My mother couldn't take it anymore.
Her voice broke as she shouted, raw and desperate. "Tessa! Adrian! Your mother is right here!"
She pointed straight at me, her eyes blazing with disbelief and pain. The crucifix pendant at her neck was white-knuckled in her other fist, the chain biting into her skin.
"She gave up eighteen years of her life to raise you!" she cried. "And now you're calling the woman who destroyed our Family 'Mom'? Have you lost all sense of right and wrong?!"
"Adrian," my mother said, her voice trembling so badly it sounded like it might shatter, "you were a sickly baby. Do you remember that? Of course you don't. You were always burning up with fevers, always crying through the night. There was one night, one night your temperature spiked to 104. It was pouring rain, a storm so bad no one dared step outside. And your mom," her voice cracked as she pointed at me, "she didn't hesitate. She wrapped you up, ran out into that storm, and carried you through the rain just to get you to the Family doctor. She didn't even think about herself."
Her words hung in the air before she turned, eyes red and swollen, toward Tessa.