That made me smile. I could easily have that conversation. I relaxed as I began to fill her in on all the wonderful things about my baby girl.
Chapter 26
It was my father’s turn. I’d gotten insight from Elaine. Now, it was time to hear my father’s side.
Short of his joy in finding me, he and I had not talked about my abduction. And it was time that we did. I especially wanted to know how he could hurt my mother the way she’d written about in my journal.
He’d never said anything about my mother, but I couldn’t imagine that he’d spent all of that money hiring private investigators to track me down, but hadn’t figured out who the woman was who’d kidnapped me.
That’s why, immediately after I’d left Elaine yesterday, I’d called my father and asked to meet with him. Of course, he’d been all too eager.
So now, I was sitting in his office, directly across from him. I had greeted him, then handed him my mother’s journal.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Just read it, please. It explains a lot. I’ve marked where I’d like you to start.”
Though he seemed confused, he took the book.
I studied him as he read. His hazel eyes matched mine. Our skin color could blend seamlessly. A visual test confirmed what the DNA had already told us.
I remember how I used to stare at photos of Al Harrison (or whoever the man was in the picture my mother kept on our mantel). I would study him, searching his face, looking for any hint of resemblance to mine. I never found any and now I knew why.
At some point, I needed to know more about the man my mother said was my father. Who was he? Was he some figment of her imagination? The one thing that I did know, though. The man in front of me was real. And right about now, I needed to understand what kind of man would leave his pregnant girlfriend.
I continued watching him as he read. Yes, I probably shouldn’t have allowed him to read my mother’s innermost thoughts, but I hoped that if he could see the person she had spiraled into, the pain that he had played a part in causing, he would have mercy on my mother. He wouldn’t try to make me cut her off. He wouldn’t try to send her to jail.
“Wow,” he said. I waited patiently as he read. When he finally looked up me fifteen minutes later, a mist covered his eyes. “I-I had no idea she was . . .”
“Spiraling out of control like that?” I said, finishing his sentence.
When my father looked up at me, he struggled to find his words. “I don’t know what to say,” he said.
“Did you ever love my mother?” I asked.
He shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I liked her a lot. We were young. She was fun. But I told her time and time again that I didn’t want anything serious.”
“Well, obviously she was serious,” I said. “And she obviously thought the two of you had a future.”
He glanced back down at the journal. “Oh my God. I just never knew.”
My glare tried to pierce him, to see if he was telling the truth. Finally, I said, “When I was abducted, did it ever dawn on you to look at her?”
“No,” he said. “I hadn’t heard from your mother in a year. Why would it dawn on me to look at her? We were in Beaumont. She was still in Marshall as far as I knew. Plus, the description of the woman that Elaine gave police was an older, dark-skinned overweight woman.”
I thought of my mother’s caramel skin and couldn’t help but say, “Maybe to Elaine, my mother was dark-skinned.”
He shook his head again. “This just makes no sense to me. I never even thought about . . .” His words trailed off and I could tell he was in shock.
My mother must’ve worn padding, a wig, glasses, the works. She’d proven she was a master at costumes. With the state she was in, nothing that she did surprised me now.
“So, you just left college and never talked to her again?”
“I did a couple of times when she came to Beaumont. But I told her I was getting married. Then, after she lost the baby . . .” His words trailed off again.
“You saw that as a blessing?” I asked.
He lowered his head in shame. “I wish I could say that I didn’t, but I truly felt like it was God’s way of working everything out. I was twenty-two years old.”
“Did you really ask her to get an abortion?”
He nodded. “I did and I have lived with that guilt forever. Even though it didn’t happen that way, just the fact that I had even asked her to do something like that tore me apart inside for the longest time. It was a guilt that I’ve lived with. I wasn’t raised like that. I was just young and dumb and panicked. After she lost the baby, I saw that as my way to make a clean break. I had no idea that it had destroyed her like this.” He ran his fingers over the book and from the look on his face, he was genuinely remorseful.
Pain filled my heart again as I thought of what my mother had gone through. “Well, it had, especially when she learned that she could never have children. And she blamed you for the fall that killed her baby and damaged her womb.”
“I never touched her,” he said. “I mean, she was attacking me and when I tried to push her off of me, she fell. But I thought she was fine because she got up and walked away. And then she left and I didn’t hear from her again until she called to tell me that she’d lost the baby.”
“And you just let her go through that alone?”
Shame filled his face and my heart hurt all over again thinking of my mother going through that tragedy alone.
“Well, she didn’t just disappear. Apparently, she stalked you and she knew everything about you and your wife,” I said.
He ran his hand over his head. “I don’t believe this.”
“Believe it,” I replied.
He reread a few passages. “So, she just came down here and took you?” I could see the wheels spinning in his head. As if he were mad at himself that it never dawned on him that my mother was behind my disappearance.
“I think in her mind she was rationalizing that I belonged to her.”
“Oh my God,” was all he could mumble again. “I wasn’t trying to hurt her. I was just hanging out with her while I was at school. I knew that she loved me and in a way, I loved her. But never in the way she wanted. And I knew that she was upset when she came to see me in Beaumont, but I thought it was just because she was pregnant. She told me she was seeing someone else right before she lost the baby and I just assumed he was there for her.”
“Or maybe you just wanted to absolve yourself,” I replied.
I expected him to dispute that, but he simply said, “You’re probably right.” His shoulders rose, then fell. “I never even thought that she was capable of something like that.”
I didn’t know what else to say to him. My emotions were all over the place. Nothing could justify what my mother had done. But how much could one woman be expected to endure before she snapped?
“What did your mother have to say about all of this?” he asked.
I stared at him pointedly. “I’m sure your high-powered attorneys that tracked me down have told you the state my mother is in. She has dementia. I can’t get her to say much of anything.”
He seemed stunned. “Honestly, my focus was on finding you, not finding out who took you. I didn’t get a lot of info on your mother because once I located you, that’s all I cared about. But the investigators did tell me her name was Connie Harrison. That’s why I had no idea.”
“So you mean to tell me when they told you her name, even if she was no longer going by her maiden name, you never put two and two together?”
“No! That’s just it. I don’t know a Connie Harrison. Your mother’s real name is Virginia Payne, so I never made the connection,” my father said.
My eyes widened in shock. “Virginia Payne? You’re mistaken. My mother’s name is Connie Harrison.”
My father looked confused. “No, her name is Virginia Payne. At least that’s what she was in college.”
I don�
�t know why, but a memory of creditors calling our house looking for Ms. Payne filled my head.
I remembered it because my mother always had such a fit, yelling at the bill collector, that they were mistaken and had the wrong number.
I felt sick to my stomach. Even my name was a lie.
My father shook off his shock. “Do you think she really doesn’t remember, or do you think she doesn’t want to remember?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. The tears I had been holding inside finally escaped. My father stood and came over and held me in his arms.
“I am so sorry. So, so sorry,” he said, as he hugged me. “I never knew Virginia had lost it like th—”
He stopped midsentence and I followed his gaze toward the door. There, Elaine stood in the doorway. Both of us looked shocked, unsure of how much she’d heard.
“Virginia? The woman you cheated on me with in school? That’s who stole my child?” she asked in disbelief. In that moment, I knew that any progress I’d made at lunch with her the other day was out the window. She wouldn’t rest until my mother paid for her crime.
“Sweetheart.” My father released me and stretched his arms out to her. “I had no idea.”
She jerked away from his reach. “My life was ruined over some girl you were cheating on me with while you were away at college?”
“Sweetheart,” he repeated.
“Don’t sweetheart me!” she screamed. “You robbed me of my child. Both of you! She kidnapped my baby as some vendetta because you were a liar and a cheat. Are you kidding me?” Her face had turned red with anger and she trembled as she spoke. “I want that bitch arrested. I don’t care if she’s on her deathbed, I want her under the jail!”
That caused me to take a step toward her. “Mrs. Logan—”
“I’m not Mrs. Logan! I’m your damn mother,” she screamed. She used both hands to push Major with a force that belied her small frame. “My life was ruined because you played with the wrong woman’s heart.”
I wanted to say something—anything—to get her to calm down because I saw veins popping out of her temples.
Her outburst shocked me into momentary silence. But I inhaled and said, “I understand you’re upset but—”
“No, you don’t understand anything,” she said, cutting me off again. “Until someone has ripped your child out of your life, you can’t possibly understand! But you’re about to feel my pain.” She spun around to face her husband. “You’re disgusting.” She whipped her head back in my direction. “Cut her off or she goes to jail. You let me—your real mother—know what you decide. I expect to hear from you tomorrow or the police will be there to pick up your mother the day after tomorrow.”
With that, she spun and stomped out of his office.
Chapter 27
It felt like someone was playing a cruel game on me. In one hand was the answer to all my family’s financial problems. A life of wealth that was rightfully mine. But in the other, was something that was priceless—a woman who had cared for me, loved me, raised me.
“But she stole you.”
The words of my husband rang in my head. He and Cynthia had been up all night consoling me after that meeting with Major. Mama had been upstairs asleep when I’d gotten home. I wanted to go immediately charge her up, ask her to explain her lies—but Malcolm and Cynthia had convinced me that I needed to calm down first.
We went out at my complex and sat by the pool, that had it not been a cool night, would’ve been a beacon for mosquitos with its brown, dirty water.
They let me cry. They let me vent and then they got real with me.
My mother was a liar.
A liar, a thief, and a kidnapper.
The reality of that hit me in the stomach like a sledgehammer.
My mother was a criminal. And now she was about to pay for her crime.
By no means was I trying to make her pay, but, as she used to say when I was a little girl, “The chickens had come home to roost.” My mother was going to have to pay for her crimes either by me cutting her off or actual charges being filed against her. It was a no-win situation for me and her.
The thought of my mother in prison in her frail state sent my stomach into knots. While I understood Mrs. Logan’s issue, the reality was that my mother was sick and prison would kill her.
But so would me abandoning her. Not that I even wanted to. It hurt like hell that she was a kidnapper. And a liar.
But she was still my mother.
“So, what are you going to do?” Cynthia asked me, breaking me from my conflicted thoughts.
“I don’t have a choice,” I sniffed.
“It’s going to hurt either way, but you know that your mother loves you,” Malcolm assured me. He was sitting next to me on the pool lounging chair. Usually, his presence was comforting when I was stressed but right now, it wasn’t helping at all.
“That’s one thing I don’t doubt but it doesn’t make it right what she did,” I replied.
“It doesn’t,” Cynthia said, her voice soothing. “I just want you to do what’s going to give you peace.”
I leaned back in the pool chair and weighed my options. They were limited.
“I don’t have much choice. I’m angry at my mother but not angry enough to lock her away in some home,” I balked. “But if I don’t, these people are going to make sure she goes to jail.”
“What if they do press charges? Like you say, your mom is sick. They wouldn’t put her in prison, would they?” Cynthia asked.
I’d played that scenario out in my head as well. “With all the money the Logans have, I wouldn’t be surprised if they made sure she got the maximum penalty.”
“Yeah. All that money,” Cynthia said. “And then, to think about all the money you’d have to spend trying to fight them.”
“Money I don’t have,” I added.
“Dang, I don’t know what you should do because that’s your money. You’re entitled to that.”
“But a few weeks ago, I didn’t know anything about it. So what if I just went back to pretending I didn’t?” I said.
I could feel my husband tense up. Even though I hadn’t given him the go ahead to cash the check, Malcolm was already spending our newfound wealth in his head. Just this morning, he talked about how he couldn’t wait until he could hire some additional developers to help him work out some of the kinks in his app. I knew that giving the check back and finding money to fight criminal charges was an option he didn’t want to even consider.
“I’m going to go to Mrs. Baker’s and get Destiny,” Malcolm said before leaving us to ourselves. He flashed a look at Cynthia like he was hoping she’d convince me to come to my senses.
After he was gone, Cynthia shifted in the lounge chair so that she was directly facing me. “Let me ask you a question, do you have money to get your mother an attorney?”
“No,” I said, solemnly.
“Do you have money for a divorce attorney?” Cynthia’s eyes went toward the walkway where Malcolm had just disappeared. “Because I can tell you now, this is going to take a toll on your marriage. Malcolm can say that he supports you, and I believe that he is supportive, but this one will hurt. He’s on the cusp of realizing his dream and you’re saying not only can he not do that, but he’s going to need to find money to hire a criminal attorney for your mother.”
“Malcolm would never put his mother in a home. He would never turn his back on his mother, so I don’t know why he expects me to,” I protested.
“Well, like you once told me, you can’t talk on hypotheticals. The reality is, you guys are faced with life-changing money. A life-changing opportunity. And there will be some resentment from him if you walk away from that. He’s a good guy so he’ll try his best not to show it, but it will be festering underneath.”
“That’s so wrong,” I said. “And I hate that I’m in this position.”
“I understand that,” Cynthia replied. “All I can tell you is that you’re going to have
to make a decision soon.”
“Yeah, Mrs. Logan said she wants an answer tomorrow.”
Cynthia put her hands over mine. “At least they offered to pay for the home. Look at the small blessings.”
I nodded. That was a good thing Major had done. He’d called when I was on my way home and told me that he would indeed pay for my mother to go to one of the top memory care facilities. Of course, his wife didn’t know anything about it, but he said he wanted to make sure my mother had the best care. And while he hated going behind his wife’s back, he would do whatever it took to make things right and that meant making sure my mother had the best care.
“I guess that is a bright spot, isn’t it?” I sighed.
“Yeah, it’s not like you’d have to put your mother in some dump now. And honestly, that facility may be the best thing anyway. You’re young. You have a daughter. You haven’t been focusing on Destiny. This money could change Destiny’s life. Give her a better life. Get her out of that neighborhood. You guys could have more kids like you want. You’re not in a position to be a caregiver, financially or physically,” Cynthia said.
I sighed. My best friend was right. I knew I didn’t have any other choice. Major’s offer was the only option I had. Now, I just had to muster up the strength to tell my mother.
Chapter 28
“So, you’re not going to say anything to me?” I stood in the doorway to my mother’s room as she stuffed the last of her belongings in a duffel bag. She hadn’t even bothered to fold them up, which was a big deal for my obsessively meticulous mother. She didn’t say a word as she walked over, pushed all of the toiletries off of her dresser and into a tote bag.
“Mama?” I repeated.
“Oh, am I still your mother?” she said, not bothering to look up.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and fought hard not to cry. When I had woken her up this morning, I’d actually prayed that she’d be in one of her confused states, so she wouldn’t be aware that I was moving her into a facility. Major had worked magic—making some calls and before the sun set on yesterday, had found a place for her to go. A place that, in my world just a few weeks ago, would’ve been unimaginable.
The Stolen Daughter Page 14