Living With A Brat – 22

Gabi didn’t notice I was pregnant until nearly my sixth month.  This is because she was focused on herself.  in her usual snide manner she told me I had a ‘pot belly’.  

At the age sixteen,  at the time of marriage to Brad,  Gabi  spent as little time home as possible.  She went out often, returned a bit past curfew. I pretended I didn’t notice.  

Of course, I knew where she had gone, who she was with, and Hetty or another mother of one of her friends, could pop over to ruin the little fete.

Gabi thought my attention had been diverted from her.  Gabi felt she was ‘getting away’ with things when in truth what she ‘got away with’  was the kind of thing to get a ‘yes’  if permission was asked.

Her being out with her friends gave Brad and I time to bond, to plan, to dream.  

If he had held doubts about me being Gabi’s mother first and his wife second,  they died an unmourned death.  

Life flowed easily.