A Mother's Homecoming(18)
Faith stabbed her spoon into the already softening ice cream. “You said she wanted more than life in Mimosa. Even if it was a jerky thing to leave her daughter, I guess I can understand her not wanting to be here. I miss Charlotte,” she admitted with a sigh.
Had he done the wrong thing, moving them back here instead of staying in North Carolina? He certainly hadn’t anticipated this when he made the decision.
“But here’s what I don’t get, Dad. I never really thought about it until Morgan was asking me questions, but if my mother wanted to leave Mimosa, why didn’t you go with her? Why didn’t the three of us go be a family somewhere else?”
Because she never gave me a choice. Never gave us a chance. “Honey, you know that sometimes marriages just don’t work out. Like me and Jenna.”
“That bombed because she had a guy on the side,” Faith said flatly. She was unlikely to ever forgive her stepmother, which was a shame. Jenna was probably the closest Faith would ever come to a mom. “No mystery there.”
“The truth was, Pamela Jo—your mother—and I were very, very young when we got married. Too young. Most people who get together as teenagers don’t last forever.”
Faith mulled this over. “All right,” she said finally, once more the logical, reasonable daughter he knew and not the stranger who’d been breaking rules and picking fights with him lately.
Nick exhaled with relief. I should have known. Faith was a good kid. When you got right down to it, he’d been damned lucky. Maybe his visit to Pamela Jo this morning had been an overreaction. He dug his spoon into the ice cream with renewed appetite.
“Dad?”
He looked up with an expectant smile. “Yeah?”
“I want to meet her.”
“PAMELA JO!” Julia’s voice carried easily from the front of the house to the kitchen. “You have company.”
Pam was startled enough that she almost dropped the Jewel Tea dinner plate in her hand, one of her aunt’s Autumn Leaf collection. She corrected at the last moment, so that the dish slid harmlessly into the warm waiting suds. “Y-you’re sure?” Her pulse doubled and she struggled to control it.
What were the odds of Nick Shepard tracking her down twice in one day? She felt ridiculous even considering it. The man wanted nothing to do with her.
“PJ the VJ!” There was an excited—and thankfully very female—squeal of excitement from the foyer, then the clatter of high-heeled footsteps across Julia’s hardwood floors. A round brunette came into view. Petite but very curvy, she’d seemingly fashioned her entire look from circles: glossy curls, black hoop earrings that nearly brushed her shoulders and a rainbow of polka dots covering her black sundress. “Ohmigod, I can’t believe it’s really you! I mean, my sister told me. But I had to see for myself.”
Unlike with Nick, whom Pam would probably recognize in every fiber of her being even if fifty years had passed, it took a split second to place this person from her past. “Dawn?”
The brunette grinned. “In the flesh.”
Tears pricked Pam’s eyes, startling her. In the past twenty-four hours, she’d weathered the news that her mother had died and that Nick Shepard lived just around the corner. So why should seeing an old friend elicit the waterworks? “You look good. Really good.”
Although Dawn Lewin might be plumper than was strictly fashionable, she’d always been good with hair and makeup. She’d fixed Pam’s hair before countless choir solos and high school dances. In the years since Pam had seen her last, her friend appeared to have outgrown a certain girlish anxiousness. As a teen, Dawn had been cute but insecure; now she exuded a subtle confidence that magnified her charm. Pam felt a twinge of envy. Her own confidence could use a boost these days.
“You look like you’ve been on some kind of killer diet,” Dawn countered. “I am never gonna fit into jeans that skinny. But you have split ends,” she added critically. “You’re not so thin that I’ll break you if I hug you?”
Pam shook her head, stepping forward to meet the other woman halfway. Dawn smelled like chocolate and expensive hair care products and her hug was more comforting than Pam could have imagined. She retreated quickly, embarrassed.
“I didn’t realize how much I needed a hug. Thank you. I just found out about my mother yesterday,” she said by way of awkward explanation.
Dawn clucked her tongue sympathetically. “I thought of you when she passed. Would have sent a card if I’d had any idea where you were. My sister and I used to watch you religiously when you were on that country music show. Then you disappeared and I told her, one of these days, we’re gonna go to the Mimosa Cineplex and she’s gonna be smiling at us from the big screen.”