Five Golden Rings (Main Street Merchants Book 3)

by Amelia C. Adams

  “That’s kind of an odd greeting for your mother. Usually, a ‘hello’ or something along those lines is more appropriate.”

  “Hello, Mother. Where are my kindergarten pictures?”

  Maureen sat on the couch and crossed her ankles. “I imagine they’re upstairs with the scrapbooks and other things I haven’t unpacked yet. Moving is a process, Cara. One box at a time.”

  “You’ve lived here for two years.”

  “And sometimes it’s a very long process.” Maureen’s tone of voice indicated that she was done with this line of questioning, but Cara was far from done.

  “Where are my middle-grade pictures?”

  “In the same place, I suppose.”

  “And what about the picture of me when I won Little Miss Aspen Ridge? You had that hanging over the piano in the old house.”

  Maureen held out her arm. “As you can see, we don’t have room here for the piano.”

  “So you had to get rid of the picture too?”

  Maureen sighed, long and gusty. “Cara, what do you want? I don’t understand why we’re discussing this.”

  “I was just noticing that all the pictures you have on display are of the skinny me. Where are the other pictures? You know—of my entire childhood?”

  Maureen shifted a little on the couch. “I just thought you’d prefer it if we focused on the good times.”

  Cara walked across the floor and sat down in the chair that was positioned kitty-corner to the couch. She needed those few seconds to compose herself. So many angry words threatened to fly out of her mouth, but that’s not why she was here. She was trying to tear down a wall, not reinforce it. “I had a lot of good times when I was younger,” she said. “I got to compete in the Colorado State High School Choir Festival and bring home a blue ribbon. I rode my bike, I climbed trees, I played Barbies, I beat Dad at chess, I had a dog . . . all those things were part of me. I read books. I quoted funny movie lines and made all my friends laugh. I was more than my weight, Mom, but with you, it was always about my weight. Why couldn’t you love me when I was big? What was so terrible about me that you couldn’t even stand me until after I had that surgery?”

  Even though Cara’s voice was soft, her words were pointed. She didn’t mean for them to be, but truth sometimes hurts, and she didn’t know how to open this discussion without there being at least some pain involved.

  Maureen didn’t answer for a long, long time. Cara wanted to demand answers, insist that her mother look at her and tell her why she’d been forced to grow up as a virtual outcast, but instead, she waited. She waited like she’d been waiting her whole life, but this time, it was with a purpose. And she wasn’t going to leave until that purpose had been fulfilled.

  “Have you ever seen a picture of me as a child?” Maureen finally asked.

  Her question was so different from the response Cara had expected that she blinked a few times, flipping the switch in her brain to the new topic. “Um, no, I don’t think I have.”

  “Let me tell you what my childhood was like, Cara. I weighed sixty pounds when I was four years old. By the time I was fourteen, I was in size eighteen dresses. My mother showed her love with food, and if we didn’t eat everything that was put in front of us, she thought we didn’t love her. Out in the world . . .” Maureen’s eyes took on a faraway look. “I was called everything you can imagine. Little boys would chase me home from school, squealing like pigs and throwing rocks and rotten apples at me. You can imagine what middle school was like—all the other girls were focused on the new styles and the way their bodies filled out those new styles, and I just looked like a lump. You couldn’t even see my chest because my stomach was so big.”

  Cara had no idea her mother had been overweight. She didn’t interrupt, hoping her mother would keep talking.

  “I was asked to a party when I was in high school. My mother bought me a new dress—it was the first store-bought dress I’d ever owned. She made all my others. It was aquamarine taffeta, and I loved it. For the first time in my entire life, I felt pretty. And then, when my date and I arrived at the party, I realized it was all a big joke. He was on the football team, see, and all the football players had this secret annual tradition where they’d ask out the ugliest girls in school, and they’d hold an ugly contest and crown the winner ‘Miss Dogface.’ Guess who won that year.”

  “Oh, no, Mom,” Cara whispered, wiping away the tears that had started rolling down her cheeks.

  “Yes. It was me. Cara, when you were born, I made up my mind then and there that you would never, ever go through what I went through. I didn’t realize that part of my weight problem, and yours as well, was caused by a thyroid imbalance. I wish I’d realized that years before—it would have made things so much easier. But as I saw you growing up and developing similar weight problems to what I’d experienced, I was terrified. I couldn’t handle the thought of anyone crowning my little baby girl Miss Dogface. So that’s why I made you try all those diets and took you on all those walks and enrolled you in tumbling and every other crazy thing I did.”

  “I thought you couldn’t stand to look at me,” Cara said in a choked voice.

  “I couldn’t stand to think about the abuse I’d suffered when I was your age,” Maureen clarified. “You reminded me of all the teasing and taunting, every insult, every foul word, because I could see myself in you. Looking at you was like looking at myself in the mirror, and I thought, if they could treat me in such an awful way, what will they do to my baby?”

  “How did you get your weight off, Mom? You’ve been trim for as long as I can remember.”

  Maureen smiled with a touch of sadness. “It was 1979, and diet pills were all the rage amongst my friends. I wasn’t supposed to have them, so I’d buy them and keep them in my friend’s locker at school. We thought we were being so clever, but in reality, we were just making ourselves sick.

  “Well, then we tried really making ourselves sick.”

  “Mom? You were bulemic?” Cara was stunned.

  “We didn’t have a fancy word for it. We just made ourselves throw up after every meal. After a while, my friend lost the weight she wanted to lose, but she couldn’t break herself of the habit. She got down to under a hundred pounds and was finally hospitalized.”

  “And you?” Cara almost didn’t dare ask.

  “I kept it up for a while and lost around forty pounds, but it really was a pointless battle because my mother saw that I was losing weight and she decided that she had to fatten me up. Finally, I had to address the real issue, which had nothing to do with food at all. It had to do with family relationships. You see, she showed her love with food, but she never actually said the words ‘I love you.’ I explained to her that the food was causing some real issues for me that I now needed help to overcome, and I needed her to stop trying to feed me everything under the sun.”

  “How did she take that?”

  “It was really hard for her at first. She didn’t understand how something made out of love could be harmful. But when I explained the bullying I was experiencing and then told her about the eating disorder I’d developed, her eyes were opened. She stopped trying to force food on me, and I was able to start eating a lot healthier and in smaller portions. After a while, she learned that feeding me healthy food was an even better way to show her love, and after about a year of hard work, the weight came off.

  “That didn’t work for you, though, and like I said, I wish we’d discovered your thyroid imbalance sooner.”

  “I thought my thyroid pills were just to help with brain function and hormones and stuff like that.”

  “The thyroid does control those aspects of the body as well, but if your thyroid isn’t functioning, your body can’t drop weight.”

  Cara sat back, her mind reeling. Everything she’d thought, everything she’d believed about herself, was shifting in her brain like a picture in a kaleidoscope.

  “I wish I’d done so many things differently,” Maureen said. “I
didn’t mean to make you feel ugly because of your weight—that’s exactly what I’d been trying to avoid. I just wanted you to have a happy childhood.”

  “You know what, Mom? I did. I have great memories of growing up. And I didn’t even know I was fat until you told me.”

  Maureen dropped her gaze to her lap. “So I was the cause of all the things I was trying to avoid.”

  Cara didn’t argue. It was perhaps one of the truest statements her mother had ever made.

  “So, what do we do now?” Maureen raised her eyes to meet Cara’s. “We can’t go back in time. We can’t undo what’s been done.”

  “No, but we can create a different future. One where we appreciate each other for who we are, not who we want the other to be.”

  Maureen nodded slowly. “I think I’d like that.”

  Cara steeled herself. This conversation wouldn’t be over until they’d discussed one more thing. But their talk so far had done worlds upon worlds of good, so she had nothing but hope that this last bit could turn out as well.

  “Max and I want to invite you to our concert on the twenty-third. It’s at Harpstrings, the same place you came before, but we’ll be performing even longer. And I’ll be debuting some of my original compositions.”

  “Are you going to persist in going against my wishes in this?”

  The change in Maureen’s tone from soft and conciliatory to harsh and angry was jarring, and Cara startled. They’d come so far in the last half hour—what had happened to erase all that progress?

  “If I understood why you were so against it, it would sure make things easier for me, Mom.”

  Maureen let out an exasperated sigh. “I’ve already explained it. It’s a silly waste of your time. I don’t have a deep, dark secret to share that would make that clearer to you—it’s just not the path you should be taking.”

  Cara sat there for a moment, not moving, not showing any reaction at all. What could she say? How could she respond? She’d already told her mother how much she loved music, what it meant to her, and her mother had seen her perform. There wasn’t any argument she could make that hadn’t already made—there was no new evidence she could submit that would change the outcome of the case. Finally she said, “We’re just going to have to agree to disagree on that.”

  Maureen threw her hands into the air. “I don’t know why I even bother. All I’ve ever wanted for you was a good life. Is that so much to ask?”

  “And is it so much to ask that you consider that my life is already good?”

  Just then, Cara heard a thump from the next room, followed by a groan. “Dad?”

  “Gerald?” Maureen leaped from her chair and ran down the hall, then yelled, “Cara, call 911.”

  * * *

  “A heart attack?” Maureen asked the emergency room doctor, a note of incredulity in her voice. “But he has leukemia.” She said that as if both conditions couldn’t possibly exist in the same person.

  “His entire system is weak, and his heart is no exception,” the doctor explained. “We’re having his medical records sent to our department so we can get a full picture, but it’s not uncommon for persons with a serious disease to also have heart issues. When one part of the body is undergoing stress, the entire system goes under stress, and the heart is the most common organ to be affected.”

  “Can we see him?” Cara asked.

  “We’re getting him moved into a room right now. We’ll send you in as soon as he’s settled.”

  “A room? You mean, he’s staying here?”

  “Mrs. Malone, your husband had a massive heart attack. Taking him home right now would be tantamount to letting him die. He’s not even stable at this point.”

  Maureen nodded, although Cara wondered if she really understood. Her eyes were glazed over and she moved as if in a dream state. She couldn’t blame her mother—she felt much the same way.

  “Sit tight for a bit longer, and we’ll let you know as soon as you can go in. Oh, and in the meantime, can you fill out some paperwork?”

  “I gave my insurance card to the ER receptionist when we got here,” Maureen said.

  “That’s great, but we’ll need just a little more information. I’ll have the nurse bring the papers in here.” The doctor left the room, probably to give similarly bad news to another family. Cara could never be a doctor—she would sit and cry with each patient and never get anything done.

  “Come sit down, Mom,” Cara said, nudging Maureen’s elbow and guiding her toward a chair. It wasn’t the worst furniture in the world, but it wasn’t the best, either. She supposed that when someone was waiting to hear if their loved one was dead or alive, furniture didn’t really matter. It was after they got the news that the little details began to be important, something else to focus on to distract them from what was really bothering them.

  While Maureen filled out the paperwork, Cara pulled out her cell phone and texted Laurie. My dad had a heart attack. I’ll be spending the night here. Good thing I brought that suitcase, huh? Being over-prepared isn’t always a bad thing. Please tell the others.

  Not a full minute later, she received a reply. Oh, no. Cara, that’s awful. I’m so sorry. Do you want me to tell Brennan too? He’s here.

  Brennan was at her house? That was kind of weird, seeing as how she was gone. You can tell him.

  Okay.

  The next text, which came in ninety seconds later, was from Brennan. For some unaccountable reason, when she saw his name on her screen, her heart sped up. It’s not like he’d just given her the two most amazing kisses of her life, stuck her in a car, and told her to drive away.

  I’m sorry to hear about your dad. Is there anything I can do?

  No, I can’t think of anything.

  Hang in there.

  All right—I’ll try.

  A moment later, she got a text from Regan. What hospital?

  St. Luke’s. The same hospital where I had my gastric bypass. Cara didn’t know why she threw that in there. It just sort of slipped out, probably given everything she and her mother had been discussing.

  Okay. Be good.

  Cara snorted. As if sitting in an emergency room would give her any opportunities to be bad.

  Twenty minutes went by before a nurse came to show them the way to Gerald’s room. She apologized for the delay. “I know you wanted to see him sooner, but he’s on some sensitive equipment, and we had to make sure everything was running as it should be in that particular room before we considered him settled,” she explained. “But now he’s all hooked up, plugged in, and ready to see you. He’s awake and has been asking for you.”

  “He’s awake? That’s a good sign, right?” Maureen asked.

  “It’s a very good sign, as is the fact that he called you by name. Sometimes after a heart attack of this magnitude, the patient is difficult to revive and can be disoriented for a time. Some of the symptoms mimic that of a stroke.”

  “See, Mom—if he remembers your name, that means his brain wasn’t affected. Right?” Cara asked the nurse for validation.

  “That’s right. Within six minutes of the onset of a heart attack, the brain can go into what’s known as brain death, where it begins to suffer loss of circulation. The longer that flow is restricted, the more danger to the brain. I think you folks were lucky today.” The nurse paused outside room 304. “He’s hooked up to a lot of machines, like I told you before. Try not to bump any of the cords or tubes or our monitors will get false readings, okay?”

  The nurse wasn’t kidding. Gerald looked like a science experiment, what with the IVs sticking out of his arms and the machines tracking his heart rate, respiration, and everything else under the sun.

  “I’m sure the doctor already told you, but he’s not fully stable yet,” the nurse said. “Ordinarily, we would have kept him in the ER a bit longer for that very reason, but the doctor felt he needed a quieter room so he could relax. That means we’re counting on the two of you to help us out—speak in soft tones, remind him of
good memories or maybe about plans you’ve made for fun trips and outings. Stay positive. That will do him the most good right now.”

  Maureen and Cara both nodded their agreement.

  “Good! Now, the nurses’ station is right outside his door, and we’ll be in and out constantly. Don’t mind us—just pretend we aren’t here.”

  Maureen crossed the floor and picked up her husband’s hand. “Gerald?”

  His eyes fluttered open. “There you are,” he said, his weak voice muffled further still by the mask he wore. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too. They said you need to stay in here for a bit.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t think they told us that.” Maureen glanced at Cara. “We’ll need to ask.”

  “It’s probably for the best. I feel pretty terrible.”

  Maureen chuckled. “I can imagine.”

  Gerald lifted a hand and waved at Cara. He dropped it quickly, though, and Cara thought that must be due to all the tubes sticking out of it. It probably weighed a ton.

  “Come here,” he said, and she came closer.

  “Maureen, I’d like to talk to Cara. Alone.”

  “You would?” Maureen’s voice went up an octave in pitch, as if that request was the strangest thing she’d ever heard. “Okay, I guess that’s all right. I’ll just go stand by the nurses’ station.”

  Gerald watched her from the corner of his eye until she was fully out of the room. Then he turned his attention back to Cara.

  “I’m supposed to be resting or something, but I need to tell you something first. Cara, I lied.”

  “You lied? About what?” Cara couldn’t imagine her straight-laced father doing any such thing.

  “When I told you that giving up the guitar was no big deal. I lied. It was a big deal. And in fact, I resented your mother for a long time for asking me to give it up. But I also told you the truth when I said that you filled up the hole that was in my heart. You became my greatest accomplishment.”

  “How did you get over the resentment?”

  “One day, I looked at your mother and I realized, she wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was trying to bless the family, and it’s true that I was spending a lot more time with that thing than I needed to. See, I wasn’t like you. I didn’t have plans to make music my career—it was just a hobby.” He paused and took a few deep breaths. Cara worried that this kind of talking was exerting him too much, but he seemed to have a lot to get off his chest, so she’d hear him out.