Patty grit her teeth but answered calmly, "I am her girlfriend."

Bette’s head snapped up and she stood up angrily with balled fists, "are you fucking kidding me? You condemned Tina for being a lesbian before she was even one and it turns out you are one too!? That’s like condemning someone for being white like you or being a woman!"

"I was in denial," Mary said, "I have lived with remorse and pain these past 20 years hating myself for everything I was doing. So I hooked up with a bunch of guys, ended up pregnant, then became an alcoholic. I treated Christian terribly. I abused him and locked him in the basement. When he got sick I realized what an idiot I was.

"He’s sick because of me and yet he has a heart of gold. He forgave me regardless of the fact that I was a bad mother. That’s when I made the decision to seek out Tina and beg for her forgiveness. But then social services sent Patty and I couldn’t go. We fell in love and she agreed to help me find Tina, then I found out I was sick."

Bette blinked trying to process all the information. She sat back down with a worried expression, "what does Christian have?"

"He already had asthma, and the dusty basement was terrible for him, so he used open a window and sit next to it since it was too small to get out of," Mary said, "the constant sun was horrible and he developed a rare form of skin cancer. It’s incurable as of yet, and all they have is a medication he has to take for the rest of his life unless they manage to find a cure."

Bette blinked back tears and she turned her hard gaze towards Patty, "what the fuck kind of social worker are you that you let her keep her son after all that!?"

"I was gonna take him away," Patty said, "even after we fell in love I was still going to take Christian. But when Christian was born, and before she became an alcoholic, she had got with this lawyer and set up a life insurance and living will. In case of her inability to care for Christian or her untimely death, Christian would go to the care of Christina Kennard, her next of kin. Everything is completely legal."