A Mother's Homecoming

by Tanya Michaels

  “But then something will happen,” Faith continued, “that he gets weird about. You know, girl stuff, so he makes me talk to Grandma Gwendolyn or Aunt Leigh. I love them, but Aunt Leigh only has sons, and Grandma Gwendolyn …”

  Been there. No one had to explain to Pam how difficult Gwendolyn Shepard could be. Pam should steer the conversation in a different direction before she ended up saying something she regretted about the girl’s grandmother. “Your dad tells me you have a great singing voice. Do you plan to pursue that?”

  “Pursue? Like how?”

  “Voice lessons or high school choral group or maybe singing professionally one day.”

  “I don’t know. It would be such a cool job to star in one of those musicals that tours all over the place, so I could travel to lots of cities. But I think what I want to do is get a job at NASA in Alabama. Dad took me to the Marshall Space Flight Center, and it rocked.”

  Pam leaned back in her booth. If she’d been harboring any delusions that Faith was a Mini Me, they’d just been blown out of the water. Pam had barely passed her math and science courses in high school; even if she had, she never would have thought a career using those skills was exciting. This kid sounds more together at twelve than I was throughout my twenties. “I’m impressed. You must be really good in school.”

  “I am!” Inexplicably the girl sounded exasperated. “Which is what I keep telling Dad. I’m an A student, so he and Grandma Gwendolyn should ease up. They don’t need to be on my case all the time like I’m some kind of delinquent.”

  Pam bit her lip. Gwendolyn’s son had knocked up his teenage girlfriend. Had Nick and Pam’s past behavior caused her to err on the side of prison warden when it came to her granddaughter? And while Pam knew in her bones that Nick adored Faith and would do anything for her, it wasn’t difficult to imagine him being overprotective. Didn’t he understand that kids who felt suffocated by rules and regulations were often the ones who rebelled? Pam couldn’t stand to think of the bright, beautiful girl across the table doing something stupid that would mar her future just because she felt the need to defy her elders.

  A chiming sound came from Faith’s phone. She glanced at the screen and sighed. “Dad just texted. He’s on his way. Must be thirty minutes on the dot. He’s kind of a stickler.”

  Half an hour had passed already. Pam wasn’t sure how she felt about that. On the one hand, their conversation hadn’t been nearly as excruciating as she’d anticipated. On the other, she’d had the underlying sensation of walking on eggshells this entire time, afraid that the next thing she said might be the wrong one, and she was looking forward to being able to breathe normally again.

  “Thank you for the milk shake,” Faith said, her formal manner making her suddenly seem more childlike. A little girl hosting a tea party for imagined royalty. “And for answering my questions. I only have one more. Don’t you think everyone should have a mother?” She kept her tone carefully neutral, as if she were asking in the abstract rather than about herself.

  Ignoring the pang in her midsection—under wildly different circumstances, could she have been a real mother to this girl?—Pam chose her words carefully. “In a perfect world, sure. But in reality, maybe it’s better sometimes not to have a mom than to have one who’s terrible.” Images of Mae flashed through Pam’s mind. It was occasionally difficult to remember what the woman had looked like smiling, but it was second nature to envision her raging drunkenly about how Pam had ruined her life.

  Faith straightened, her face alert and anxious. “Were you a terrible mom?”

  I was going to be. “Oh, there’s your dad.”

  Faith craned her neck, looking back toward the door. She heaved a sigh, clearly not sharing Pam’s ambivalence that their visit was over. “Goodbye.”

  Rather surprised by the lump in her throat and how hard it was to get out a farewell, Pam nodded in response. By the time Nick reached the table, she was able to add, “Take care of yourself. And listen to your father.”

  Faith crossed her eyes and made a face.

  “Hey!” Nick reached out to playfully tap his daughter on the shoulder. “What happened to respecting your seniors?”

  “Sorry.” Faith giggled, clearly not.

  “You ready to go?” he prompted.

  Obediently she stood, but then threw one last imploring glance at Pam. “Maybe I can see you again?”

  Behind Faith, Nick’s eyes turned to thunderclouds. He’d been all right with this as an isolated event but obviously didn’t want it to turn into a habit.

  “Not unless we happen to run into each other,” Pam said, trying to take the sting out of her refusal. “I won’t be in Mimosa long, and I’m going to be really busy while I’m here. But I’ll never forget today.” That was the gospel truth.

  For almost two straight years, Pam’s existence had blurred together in hazy, kaleidoscope episodes, broken up by periodic hangovers and rare moments of clarity and self-loathing when she faced a counter full of empty bottles and had to admit that they could all be attributed to her. There was a lot she didn’t remember. And a lot she did she wished she couldn’t.

  What Faith had given her today, this single half hour that Pam would carry with her for the rest of her life—that alone had been worth getting sober.

  Chapter Eight

  Nick had a case of the Saturday night blues, a restless dissatisfaction, marked by a lot of pacing and grouchiness and the world’s shortest attention span. In his early twenties, he’d struggled with this every week, the sense that everyone he knew was out somewhere having a good time, while he was trapped at home. He’d outgrown that long before meeting Jenna. Now that he was single again, if someone were to ask, he’d say that after a long week, he was perfectly happy to rent a movie and split a pizza with his kid, then call it a night.

  Not that the “kid” was so happy with that arrangement, he thought wryly. Faith had kept to herself for most of the afternoon, and he hadn’t wanted to press her for details about her conversation with Pam. His daughter knew he was here and would talk to him when she was ready. When she’d bounced down the stairs before dinner, he’d misinterpreted her sudden presence as exactly that.

  But it hadn’t been him she’d wanted to confide in—she’d asked for permission to spend the night at Morgan’s.

  He’d felt like an ogre as he reminded her, “You’re grounded.” In his humble opinion, Morgan should be, too.

  “These are extenuating circumstances!” Faith had argued, breaking out the PSAT vocabulary words. She sometimes did that when she was trying to get her way, as if more highbrow language would convince him to take her seriously. “I had the first encounter I can remember with my mother today, probably the only one I’ll ever have. I need to talk to a friend.”

  “You could talk to me,” he’d suggested.

  This was met with a roll of the eyes and a huffy sigh as she stomped out of the room.

  When the phone rang two hours later, he found himself almost wishing he’d capitulated. If Faith were out of the house Nick could take Joseph Anders up on his offer.

  “Thanks for the invite,” Nick told his coworker, “but I can’t. It’s a little late in the evening for me to call up Mom or Leigh and ask them to come over last minute.” The problem with grounding your kid was that you effectively grounded yourself, too.

  “Any other weekend, you could drop Faith off at my house. Lisa would probably welcome the company,” Joseph said of his wife. “But she and the twins are visiting her parents in Kentucky. Damn shame you can’t join us. I like Tully, but the man can’t bowl worth squat. Without you, we’re the odds-on favorite to lose.”

  “Sorry, guy. Check with me next time, though.” Nick hung up the phone, admitting to himself that, even if he’d gone, he wouldn’t have been much help to Joseph’s cause. He was far too preoccupied tonight.

  There had been rumblings in the hardware store where he’d gone to give Faith and Pam their space. Apparently, Ed Calbert had come in ye
sterday with his prodigal niece and placed a sizable order. Although Nick had heard months ago that Mae Wilson died, he hadn’t thought much about her leaving Pam anything. Frankly he was a bit surprised to learn she’d had anything to leave. But now he realized that Pam owned the old house and would need to do considerable repairs if she was to have any hope of selling it.

  Which meant that Pam wasn’t going anywhere just yet.

  Hell, I run a construction company. If he volunteered to work for half-price, would she be gone sooner? Or he could just bulldoze the place for her. Judging from the occasional glimpses he caught from the road, it wouldn’t take much to flatten the neglected place into nothingness. Some things couldn’t be saved; it might be better just to start over, rebuild.

  He could just imagine the look on Gwendolyn’s face if he told his mother he was helping Pam renovate a house. The back of her head would blow off. He almost grinned at the rare prospect of his mother speechless.

  Nick had muted a ballgame on television when Joseph called. Now he restored sound with the remote but still couldn’t concentrate. He ended up in the kitchen, randomly opening cabinets and inspecting refrigerator shelves with cursory interest. Boredom munchies. He didn’t really want to eat. He wanted something physical to do, something that would help him work off this prowling sense of … whatever it was.

  He opened the high cabinet above the refrigerator and reached for the bottle of premium whiskey his semiretired boss, Donald Bauer, had given him at Christmas. As Nick headed for the dishwasher to get a clean tumbler, he noticed Faith’s phone on the counter. He pulled the spare charger out of a drawer. He reminded her on a near daily basis that the phone whose chief purpose was supposed to have been “for emergencies” wasn’t going to do her any good if it ran out of juice and couldn’t be used in an actual crisis. There was a bloop of acknowledgment when he plugged in the phone, and the dark screen brightened. Instead of the usual wallpaper, a picture of Faith and Morgan making crazy faces on the back porch, there was a photo of Faith and Pam, heads close together over a dark green tabletop, smiling at the camera.

  He sucked in a breath at the unexpected vision.

  They really did look a lot alike. In an alternate reality, this would have been a picture he’d taken—a routine family outing, a spontaneous shot of his wife and daughter. His throat tightened, and he ran his thumb across the picture, enlarging it so that it was zoomed in on Pam. Her face and hair and style were different, but her eyes hadn’t changed at all.

  When they’d been together, he’d found it boldly erotic that she so frequently met his gaze during sex. Her lashes didn’t close often, and she rarely turned her head away from him. Instead she looked right into him.

  With a groan, he set down the phone and guiltily shoved it away. Then he poured himself a double. Watching the alcohol splash into the glass kept his thoughts centered on her. Did Pam ever get this itchy, restless feeling? He was vaguely aware that Ed and Julia were gone most weekends; was Pam all alone in that house?

  He pulled his own cell phone out of his pocket and padded barefoot onto the back porch. She’d called him the other day to confirm the time she was meeting Faith. Scrolling through recent calls, he clicked on the only one that was unfamiliar before he could stop to question his actions.

  The phone rang twice and, without thinking, he greeted her the way he always had—ever since he’d asked her to be his homecoming date sophomore year. “Hey, it’s me.” As if taking for granted that she’d recognize him instantly, as if no time had passed.

  “Hey.” Her voice was breathy, low, reminding him of all the times they’d been on the phone after midnight and she hadn’t wanted her mother to catch her.

  They’d had some intense late-night discussions about whether or not they were “ready to go all the way.” They’d anticipated what it would be like, and some of those graphic conversations had been a lot hotter than their actual first time, which had ended too soon. Of course, they’d improved greatly with practice.

  “Nick, you still there?”

  He tossed back a swallow of whiskey. “I’m here.”

  “Good. I’m glad you called.”

  He’d been expecting more wariness—or even exasperation—and her welcoming tone knocked him off balance.

  “Saves me the trouble of finding your card again,” she continued. “I wanted to talk.”

  “You did?” Nick set his drink down on the picnic table he’d built. Pam’s voice in his ear had more kick to it than the whiskey; both at the same time were too potent. He needed to keep a clear head.

  “Well, to say thank you, first of all. For today.”

  “So you don’t think I’m a bully anymore for trying to talk you into it?”

  She was quiet for a long moment, as if giving his words serious consideration. “I have a friend I think you would like. Annabel. She’s a firm believer in an unapologetic kick in the ass, if it’s warranted.”

  “Happy to help.” He paced the grass along the edge of the porch, the ground cool and damp against his bare feet. “You said ‘first of all.’ Was there more than one reason you were planning to call me?” Was it possible his mother’s insane suspicions weren’t so insane—could Pam have missed him? After all, they were both back in Mimosa, where certain nostalgic tendencies might take effect.

  But Pam sounded far from wistfully reminiscent when she said, “It’s about Faith.”

  His body tensed. “What about her?”

  “I realize this is none of my business …” Utterly bizarre words for a girl’s mother to be speaking, but given the circumstances, accurate. “She seems like a good kid.”

  “The best.”

  “So you might want to consider, um, easing up on her. A bit.” Her discomfort seeped through the phone lines. Doling out unsolicited advice did not come as easily to her as it did to Gwendolyn and Leigh.

  “Easing up? Did she paint me as some sort of überstrict parent?” The little con artist. It galled him to think that after he’d faced down Pam, not to mention his mother, to get Faith today’s opportunity, she’d used it to bitch about him.

  “Actually, she seemed to adore you. She said she was even cool most of the time with not having a mom because she had you. I got the impression it had more to do with Gwendolyn.”

  Ah. That he could believe.

  “And that she just wants you to trust her, to give her the space to prove she’ll make smart decisions.”

  He snorted. “And did this upstanding citizen mention to you that she’s currently grounded for cutting class?”

  “She what?”

  It was gratifying to hear his own parental outrage echoed. “Oh, so she left out that part when she was describing life under my tyrannical thumb.”

  Pam sighed. “Damn it—darn it, I knew I should have stayed out of it. I’ve just … I was in California for a while and ran into lots of people making bad decisions. Some of them started as good kids with promising futures, but they rebelled too far against the restrictive ways they were being raised. Parents who probably thought they were keeping their children from harm inadvertently pushed them into it. I’m sure the last thing you want is for Faith to end up, well, like I did.”

  The idea of his daughter as a pregnant teenager was enough to wake him in the middle of the night drenched in a cold sweat. He pushed it aside and focused on Pam instead. “Are you saying that’s what I was to you, teenage rebellion? A method for getting back at your mom?”

  “No!” She quickly shot down his idle theory. “Are you kidding? We were together for years, Nick. I’ve had one-night stands, mistakes that made me ashamed to look at myself in the mirror the next day. That’s not what … I loved you.”

  His jaw clenched. How dare she say that to him, this woman who’d whispered words of love to him for years, then disappeared? He’d seen her once, on television, and had been incensed that she’d simply built a new life without a backward glance at him and Faith. Why hadn’t it been that easy for him, to forget
the woman who’d betrayed him? Instead, Pam had waltzed through his mind so many times she’d worn her own groove.

  Not that he planned to share that with her. “I shouldn’t have called.”

  “Why did you?” Now the wariness he’d anticipated had crept into her tone.

  “Who the hell knows?” He leaned back, taking in the inky black night. The way he was feeling, there should have been a full moon. “I get antsy sometimes, on edge, and I thought you might feel that way on late Saturday nights, too. I heard your aunt and uncle were out of town, and you met Faith today …”

  “So you were calling to check on me?” She sounded bemused. “To make sure I wasn’t raiding the liquor cabinet? Not that Aunt Julia has one.”

  “Something like that. I didn’t really analyze it, just dialed.” How many times would he have called her over the years if he’d had a number? “Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.”

  THE STRESS HEADACHE behind Pam’s left eye throbbed in time to the bass-heavy pop song playing through the salon’s speakers. On Sundays, the place was only open for a few hours in the afternoon. It was due to close in about fifteen minutes. Given the day Pam was having so far, she’d debated telling Dawn she was unfit company and canceling. But at the last minute, Pam had reconsidered. Visiting her old friend gave her a much-needed excuse to head into town. Because if she’d stayed at the house any longer, she couldn’t be held responsible for her actions.

  When she’d staggered bleary-eyed from her bed this morning, she’d actually been looking forward to tackling Mae’s house. It might be a lengthy, complicated process, but at least there weren’t emotions and verbal land mines involved. Instead of letting herself be overwhelmed by the house as a whole, she’d tried to break down a list of individual projects.

  Unfortunately very few of them could be completed in a day, and when she added up the cost of all of those projects …