The Daughter in Law by Jordan Silver Page B

that.
    I’m supposed
to be enjoying this pregnancy and looking forward to my child’s birth. Instead
I have to consort with lawyers and shit to find out what our position is
concerning grandparents rights. Yes, that’s one of the things she threw at me
from her hospital bed. I wanted to choke the shit out of her for that one.
Instead I stood there wondering if she was even aware of what she was saying.
    It seems she
thought that she and I were in this together. Somehow she’d got it into her
head that she had to save me from my wife whom she now sees as public enemy
number one. I couldn’t tell my pregnant wife any of this shit I’m just not made
that way. And no matter what she says I’m not letting her anywhere near this
shit. All I can hope for is that at the end of the day after I’ve done what
I’ve set out to do, that it will be enough. Vanessa, as bad as she thinks she
is, has no idea what she’s dealing with. I didn’t either until I saw that shit
up close and personal.
    The road
Vanessa wants to take will just lead to more heartache for her, which is
something that I will avoid at all cause. Tommy can’t handle this shit, unless
she shoots to kill, and she doesn’t have the ammunition needed to win this war.
I do, and when I aim I don’t intend to miss. So for now, the guards will be my
eyes and ears when I couldn’t be there. In the end I’ll give her what she wants
and hope to fuck it’s enough. But knowing her hardheaded ass she’ll still want
to have her say.
    She is cute
though with her threats, and half the time I have to fight not to laugh when
she gets all riled up, because I don’t fancy dodging any more of her damn tuna
cans. She’s a little volatile too these days, which I put down to hormones,
because the girl who met me at the altar was a sweet fun loving beauty, who’d
never said a bad word about anyone as far as I could tell. Now I have to listen
to her ranting and raving about gutting my mother or haggie as she’s grown fond of calling her these days.
Like I said, if this wasn’t my life the shit would be funny.

 
 
    I leafed
through the reports Tony had slipped me earlier in the day when I left the base.
I felt like a C.I.A. operative with all these clandestine meetings and shit but
it was the only way to stay one step ahead of the game. My wife is a loose
canon and my mother is fucking nuts, and I’m playing monkey in the middle.
    “ Dami come eat.”
    “I’m coming sweetheart.” Mom had sent me another one of her
passive aggressive bullshit emails. I played along as I have been for the past
couple weeks. ‘No mom I’m not still mad at you but I need some time to work
things out in my head’.
    I noticed most of her notes were always a fishing
expedition, asking about Vanessa and if she was showing and shit like that.
Once before I would’ve seen that as a nice, sweet, gesture. Now it makes my
nuts crawl into my gut because I know she was up to some shit. I have the daily
reports to prove it.

Chapter 17

 
 
    Mom wants a
meet but I’m pretty sure Vanessa would have my balls if that happened. That,
plus the fact that I wasn’t too sure I could be alone in the same room with my
own mother without choking her out. I’d stopped trying to reason with her since
Xmas. It was the middle of February and I was running out of plausible excuses
to give her at this point. I just needed a little more time to do what I needed
to, to safeguard my little family, and then she would be out of my hair.
    It was by no
means an easy decision to cut all ties with my family. I knew from talks with
dad that if I took the road I was on that that would be the end result. Unless
he and Denise, who seemed to be the only two with any working brain cells left
decided to stand up to mom and her shit. That wasn’t my problem though, she was
his wife and like he’d said, after almost thirty-four years together he
couldn’t just up and start over. It was probably horrible of me as a son,