Tanya Michaels - A Mother's Homecoming

But trying to second-guess the emotional reaction of a near-teenager she didn’t know was impossible. Pam’s mind stumbled back to Nick, someone she’d once known intimately. It had been amazing how quickly he’d reined in his emotions today. In his younger years, he’d been very direct. Whether he’d been on the football field or romancing her, he’d always been clear about what he wanted and let others know that he would pursue his goals diligently. The only times she’d ever seen him censor himself had been during their brief, ultimately doomed, marriage, when they’d lived with his parents.

Truth be told, he’d reminded Pam a little of his parents just now. Polite, by way of the Arctic Circle.

As a teen, Pam had liked to believe she was tough, impossible to intimidate. After all, she’d grown up alone in a house with a temperamental alcoholic. But she’d been scared to death of Gwendolyn Shepard. Instead of raging when she’d learned about the pregnancy—Mae’s diatribe had blurred in Pam’s memory, but “ungrateful whore” had been the recurring theme—Nick’s mother had been icy calm.

Well, then, I suppose that’s that. Welcome to the family… . Naturally you’ll be wearing ivory for the wedding instead of white.

Prior to announcing that his girlfriend was pregnant, Nick had never let his parents down. He’d been the slightly spoiled baby of the family who spent his short marriage trying to win back parental approval. The diplomatic balancing act couldn’t have been easy on him, but, at the time, all Pam had been able to see was the way he didn’t stand up for her. When she’d complained to him about it, he’d insisted she had to be patient with his parents, that they’d adjust in time. Meanwhile, she’d felt as if the entire Shepard family had ganged up on her—including the newest Shepard, a baby girl who shrieked all the time.

Pam’s recollections of those awful postpartum months were hazy, but she remembered Faith crying constantly, as if the infant had been channeling her mother’s confusion and misery. She was better off without me.

“Miz Wilson! You up there?” Trudy’s footsteps sounded on the stairs, nearly as loud as her strident voice. A frail old lady, Trudy was not.

“Yes, ma’am,” Pam called back, summoning the energy to stand. Get back on your feet. It was a life lesson it seemed she was always learning. Some day, she vowed, all of this would be behind her and she truly would be able to stand on her own, without daily calls to Annabel. Maybe—in the distant future—Pam would even be stable enough to be there for others, help them regain their balance.

Some day. Pam opened the door to her room, checking the impulse to ask Trudy why she’d let Nick up here? “Good morning. You’re the second surprise visitor I’ve had today.”

Trudy’s snowy brows lifted. “And this is how you greet visitors? Where are your clothes, girl? Day’s half over.”

“I drove to Mississippi from California. I had some sleep to catch up on.”

“You just be sure and catch up on your sleep alone.” Trudy craned her head, scrutinizing the bedroom. “That Nick Shepard isn’t still up here, is he? He promised he’d take only a few minutes of your time and that he needed to see you immediately because it was a family emergency.” She snorted. “I suppose you’re gonna try to tell me you two are cousins?”

“No, ma’am.” Given how bleak her morning had been so far, Pam couldn’t help the small, perverse moment of humor she took in startling Trudy as she revealed, “He’s my ex-husband.”

Trudy’s mouth fell open, but she recovered quickly. “You’re the gal who cheated on him in North Carolina?”

So it had been an affair? He’d implied as much, but Lord knows, there were lots of different ways to betray a loved one. Pam couldn’t imagine any woman throwing away marriage to Nick. She herself wouldn’t have left him if it had been just the two of them. He’d made her feel safe in a way no one else ever had, before or since. Plus, he was a wickedly good kisser, although, now that she’d seen him, that memory was uncomfortable. Nick was no longer abstract nostalgia but a living, breathing, solidly male part of her present. There’d been such heat coming off of him that Pam fancied a red-and-yellow outline of his body might still be visible if you were looking through one of those thermal scanners they used in movies.

“I’m not the one from North Carolina,” she said. “And I didn’t cheat on him.”

“Just how many wives does this guy have?”

“Only two that I know of.” She recalled his saying he’d moved back to Mimosa “after the divorce.”

Reassured that Nick wasn’t a bigamist, Trudy turned her disapproval back to Pam. “And I suppose you think you can do better than him?”

Pam smiled sadly. “Not really.” She’d feared more than once that Nick Shepard would be the best thing that ever happened to her. “But that doesn’t mean I get to stop living, just because the good old days are behind me. Right?”

Trudy pursed her lips. “I wouldn’t know. I’m smack in the middle of my prime.”

PAM’S FIRST SIP of god awful tea in her aunt’s antique-filled living room dredged up a long buried memory.

“Mom, do I have to drink it?” Even as a first-grader, Pam had been appalled by the idea of unsweetened tea. Iced tea in the south was synonymous with generous amounts of sugar. The bitter flavor of the special herbal blend aside, she’d also been alarmed by the long list of “beneficial” ingredients her aunt had recited. “She said there were geckos in this.”

Mae had looked blank for a second, then laughed, smiling at her daughter with amused affection. “Ginkgo, Pammy Jo. Not gecko. Although lizards probably taste better.”

Now, decades later, Pam’s fingers clenched around the glass. It seemed surreal that the frosted vintage set her aunt had used since the seventies was exactly the same when so much else had changed. “I can’t believe she’s dead.”

Julia Danvers Calbert sniffed. “Then you’re deluded. The way my sister drank and carried on, the mystery isn’t that she’s passed, it’s that she lived so long.”

“Julia!” The one-word rebuke from quiet Uncle Ed was unprecedented. It was clear just from the seating arrangements who reigned over conversation. While Julia sat as regally and straight-shouldered as a queen in a richly upholstered wing chair, Uncle Ed was wedged into a ridiculously dainty chair with a heart-shaped back and gilded gold legs. It looked very expensive and very uncomfortable.

“I’m only telling the truth,” his wife protested. “And she’s grown up enough to hear it. She’s not little Pammy Jo anymore.”

“Still …” Flushing a bright pink that shone through his salt-and-pepper beard, Ed gave his niece an apologetic smile. “Whatever her age, she’s a woman who just lost her mama.”

“Just?” Julia shot to her feet. “No, Mae died months ago, if you’ll remember. And we had to deal with everything. Because this one—” her words illustrated by an accusing jab of the index finger “—was off gallivanting who knows where.”

“California,” Pam declared reflexively.

“Exactly!” Julia nodded, repeating the word with some venom. “ California. I suppose you’ll content yourself with putting a few flowers on your mother’s grave and then head right back to the Sunshine State with little thought for the rest of us?”

Pam opened her mouth to inform her aunt that the Sunshine State was actually Florida, but bit her tongue. She’d never seen Julia, the proper, understated Danvers sister, quite so worked up before and didn’t want to add fuel to the fire. Pam never would have said that her mother and aunt were close—indeed, they seemed to hold a mutual contempt for each other’s lifestyles—but Julia’s hands were trembling and she blinked as if determined to keep tears at bay. Was she grieving Mae’s death?