“You were going back to visit your parents?” Why had Daddy misconstrued that the way he had?
“I was pretty messed up in my head in those days. Thought I could win back my parents affection, but soon realized they were cold people who had no place in their hearts for me.”
“Did Daddy know about that?”
She shook her head. “I was ashamed that my own parents would reject me like that.”
So then you went and did the same thing to me?
Both her parents had been emotionally abandoned by their parents, but that was no legacy to carry on.
“I’m so sorry, Kate. The only real love I ever felt was first with Ben and then with you. Once I realized there was nothing for me in California, I begged your father to let me come home. “But,” her voice broke and she cleared her throat. “He told me you were better off without me. Stupidly, I believed him.”
Was it stupidity, or merely a young woman who was truly messed up?
“Daddy lied—to us both. I hate that I spent so many years thinking I’d done something to send you away.”
Mom’s eyes opened wide. “He didn’t—”
“Oh, no. That was just what my five-year-old brain came up with.” She hitched the corner of her mouth. “I know now that wasn’t the case, but as a kid, I was afraid to ask Daddy why you’d left me. He never let me talk about you. So many things were left unspoken and unresolved when he passed.” Travis squeezed Kate’s knee, grounding her in the present again. She smiled at him before returning her focus to her mom. “But that’s all behind us now.” Kate couldn’t continue to harbor resentment toward the woman who had given her life. The healing needed to begin today. “Mom, I forgive you.” Kate’s eyes blurred and her mom let out a ragged sob. Blindly, they came together in a tear-filled embrace. “We’re going to move on and not lose touch ever again.”
Minutes later, Kate sat up, worried that she might be keeping Mom from breathing. She still had so many questions about her life in the years they were separated. “What brought you from California to Nevada and Oregon?”
Her smile faded. “You tracked me to all those places?”
“Well, not me personally.”
“Two of my sisters work at finding lost loved ones,” Travis explained. “They’re the ones who finally found you.”
“How on earth did they do that?”
Kate grinned. “It wasn’t easy! A week or so ago, Travis and I brainstormed all the possible names you might go by if you created a new identity. Among them, Chula from the letter I found, and Serenity from my birth certificate turned out to be the ones they hit on.”
“I chose Serenity for your middle name. I’d needed a sense of peace myself and thought giving you that name would provide some for you. If I’d only stayed in Kentucky, we both would have found that peace.”
Kate smiled, happy she was finally able to start letting go of the pain. “Well, I didn’t think that Daddy came up with it. He was such a traditionalist.”
Mom shook her head, but the smile returned to her face. “That’s a nice way of putting it, I suppose. He certainly was set in his ways.”
But Kate didn’t want to talk about him now. “Anyway, yesterday afternoon, one of Travis’s sisters called to tell me they’d tracked you to this hospital.”
Mom’s smile faded. “I’m sorry to say it, but over the years I’d grown to fear being found by you and having you discover who I really was. I’ve done some things I’m not proud of.”
Kate reached out to press her finger against Mom’s lips. “Shh. That’s water under the bridge.”
Mom nodded. “I’m not sure how much time we have left together, but I want to make the most of every minute.” Her voice had started off weak, but there was firm resolve as she finished.
Kate wondered for the umpteenth time why her mother was in here, but didn’t want to ask. Wait a minute. Hadn’t Kate spent a lifetime tamping down questions she should have asked? First with her dad and later Travis? If she’d asked Travis what he wanted when she found out she was pregnant rather than assuming she knew what his wishes would be, their lives might have been so different. Not asking important questions had left Kate with deep-seated insecurities and years of loneliness.
She needed to ask her question rather than continuing to make assumptions and living with regrets. Kate cleared her throat. Yet she still wanted to be tactful. “Mom, what are the doctors saying about when you’ll get out?”
Her mom’s lower lip trembled as she reached for Kate’s hand. “There isn’t much chance of that, chula, unless I’m moved to hospice or a nursing home. Two weeks ago, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. There’s nothing they can do other than manage the pain and treat the symptoms.”
No! Kate’s chest ached as if pierced with a dagger. She’d just found her mom again. How could she lose her again so soon? She blinked at the tears stinging her eyes.
Travis was suddenly behind her, rubbing Kate’s arms and shielding her as best he could within his warmth, but even he couldn’t make this shock, this intense hurt, go away.
“Thank God we caught the first plane west,” Kate said. She wanted to hug her mom, but was suddenly afraid that if she did, it would cause her more pain. But Mom opened her arms and Kate was being cradled and comforted by her mom immediately, tears streaming down her cheeks again. Tears of sadness this time.
“I’m glad you did, too. Your daddy kept telling me to get in touch with you for the past month or so—even before my diagnosis a little over a week ago—but I…”
Kate sat up. “Daddy?” He’d visited Mom, too?
Mom gave a quirky smile and nodded. “Don’t think me crazy, but he’s visited me a number of times—mostly trying to convince me to call you.”
While Kate swore she’d heard him yesterday, she hadn’t said anything even to Travis. Until now. “I used to smell his pipe tobacco, the vanilla scented kind he liked so much. I think I hear him, too, sometimes. In fact, he told me he’d be here with me, although that might be wishful thinking on my part.”
Mom glanced over Kate’s shoulder at the same moment Kate felt Travis’s hand pressing on her shoulder. “Oh, he’s here, all right. Standing behind you.”
Suddenly, she knew it wasn’t Travis at all. “He just touched my shoulder, didn’t he?”
She nodded. “His hand is still there.”
Kate placed hers over where she felt his to be before reaching for Travis’s and joining it with hers and Daddy’s while taking her mom’s frail hand with her other, welcoming Travis into the circle of her family. For the first time in almost twenty-nine years, she was sheltered safely between both her parents and the man she loved.
Mom’s face became serious again. “Kate—you, too, Ben”—she glanced over Kate’s shoulder—“I need to explain why I didn’t seek you out over the past twenty years. Even knowing I don’t have a lot of time left, I couldn’t contact you. There’s something that happened in Reno that I was so terribly ashamed of—”
Didn’t Gail realize there was nothing she could do that would make Kate ashamed of her? Perhaps she’d never experienced unconditional love before. Kate pressed a finger against her mother’s soft lips. “Shh. You have nothing to apologize for.”
Mom kissed her finger before grasping her hand and lowering it to her chest, over her heart. “I need to unburden myself before it eats at me any longer.”
“Just know that whatever you did doesn’t matter now.” Kate didn’t reveal that she already knew about the prostitution arrest. Apparently, her mom needed to tell the story herself.
“While in Reno, I got in with the wrong crowd. Smoked too much pot. Got suckered in by the wrong man.” She glanced over Kate’s shoulder. As she continued, it was more as if she were confessing something to her husband rather than to her daughter, but Kate listened. “Then the drugs got harder and there are six months of my life I don’t even remember…until I woke up in the county jail going through withdrawals from whatever drugs the
y were giving me and under arrest for…prostitution.”
A single tear trickled from her mom’s eye into her hair. “My pimp—and that’s all he was, if only I’d realized that earlier—deserted me. Then some do-gooder from a local church took me under her wing. She bailed me out, helped me get clean, prepared me for my trial. But when my court date drew nearer, I panicked and ran.” Her gaze returned to Kate’s. “I hitchhiked to Portland, changed my identity, and never looked back. But I’ve lived in fear of being caught and sent back to Reno, so it hasn’t been what anyone would call living by any stretch of the imagination.”
“I’m sure no one remembers that case after all these years, Mom. Don’t worry about it any longer.”
“I know, but would you promise me something?”
“Anything I can do.”
“If there’s anything left from my life and cancer insurance policies, I’d like for fifteen thousand of it to go to the woman I stiffed on the bail money, which would pay her back with interest. I never had enough money to send her over the years and was afraid I’d create a paper trail to my doorstep if I tried.”
“You know, Mrs. Michaels,” Travis began, using a name Kate hadn’t heard in connection with her mother in a long time. “…the statute of limitations probably ran out years ago on those charges.”
Kate couldn’t imagine the shame and guilt her mom had suffered all these years, not only from this incident but from leaving Kate and all the regrets that stirred up. If she could ease her mom’s conscience at this time, she would. “I’ll be happy to do that. Just give me her name and where she last lived. I’m sure Travis’s sisters will be able to find her from that information.”
Travis, whom she’d almost forgotten was seated behind her, said, “I’d be happy to make up any difference.”
Mom shook her head. “This is my debt to pay. She’s listed as a beneficiary on my life-insurance policy already for that amount.”
“How’d you manage to get a policy with your new name, if I may ask?” Travis asked.
Her mom smiled sheepishly, avoiding eye contact. “It’s not any harder to obtain fake IDs nowadays than it was when I was younger. I had a friend in Southern California set me up with a Serenity Chula driver’s license, Social Security card, and even a birth certificate.” She turned toward Kate again. “I couldn’t use my birth name for fear of being sent back to Reno, which was a real concern at the time” That her mother had lived in such fear for so long, ruining the quality of her life and keeping her away from Kate when she might otherwise have finally tried to reconnect was heartbreaking. “I listed you to inherit the remainder, but there might be legalities given that I didn’t use my legal name to take out the policy.”
“Actually, Mrs. Michaels, I ran into this with one of my crew members not all that long after starting my business, and the insurance company didn’t seem to mind at all about his name being fictitious. By law, they had to pay the beneficiaries listed because they were legal names and people whose legal identities could be easily proven.”
“Well, that’s quite a relief. But now I have a granddaughter.” She turned to Kate again. “After I’m gone, please use some of the money for Chelsea, too. Perhaps pay for college or buy her something she really wants.”
Kate blinked away more tears. “Mom, I just found you again. Stop talking about dying.”
Mom squeezed her hand. “I’ve learned over the years to not ignore reality. I don’t have a lot of time left.”
Once again, strong arms surrounded Kate, and Travis’s heat seeped into her body. She leaned back against him for support. She’d probably need to lean on him a lot in the months and years to come.
Her mom smiled. “You have a good man, there. Don’t do anything foolish like I did and throw it all away. And please keep the lines of communication open at all times.”
Kate nodded. She’d already repeated that mistake with him too many times. Reaching up to place her hand on his arm, she said, “I have no intention of letting him go again.”
Realizing that her mom truly had loved her dad warmed her heart as well.
“I’ve been ailing for months. Nausea, indigestion, losing weight for no reason. I thought it was because of my diabetes…” She shrugged matter-of-factly. “But I guess not.”
“You have diabetes?”
Mom nodded. “Insulin-dependent since my late thirties.”
“I developed gestational while pregnant with Chelsea, but was diagnosed with Type I not long after. I didn’t know where it came from because I knew nothing about your side of the family.”
“I’m sorry if that’s one of my legacies. My father had Type I diabetes from the age of fourteen until he died at forty-nine. It definitely runs in my family.”
Before they could continue talking and get back to her cancer diagnosis, the nurse came in. “Mrs. Chula, you don’t want to overtire yourself. Would you like to have your guests take a break and come back later?”
“No. I’ve waited too long to be with Kate again. I’m fine.”
“Mom, if you’d like to rest, we haven’t booked return flights and can stay as long as you need us.”
“I’d never be able to sleep knowing you were waiting somewhere in Portland to come back and visit again. I’ll let you know when I’m tired. But right now, I want to talk.”
Kate glanced up at the nurse to see if there was any hospital policy that would necessitate them leaving, but she merely smiled at Kate. “She must be feeling better if she’s this energetic. Enjoy your visit.”
The nurse left, and they spent the next half hour discussing everything but cancer and dying. Kate still had so many questions concerning what the doctors had said about the prognosis, but could ask later. Right now, they chose to talk about the memories they shared, including some Kate didn’t remember at all from when she was a small child, and she filled her mother in on her granddaughter’s life.
“She shows horses?”
Travis spoke up, “Sure does. She’s good at it, too.” Again he pulled out his phone and showed her videos this time from the Ohio show of Chelsea going through her program and of her victory trot with her blue ribbon flying. “Perhaps my insurance money could help buy her a good show horse. I just wish I’d been able to see her perform.”
Her mom probably had no idea what a horse would cost, but the wheels started spinning in Kate’s head. What if she brought Mom home to the farm in Kentucky to spend her final days? She could at least arrange for her mom to get to see Chelsea ride, if not actually perform.
When Mom’s eyelids drooped a little, Kate insisted that she and Travis grab some lunch and let her rest but assured her they’d be back in a couple of hours. She’d run her idea by Travis. He’d help her figure out what needed to be considered before making the suggestion.
* * *
Travis drove their rental car to a restaurant that had good reviews online and soon they’d ordered and were waiting for their meals. A sense of peace had come over Katie since meeting her mom. He’d been worried about how she’d handle the news her mom had terminal cancer, but she hadn’t dwelled on that. Meeting her mom had filled a void, it seemed. Perhaps finding her mother gave her the piece to the puzzle that had been missing since she was a little girl.
Halfway through the meal, she leaned forward, her eyes earnest. “Tell me if this sounds crazy, but if Mom is willing, I want to bring her home to the farm.”
“I’ll support whatever you choose to do, but be sure you’re prepared for the toll it will take on you physically and mentally.”
“I took care of Daddy in his final months when he was totally bedridden, and I was chasing a toddler at the same time. So that doesn’t concern me, but it could be difficult for Chelsea. She was too young to remember Daddy’s final days. If it wasn’t time for school to start next week. I could let her stay with you—”
He shook his head. “I’ll help with Chelsea, even move in, if necessary.”
“I can’t ask you to do that. Yo
u have a company to run.”
“You didn’t ask—and let me worry about the business. Family comes first. I can also take care of the horses. Maybe you can take a break from training.”
“No. I might need that activity as an outlet for my sanity. Melissa did so well at the Junior League that she’s set her sights on the World Championships in Louisville later this month.”
“That’s a lot for you to take on all at once.” His thumb brushed her cheek. “Promise me you’ll ask for assistance from another trainer if you aren’t able to handle it all.”
Her eyes grew bright and she blinked rapidly. “I will. Thank you,” she whispered.
He asked the server for the check. “If you’re sure about this, let’s suggest it to her when we go back up after lunch.”
She bit her lower lip. “What if she says no? It wasn’t her home for very long.” Would Katie ever get over the sense of abandonment with her mom?
“You and Chelsea will be there. I think she’d like to get to know you both better.”
Katie nodded. “I hope so. I’m already dreading the thought of having to leave her here. With school, though, there are only so many more times I can fly out here before…” Again, she couldn’t say the words and took a sip of water instead. He worried about how she’d handle losing her mother when the time came.
If her mom needed the guest room they’d been letting him stay in, he’d take the barn apartment. Regardless, they’d be together in this.
“What if she doesn’t want to die at your place?” he asked.
Katie flinched at the word die, but replied, “I know I can’t force her to do anything. She’s as independent as I am. But we have good hospitals nearby if she’d rather not…be at the farm when the time comes.”
“I agree you might have a fight on your hands; she has a stubborn streak as long as yours and your dad’s.” He hoped she wouldn’t take that the wrong way.
Kate's Secret (Bluegrass Spirits Book 2) Page 43