by Lori Wilde
“I’m glad it helped.”
The kid picked up the wooden soldier he’d been carving. “I’m making this for my nephew for Christmas.”
Shepherd turned the carving in his hand. “Wow, that’s really good.”
“Turns out I’m a natural. Who knew?” The kid’s eyes glowed with inner excitement.
“How are the nightmares?” he asked, handing the toy soldier back to the private.
“Few and far between.” The kid’s smile was radiant. “I think I’m gonna be okay.”
“I know you are.” He chucked the kid on his shoulder.
The receptionist nodded at the kid. “You can go in now.”
The kid picked up his belongings. “Have a merry Christmas.”
“You too,” Shepherd said, and headed for the door.
“Gunny,” the kid called out.
Shepherd stopped, turned. “Yes?”
“You’re gonna be okay too.”
Shepherd smiled and walked out, praying that the kid was right. He wouldn’t know for sure until he did the thing he’d been avoiding for eighteen years. Don his emotional armor and go into battle with his past. And end his mother’s influence over him once and for all.
Then he could return to Naomi unfettered and ready to accept her love.
Chapter 29
At eight o’clock on Christmas Eve morning, Shepherd limped up the steps to the assisted-living facility in Lexington, Kentucky.
He’d driven the rental car from Maryland to Kentucky, needing time to collect his thoughts. He’d driven past the old places where he used to live. Visited one of his foster families who were still in town. He’d kept up with them through Christmas cards and friendships on social media. They welcomed him with open arms. Reminded him how he had his own moral compass separate from his parents. How he’d carved his own way in the world. They sounded proud of him. And he saw himself through the lens of a different perspective.
The takeaway, added to what he’d learned from his session with Dr. Fox, was that because he’d grown up in such a chaotic situation, he’d developed a hypervigilant need for safety and security.
His foster mother told stories of how he would get out of bed at night to double-check that all the doors were locked. Recalled how he had driven her berserk with a dozen what-if questions during disaster drills. Mentioned how suspicious he’d been of strangers. Constantly questioning motives. But once he finally trusted someone, he was intensely loyal. They were his friends for life.
Given his pattern, was it any wonder he’d become such a rule follower? That he’d gravitated toward the military—a structure that fed community, loyalty, and adherence to hierarchy?
The only problem with all that?
Just as Dr. Fox had said, he hadn’t developed the ability to trust his gut and common sense over the rules.
On the front lawn of the assisted-living facility, someone had built a family of snowmen. A resident? he wondered. Or visiting family members? Maybe the staff?
Papa Snowman sported a corncob pipe beneath his carrot nose and hairbrush mustache. Mama Snowman had a red-and-green-checkered bandana tied around her head. And Baby Snowman had a pacifier as a mouth.
Whimsical. Cute.
Too bad his mood was anything but.
Shepherd’s gut was a churn, sloshing emotions thick as butter. For the first time in eighteen years he would see his mother.
He barely remembered her. He was five when she went to prison the first time. She’d spent a year inside that time for identity theft. She’d been in and out on a revolving door of prison sentences throughout his childhood—six months for writing hot checks, ten months for shoplifting, three years for credit card scams.
He recalled her scent—cigarettes and hairspray. And that she loved Starburst candy. She usually carried some in her pocket, and if he was good, she’d give him one. Usually, it was the orange flavor because they were her least favorite.
Inside, the building was blazing hot. The furnace hummed loudly enough to be heard above the TV in the main room tuned to the DIY Network. On the screen, a picky young couple were turning their noses up at a kitchen because it didn’t have granite countertops.
Several residents were ringed around the TV in wheelchairs. Sheets were tied around their waists like seat belts. Most of them were asleep. A Christmas tree stood in the front window. Halfheartedly decorated with sparse ornaments and minimal strands of multicolored twinkle lights. The place smelled of citrus-scented antiseptic plied over the underlying odor of urine, burned oatmeal, and hopelessness.
Shepherd gulped.
A woman in her mid-forties sat at a computer desk in the living room area. She stopped keyboarding and glanced up. She wore hospital scrubs. Her name tag said: “Angela Barton L.P.N.” She offered him an efficient smile. “May I help you?”
“I’m looking for Virginia Shepherd.”
She studied him a moment, her gaze lingering on his cane. Nodded. “She’s in the south wing. Go through those double doors.” She motioned toward the back of the room. “And across the courtyard. She’s in apartment 4B.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m glad to see she’s got a visitor,” the nurse said. “I’ve been here for two years, and in all that time, Virginia’s never once had a visitor.”
There was a reason for that.
“She doesn’t have much family,” he explained. “And what she does have she alienated a long time ago.”
“Her chart says she had a son,” Angela’s voice softened. “But no one knows anything about him.”
Yeah, there was a reason for that too.
“I’m glad you came to visit her,” Angela went on. “She’s having a good day.”
His throat closed off and he couldn’t even say thank you. He nodded and followed Angela’s directions to apartment 4B.
For the longest moment, he stood at the front door. Working up the courage to knock. Now that he was here, he had no idea what he was going to say to her.
Before he could raise his fist and rap on the door, it opened and a young dark-haired woman emerged. Her badge identified her as Lola Lopez, a social worker.
“Oh.” Her eyes widened in surprise. “You’re here to visit Virginia?”
“Yes.”
“And you are . . .”
“Her son.”
“Oh,” Lola said again and then, “oh my.”
“What does that mean?” Shepherd asked.
“I . . . well . . . we . . . that is, I, and the rest of the staff”—she waved her hand in a general, inclusive way—“hoped this day would finally come before Virginia lost her memory completely.”
“She’s got Alzheimer’s,” he said, repeating what he’d learned when he’d called the prison system and discovered she’d been released two years earlier. “That’s why she’s out of prison early.”
“Yes.” Lola’s fading smile looked as if she was about to offer him tea and sympathy. “Compassionate release. That plus prison overcrowding.”
Shepherd knuckled up on the cane.
“She’s in a good place today, but there’s one thing you need to know about relating to someone with advanced dementia.”
“What’s that?”
She leveled him a serious stare. “We avoid confronting them with the truth.”
“You mean lie to her?”
“The preferred method is distraction. Get the patient interested in something else. Usually, they easily forget what you were talking about.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
“We enter their reality.”
“In other words, lie.”
“Bend the truth.”
“You’re saying don’t bring up the fact that she was a horrible mother, and a miserable human being.” He said it matter-of-factly. It was the truth and he wasn’t feeling bitter or resentful. If anything, he just felt sad.
“I’m saying there’s a reason she was released. Have compassion.” Lola’s eyes were full of
empathy, as if she’d been down a similar road.
“You want me to lie to her, and forgive her?”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?”
Was it?
Lola stepped to one side. “Come on in, I’ll introduce you to her. Your name is . . .”
“Mark,” he said, his voice scraping against the back of his throat.
“So glad you’re here. What a lovely present.” Lola clapped her hands, a short, quick gesture of approval. “Come in, come in, and merry Christmas to you.”
“Merry Christmas to you too,” he mumbled, feeling out of step and out of place. But who would feel comfortable and relaxed in a situation like this?
“She’s in the living room.” Lola ushered him into the apartment that was no larger than four hundred square feet. Small living room and a kitchen he could see from the doorway when he walked in. Simply furnished. Functional. Clean.
It reminded him of the military.
“Virginia,” Lola said. “You have a visitor.”
The woman sitting on the plain brown couch turned to him. She was only fifty-seven, but she looked at least ten years older. Her hair was short and silvery gray. Her face lined with wrinkles. The TV in front of her was on. It was the same DIY program. The picky young couple had progressed to the backyard. This time they were bemoaning how much work it would take to keep up the big lawn.
“Who are you?” his mother blurted, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. He remembered that look.
“Virginia,” Lola said, her voice soft and careful. “This is Mark.”
His mother’s eyes took on a dreamy expression, as if she’d drifted off into the past. “Mark? I once had a son named Mark.”
Lola’s gaze met Shepherd’s and she made a motion that said, I’m just going to go, and she slipped out the door.
Leaving him alone with the woman who’d left him so many years ago.
Pulse quickening, Shepherd approached. He sat down in the chair across from her. They would be on eye level, and he could rest his knee.
“Tell me about your son,” he said, surprised. He had no idea he was going to say that.
Her eyes grew misty, tears glistening. “I lost him a long time ago.”
“What happened to him?” Was it cruel? Not telling her that he was her son? He held back because just blurting it out seemed too jolting. He remembered what Lola had said. Go against the traditional rule of always telling the truth. Here the rules were topsy-turvy. Bending the truth was not only acceptable, but encouraged.
His mother was so frail, her body thin, face gaunt. Whatever she’d done in her life, it had taken its toll. “I . . . went to jail and he went . . . somewhere.” One tear rolled down her cheek. “I loved him so much. But I was not a good mama.”
“I’m sure you did the best you could.” He shocked himself with that. Where was all the resentment and blame he’d harbored for so long? He reached down inside, trying to find it. Came up with nothing.
“I did.” She nodded. “But it was not good enough.” She sat up straighter. Stared him in the eyes. “Do you have children?”
He thought about Hunter, and his gut twisted. “I’m in love with a woman who has a son.”
She considered him with a long, measured expression. “It’s not the same. Not unless you marry her, and adopt the boy. When you’re a parent, then you’ll understand.”
For the first time since coming to Lexington, a flash of anger passed through him. “Understand what?”
“The things you’ll do for your kids.”
He almost laughed in her face over that one. “What did you do for your son?”
She looked at him, puzzled. “Do you know my son?”
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
Her eyes rounded and she brought her hands to her mouth and made a small noise of despair, and in that moment, Shepherd was certain that she recognized him.
“Do I know you?”
“My name’s Mark Shepherd.”
“Mark.” Her eyes lost their clarity, went foggy again. “I had a son named Mark.”
He let out his breath through clenched teeth. There would be no resolution here. He did not know what he’d come here seeking from her. An apology? He wasn’t going to get that.
“Would you walk with me in the garden, Mark?”
“It’s cold outside.”
“I have a good winter coat.”
Why not? Moving was preferable to sitting here in this cramped little room with the woman who’d given birth to him, but had never been a real mother.
“I’ll get your coat for you,” he said. “Where is it?”
Her smile brightened her weathered face. “In my bedroom closet.”
He levered himself off the couch with his cane, ambled into the bedroom. It was clean and plain in here as well, not many personal items—a red knitted blanket thrown across the foot of the bed, a pair of black ballet slippers, a small framed photo on the bedside table.
Shepherd hadn’t intended on snooping, but the photograph drew his attention. He stepped closer to her bed. Picked up the photograph.
It was a faded Polaroid of a child—a little boy wearing a baseball cap and high-top sneakers. The moisture left his mouth and his heart careened into his chest. It was a picture of him when he was four or five. One of the last pictures taken of him when he lived with both parents. In the photograph, he was eating an ice cream cone, sitting on the back porch of the little house they’d rented on Vine Street. Chocolate. His little face was smeared with it, but the kid looked happy.
He looked happy.
Shepherd remembered his childhood as a dark, dreary existence. Something to escape from. Something to forget. Something to strive to get beyond. His childhood had not been a happy one. But here was cold, hard evidence that there had been happy moments.
“That’s my favorite picture of you,” his mother said from the doorway.
He put the picture down on the bedside table, turned to look at her. “Mom?”
“It is you, isn’t it?” she said, her voice high and breathless.
“Yes.”
She rushed across the room, stood in front of him in the dim gray light seeping through the open curtains. “Mark.”
“Mom,” he repeated, everything in his body clamped down like a vise. His stomach. His throat. His heart.
They stared at each other. His thoughts were a restless tornado, dark, fast, and hard to track.
“You found me,” she said.
“Yes.” It was all he could manage. His stance was rigid. He held the cane in front of him. A flimsy shield.
She dropped to her knees. Wrapped her arms around his legs. Tilted her head back to look up at him. “Please forgive me,” she begged. “Please, please.”
A roil of pain and grief knotted up in his gut. Spread through his veins like a poison. Infecting him with unexpected thoughts. He felt deeply sorry for her. For all the wrong decisions she’d made. The wrong turns she’d taken. She’d wrecked her own life far more than she’d wrecked his.
“C’mon,” he said gently. Took her under the arm and eased her to her feet. “It’s okay.”
“Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Please forgive me.” She didn’t say for what. She didn’t have to. He knew and she understood that he knew.
“I forgive you,” he said. Suddenly feeling as if his heart—which had been tied in cable wire and dropped with an anchor into the middle of the ocean—had been cut free. He was a buoy on the water. Bouncy and resilient. Then he said it again. “I forgive you.”
She looked at him and he could see the confusion stealing over her once more. A blank expression in her eyes. Confusion. Fear. A bucket load of fear.
“Who are you?” she cried.
Quick as a finger snap, she’d lost her perch on reality.
“I’m Mark,” he said patiently, drawing on a reserve of strength he thought he’d lost forever outside that orphanage in Kandahar.
“Mark,” she said. “I h
ad a son named Mark.”
“I know.” He smiled kindly and took her hand. “You told me.”
“That’s his picture.” She pointed to the Polaroid. “He was a very happy boy.”
“I can see that. Here,” he said. “Let’s get your coat. I’ll walk with you in the garden and you can tell me all about him.”
“Oh, would you?” She clapped her hands like a child. “That would be so very nice. Thank you, thank you.”
Mark took his mother’s hand, and with forgiveness swelling in his broken heart, helped her on with her coat and led her outside.
Chapter 30
Shepherd had no more gotten back into the rental car than his cell phone rang.
“Where are you?” It was Nate Deavers.
“Kentucky.”
“What! You’re supposed to be here at five to stuff yourself into a Santa suit, and give out presents. Were you planning on letting us down, Shepherd? Don’t let us down.”
“Relax,” Shepherd said. “I have a plane ticket. My Jeep is in the parking lot at DFW. My flight touches down at three. I’ll be there in time.”
“Whew. You’re a good man. When I heard from Naomi that you’d left town, gotta tell you, I was ready to track you down and strangle the life out of you.”
“Good to know our support group leader is homicidal.”
Our support group leader. Nate said it as if he were part of the Twilight community. He was. Or he could be. If he wanted. All he had to do was claim it.
“How are you?” Nate asked.
“I’m coming home,” Shepherd said. “What do you think?”
“Get your ass back here,” Nate said. “And all will be well.”
Shepherd grinned, and for the first time in his life, he truly believed that. “Do me a favor, will you?”
“What is it?”
“Don’t tell Naomi I’m back in town.”
“You want to surprise her?”
“Something like that.”
“You need a place to stay?”
“You offering?”
“I am. What are you waiting for?”
With that invitation, Shepherd shut off his phone, started the car, and headed to the airport.