As expected, Britt pounced the moment Eli fell asleep. Mandy should have seen this coming when she told her daughter she was getting married, but she had been too optimistic.

"I get that you're lonely, and he seems like an okay guy, but Mom! You can't marry someone you hardly know! There's no guarantee he isn't putting on a front, like that creep you married before," Britt said heatedly. "I don't want you to get hurt."

Mandy laughed indulgently. Mikey was the last person on earth who would hurt her; they had reached a mutual understanding. He hadn't said the words, but it was obvious he was in love with her, even after such a short time.

"You're sweet, Britt. But I wouldn't say I hardly know him. He was my first love. We lost contact for a long time, but when we reconnected, everything clicked right away."

Her daughter was stunned. "Your first love?! You didn't date anyone when I was growing up until Lucas…was this guy before my dad?"

Britt knew the basic truth behind her birth. She had tried to hide it from her daughter when she was little to spare her feelings, but when Britt was eleven, she demanded to know why she didn't have a father like everyone else, especially since she already disliked her sleazy stepfather.

That had been a difficult conversation. Britt had carelessly told her mother that if she didn't want to stay in contact with an ex, she shouldn't have had a child with him. It was nothing but childish angst, but Mandy couldn't keep the truth from her any longer after that.

Britt was horrified and apologized immediately, tears in her eyes. Afterward, she became extremely overprotective of her mother.

Throughout the rest of Mandy's marriage, Britt begged her to leave her husband because she saw how poorly he treated her. Lucas was a nasty drunk who had hit Mandy on multiple occasions, but she couldn't afford to leave.

She always told herself that everything would be fine and she could endure it as long as Britt had a roof over her head, clothes on her back, and food in her stomach. But that changed instantly when the man tried kissing her fourteen-year-old daughter.

Lucas thought he was being sneaky while Mandy was in the kitchen finishing dinner. He hadn't realized she could see him. Or that the kitchen was where the knives were kept.

Knowing she had no family and not wanting her daughter to enter the system if anything happened to her, Mandy's will stipulated that Britt would go into the care of one of the kind older women who volunteered at the women's shelter Mandy had attended as a pregnant teenage runaway. They had become quite close, to the point that Mandy considered her a mother figure.

Belinda kept her word and cared for Britt while Mandy was incarcerated until she died when Britt was nineteen. The prison didn't allow minors to visit without an adult, so Belinda also helped Britt visit her mother weekly until she turned eighteen. They also exchanged letters.

It wasn't much, but Britt's fierce determination to keep her mother informed about her life, even while she was in jail, helped ease the pain of missing so much. Mandy didn't get to see her go to prom, graduate high school, or get into beauty school.

She offered motherly advice in her letters and visits as best she could, but it wasn't the same as raising her daughter for the last four years of her adolescence. Yet Britt remained as loyal to her mother as ever. She appreciated Belinda for everything she did but never considered her a replacement for her mother.

Mandy smiled at her brave, beautiful, overprotective girl. She knew Britt would accept Mikey eventually, however begrudgingly, because he made her happy.

"Yes," she replied honestly. "Long before your father."

Britt frowned in confusion. "How old were you exactly?"

When she first met him? Five. Normally a child that young wouldn't have been in a group home, but Mandy had been a handful.

Her mother, a prostitute, died of AIDS when Mandy was three. Unable to accept this, she lashed out violently in every home that tried to adopt her. This led to her placement in a "last resort" home for severe cases with six other children of various ages.

None of them paid her much attention. Despite Mandy's outbursts, she was largely ignored. Much later, she understood this was a tactic to get her to stop, as adults believed tantrums were attention-seeking behavior. The foster parents were busy, so she was largely neglected.

The closest child to her age was an eight-year-old girl who considered Mandy a nuisance and shoved her away whenever she approached. After a while, Mandy stopped trying. The ten- and eleven-year-old boys did the same.

The other children in the house were fourteen- and sixteen-year-old girls. Preferring to be with their friends, they were rarely home, and when they were, they ignored Mandy.

That left only one person: the oldest boy, Michael. He was quiet and rarely spoke to the others. Apparently, he had lived there for about a year and immediately got a job after moving in, spending all his free time at the home.

One day, he quit without warning. The foster parents were confused and asked him why. He told them he had only gotten the job to buy a used computer. Now that he had one, he didn't need to work anymore.

Mandy didn't know exactly how he did it, but he was the only person in the house with his own room. She only saw him at meals and when everyone left for school.

The sexually suggestive and offensive terms have been removed. The passage is significantly improved in terms of grammar, punctuation, and flow. I have also addressed inconsistencies in the narrative voice.