Diane Chamberlain - Her Mother's Shadow

“Who is ‘we’?” Lacey hoisted the suitcase onto the bed and started to unzip it.

“All Jessie’s friends,” Amelia said. “And, of course, Nola. Nola has seen Mackenzie at least once a year, and well, I don’t have kids, but Jessica has lots of friends who do and who would take Mackenzie in a heartbeat. And who are married, so Mackenzie would have two parents raising her.” Amelia lifted her hands in a helpless gesture, then dropped them to her lap. She had tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know this is coming out all wrong. I don’t seem to have the energy right now to make it come out right.”

“Are you one of the friends who would be a better choice?” Lacey asked, and Amelia’s eyes widened.

“No!” she said. “I’m only twenty-three, I’m not married, and I don’t have any kids of my own.”

“Well.” Lacey tried to smile. “Except for the twenty-three part, you just described me.” She pushed the suitcase toward the center of the bed so that she could sit down, herself. “I’m just as confused about this as you are, so you don’t need to feel awkward about it,” she said. “But Jessica’s attorney told me that she was very firm about wanting me to take Mackenzie. She obviously had her reasons, and I want to do what she wanted. I think it would be horrible to put a lot of thought and care into making a huge decision like that, and then have the people left behind not follow through on my wishes.”

Amelia nodded. “I know Jessica really cared about you,” she said. “Some of her friends don’t remember her talking about you, but I do. I was probably closest to her. She said that, even though you didn’t see each other much, she still considered you her best friend. Or maybe she didn’t say best, but she said that when you saw each other, you could just pick up where you left off without any problem.”

“That’s true.” It seemed like a slim reason to leave her child to her, though, Lacey thought. She pulled her thick hair up and held it against the back of her head to let the air-conditioning reach her neck. “I had a lot of time to think on the plane,” she added. “I came up with a few reasons she might have wanted me to take care of Mackenzie.”

“What are they?” Amelia asked.

“Maybe she wants Mackenzie to be raised in the place she was raised,” Lacey said, dropping her hair to her shoulders again. “In the Outer Banks.”

“That’s possible,” Amelia said. “She always talked about how she loved it there and she complained about how dry it was here. But she stayed here, didn’t she? I mean, she could have gone back. And if that was the reason, she could have left Mackenzie to her mother.”

“True. But I think Jessica really liked my family. She felt comfortable with us. Maybe she wanted Mackenzie to be part of that.”

Amelia nodded. “Well, maybe. Was she very close to your family? Is it big? I know she was always sad she had no brothers or sisters.”

“Well, she was close to us when we were kids, though not since she moved out here,” Lacey said. “I have a brother and a niece and a father and stepmother and half siblings. And my mother also died—”

“Yes, I remember Jessica saying something about that,” Amelia interrupted her. “Do you think that could be her reason? That she knew you would understand how Mackenzie felt, losing her mother?”

“I thought of that,” Lacey agreed. She’d also thought of another reason: Nola’s wanting Jessica to have an abortion and Lacey’s dissuading her from that decision, but she didn’t want to mention that to Amelia with Nola in town. “And there’s one other possibility I can think of,” Lacey added.

“What’s that?”

“I was always after Jessica to let Mackenzie’s father know that he had a daughter. To let the two of them at least know about each other’s existence, if not actually be in each other’s lives. Maybe she really wants that for Mackenzie and thinks I’ll do it.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Amelia shook her head, almost violently. “She never talked about him. What was his name? Bobby?”

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