you go looking through my things?”

“Mom, don’t act like you have the moral high ground, because you don’t. I was looking through your things because you took something from me. You took my grandparents away from me. How could you do that?” Her voice threatens to break, but she stays strong. I don’t want her to give her scumbag mother the satisfaction of seeing a single fucking tear.

I stare at her mom, and I can see the cogs turning in her conniving brain. She doesn’t want to lose Harley. She rearranges her features, pushes her bottom lip out, and speaks in a low whisper. “Sweetheart, I planned to give you the cards. I had marked twenty-one on the envelope, because I planned to give them to you when you turned twenty-one. And you’re not twenty-one yet. Ergo,” she says, holding her hand out wide, as if this simple numerical justification will make Harley say, Oh sure, of course, that makes perfect sense.

“But why did I have to be twenty-one to read a frigging birthday card from my grandparents? It’s not like there was anything inappropriate in there. They were full of stories about animals and the beach. There was no reason for you to keep them from me.”

Her mom reaches across the black lacquered table, tries to clasp Harley’s hand. Harley recoils, and I want to pump my fist.

“There are things you don’t know,” her mom says, in that same calm, steady voice.

“Things that would make what you did okay?”

“Harley.” Her lowers her voice to a whisper, and I wonder if she’s forcing herself to speak so quietly because otherwise she’d explode. If there’s one thing her mom would hate, it would be a public scene. “Things about your father. About why he left me.”

“Like what?”

Her mom casts her eyes at me. “Can we talk about this privately?”

“Mom. I’m going to tell him anyway. I don’t keep secrets from Trey. You might as well say it.”

She clasps her hands more tightly, and then starts fidgeting with her watch band. “You might think I just cut you off from them. But your father was the one who cut us off. I was protecting you from him and his family. He cheated on me countless times. Over and over. He was a sex addict. That’s why I left him, and when I left I didn’t want you to have anything to do with him or his family. And he didn’t want to have anything to do with us, since he never stayed in touch, okay?” She stops to take a drink of her wine. “Now you know the truth about your father. He was a serial cheater, and an addict. His parents and I tried to help him, to get him to go to therapy, and I fought like hell to make things work. That’s why you spent the summer with them when you were six; because your father and I were trying to fix things. But it didn’t work, and I didn’t want you to have anything to do with him or them. Are you happy, now that you know? Harley, some things don’t need to be dragged into the light. Some things are better left unsaid. But there, you made me say it.”

Harley doesn’t say anything at first. I watch her closely, and she swallows hard. “I’m pregnant.”

Her mother cringes. Visibly cringes. Like, her whole face spasms. “What?”

“That’s why I’m not eating the rainbow roll.” Harley pulls on her sweater, stretching the fabric across her belly, showing the swell.

“Oh my lord in heaven,” her mother says, flinging a hand over her face. “Please say that’s a lie. Please say that’s not true.”