A Mother's Homecoming(24)
He only knew one thing about her absolutely. Pam had given him Faith, for which he would always be grateful. And he wouldn’t breathe easy again until Pam left Mimosa.
Chapter Seven
By the time AA ended, the sun had fully set. The bob-whites that had been singing when Pam had parked her car an hour ago had been replaced with the harmonious buzz of insects and the low hoot of a distant owl. Even though it was dark, she’d decided to visit Mae’s grave. The idea had come to her during the meeting, when she’d been thinking what a waste it was that alcoholism was probably the strongest bond she and Mae had ever shared. She knew that if she waited until morning, Ed or Julia would probably insist on coming with her, wanting to be there for her, but she preferred to do this alone.
Pam had seen big, formal cemeteries before that were gated and locked up after a certain hour. But Mae had been buried in the small patch of graveyard alongside the old Baptist church, which had been a one-room schoolhouse many decades before and had gradually lost a fair amount of its congregation to newer churches in the area. Anyone could park at the church and walk between the headstones.
The uneven parking lot was empty at this hour, and Pam pulled up as close as she could to the edge of the cemetery. She climbed out of the car, leaving her headlights on for illumination. The headstones closest were the ones that had been there longest, so she automatically went to the back row, looking for a stone not so weathered by time. Even though she had to squint to read it, she made out her mother’s name. Mae Danvers Wilson, Mother and Sister.
Pam swallowed, turning the words over in her head—especially the “mother” part. “You weren’t much good at it,” she said candidly. The sentiment might be disrespectful of the dead, but it was still true. “Wherever you are now, I hope you know I came back. I wanted to see you.”
The odds weren’t good that they would have hugged it out and gone on to be lifelong friends, but whatever happened would have been better than this, this piercing sense of incompleteness. This hollow feeling of unfinished business was a major reason she’d agreed to Nick’s request this afternoon. Pam wasn’t worthy of being anyone’s mom—she hadn’t even been sober a full year—but if letting Faith meet her would give the girl any kind of closure, then her daughter deserved it.
“Your granddaughter’s beautiful,” Pam said. Seeing that school picture had been a jolt, like banging a funny bone against a doorjamb. Tingly and painful all at once. Pam almost envied Mae for the years she’d spent in Mimosa, theoretically able to watch Faith from afar. Truthfully, though, Pam doubted her mother had crawled out of the bottle long enough to care that she was a grandmother. And Pam knew without a doubt that the Shepards never would have let Mae, who’d disowned Pam and hadn’t even attended the wedding, anywhere near Faith. Rightfully so. Faith should be protected from selfish, destructive alcoholics.
Pam took a deep breath. “I’m trying to forgive you, Mom. Some days I’m better at it than others. I wish things could have been different.” She stopped, then felt foolish, as if she were waiting for a response she knew would never come. “I don’t know how long I’ll be in Mimosa, but I’ll come back again. I’ll bring flowers next time.”
Blinking against the glare of the headlights, Pam made her way back to the car. Flowers would help alleviate the grimness of the stark, simple stone. Mae Danvers Wilson, Mother and Sister. If Pam had somehow killed herself during the worst of her drinking, she wouldn’t even have had that much to claim. She’d never had a sister and she’d completely forfeited her right to be a mother. Still, she thanked God that she’d realized something was unnaturally wrong with her in time, that she hadn’t stuck around to damage her own daughter. She wanted Faith to grow up secure in Nick’s love and the adoration of all the Shepards; she never wanted her daughter to be the one standing in a dark cemetery with decades worth of bad memories and self-doubt.
“STRUCTURALLY SOUND, but needs a lot of work. And a lot of love.”
Pam slanted Ed a sidelong glance. Is he talking about the house or me? As a guest in her aunt and uncle’s home for the last couple of days, she’d realized there was a lot more to the man than she’d guessed. As a teen, she’d viewed him as the henpecked, somewhat simpleminded husband of an overbearing woman. But this week she’d witnessed the subtle affection between the couple. Also, she’d learned that while Uncle Ed didn’t talk much, his words often carried more than their superficial meaning.