Danielle Steel - The long road home

“Yes.” She nodded. “Mr. Waterford?” He smiled at her then, more than a little surprised to see her. “I'm looking for my mother.” A glance was exchanged between the two Waterfords, who understood now. “I take it she doesn't live here.”

“No, she doesn't,” he said carefully. “Why don't you come in for a minute?” He looked much happier to see her than her father had, and seemed much kinder. They invited her to set down her bag, and come into the living room with them. He offered her a drink, and she said she'd be happy with a glass of water, and the woman with the blond hair went to get it for her.

“Are you and my mother divorced?” she asked, looking a little nervous, and he hesitated, but there was no way to keep the truth from her, and no reason to do it.

“No, Gabriella, we're not divorced. Your mother died four years ago. I'm very sorry.” For a moment, Gabriella was stunned into silence. She was gone, taking all her secrets with her. Gabriella knew instantly that she would never be free now.

“I felt sure your father would tell you.” He had a soft Southern drawl, which she remembered now, and thought she had heard her mother say he was originally from Texas. “I sent him a copy of the obituary, just so he'd know, and I assumed he'd tell you.” The whole situation was puzzling to him until Gabriella explained it.

“I saw my father for the first time in fourteen years yesterday. He didn't say anything to me. But I didn't tell him I was going to come here.”

“But didn't you live with him?” Frank Waterford looked baffled. “She told me she had given up full custody of you to him in order to marry me, and he never let her see you again. She never even put any pictures of you anywhere, because she said it was too painful.” They were interesting people, her parents. What they had done to her was no accident, it had taken considerable effort.

She sighed as she answered him, amazed at the lies they had told their spouses, all in order to desert her. “There were no pictures of me, Mr. Waterford, they never took any. And she left me at St. Matthew's convent in New York when she went to Reno. She never came back. I never heard from her again, she just sent a check every month to pay for my board there, and it stopped when I turned eighteen. And that was the end of it.”

“She died a year later,” he explained, putting the pieces of the story together finally. “She always told me that was a charitable donation, that the nuns there had been good to her once. I never had any idea that you lived there.” He felt suddenly as though he should apologize to her, as though he had been part of the perfidy, but Gabriella knew he wasn't. It had all been her mother, and it was very like her.

“How did she die?”

“Of breast cancer,” he said, looking at Gabriella. There was something so sad in her eyes that he wanted to hug her. “She wasn't a very happy woman,” he said diplomatically, not wanting to offend her daughter, or destroy her illusions about her. “Maybe she missed you. I'm sure she must have.”

“That's why I came here,” Gabriella explained quietly, setting her glass down. “There were some questions I wanted to ask her.”

“Maybe I can help you,” he offered, as his wife listened with compassion and interest.

“I don't think so. I wanted to ask her why she left me, and why,” she found herself struggling with tears in front of these people who were strangers to her, and it embarrassed her, but they were land to her, and it was a difficult moment. “I wanted to ask her why she did a lot of things before she left me.” He could see easily that her questions were painful, and he began to suspect that there was more to the story than he had ever dreamed of, and he decided to be honest with her. It was too late now to be otherwise. And he felt that Gabriella deserved at least that from him. It was all he had to give her.

“Gabriella, I'm going to level with you. You may not like it, but maybe it will help you. I was married to your mother for the worst nine years of my life. We were talking about getting a divorce when she got sick, but I didn't feel right about it under the circumstances. I thought I should stick by her, and I did. But she was a cold, difficult, angry, vicious, vengeful woman, and I don't think she had a kind bone in her body. I don't know what kind of a mother she was to you, but I'd venture to say that she was no nicer to you than she was to me, and maybe the nicest thing she ever did for you was leave you at St. Matthew's. She was a hateful woman.” He said it dispassionately, and his new wife patted his hand as he said it. “I'm sorry she left you,” he went on, “but I can't imagine you'd ever have been happy with her, even with me around. When I was going out with her in New York, she forbade me to speak to you, and I never understood it. You were the cutest little thing I'd ever seen, and I love kids. I have five of my own in Texas, but they wouldn't even come here to visit when I was married to her. She hated them, and they hated her right up until the day she died, and I'm not sure I blame them. By the time she died, I wasn't too fond of her either. She was a woman without many redeeming features. Her obituary was the shortest one I've ever seen, because no one could think of anything nice to say about her.” And then, looking back into the past, he remembered something else he had forgotten. “You know, back in New York, she tried to tell me that you had destroyed her marriage to your father. I never figured that one out, but I always got the feeling then that she was jealous of you, and that's why she gave up custody to your father. She didn't want you around, sweetheart. But I never figured for a minute she'd desert you. I wouldn't have married her if I knew that. Any woman who can do a thing like that… well, it tells you something about ‘em… But knowing what she was, I believe it of her now. Amazing that for all those years, I never knew anything about it. I just figured it was painful for her talking about giving you up, so we never talked about you.”

It was indeed an amazing story. They had all forgotten her, buried her with the past, both her mother and her father. She truly had been abandoned by them.

And then she began telling the Waterfords what it had been like, what her mother had done to her, and how her father had let it happen, the beatings, the hospitals, the bruises, the hatred, the accusations. Her story went on for a long time and took a long time to tell, but when it was over, all three of them were crying, and Frank Waterford was holding her hand, and his wife, Jane, had an arm around her shoulders. They were the nicest people she'd ever met, and she knew for a fact that her mother had never deserved him. She'd just been lucky, and he'd paid a high price for the pleasure of her company. He still looked grim when he talked about her, but so did Gabbie.

“I wanted to ask her,” Gabbie said tearfully, as she sat with them, “why she never loved me.” It was the key to everything for her. The final answer. And now she would never know it. What was it about her that they couldn't love? Was it her or them? It was as though she had expected her mother to apologize, to beg her forgiveness, to tell her she had loved her but never knew how to show it. Anything would have been better than the raw hatred she had met at her hands and seen in her eyes for the ten years she had endured before her mother left her. But now she could not ask her.

“There's a very simple answer to that, Gabbie,” Frank said, wiping his eyes. “She couldn't love anyone. She had nothing to give. I'm sorry to speak ill of the dead, but she was rotten to the core, mean as a snake. There was something wrong with her. No single human being can be that hateful. I always thought it was my fault. For the first five years of our marriage I thought it was me, that I had disappointed her somehow, or wasn't good enough, or had failed her. And then I realized it had nothing to do with me. It was her. It was a lot easier after that. I just felt sorry for her, but she still wasn't easy to live with.