A Mother's Homecoming(48)
Julia mashed the brake harder than necessary at a stop sign and turned pointedly to her niece. “Some kids with mothers have it pretty rough, too, as I’m sure you recall.” She didn’t speak again until the car started rolling, her tone calmer and sounding more like herself. “Beating yourself up does neither you nor Faith any good.”
Pam stared out the window, watching Mimosa pass by, noticing all the tiny, paradoxical ways that the town had both changed and stayed the same. “I know you’re right, but there are times when it’s hard not to beat myself up. This afternoon was draining, but it was only a couple of hours in my life. Nick goes through that every day. I wish things had been different for him, I wish I’d told him no when he asked me to marry him. If I’d had any sense at all, instead of torpedoing his college plans, I would have begged you and Uncle Ed to consider adopting Faith.” She seemed to recall that her aunt and uncle had long ago tried to have children.
“We wanted to adopt you.” Julia’s words were so quiet that Pam thought she must have misheard them.
“What?”
Julia swallowed, keeping her gaze straight ahead, glued to the road. A rosy flush climbed her cheeks. “I’ve never been sure whether to tell you this. There’s a chance you’ll think I sound like a jealous, bitter shrew. But I think what scared me is that there’s an equal chance you’ll be mad at us for giving in and not trying harder.”
“Aunt Julia, you and Ed have been wonderful to me since I came back to Mimosa. Nothing you say is going to change how thankful I am for both of you.”
Sniffing, Julia turned onto a side road Pam didn’t recognize. “Ed and I tried to have children of our own. I got pregnant twice over the course of six years, and miscarried both times. And for her to …”
“Her, who? My mother?”
“I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. I don’t want to tarnish whatever good memories you might have of her.”
“All two of them?” Pam asked wryly. “I don’t harbor any illusions that Mae was a saint. There were some times over the years when we laughed together or that she told me I was beautiful or that she surprised me with a home-cooked feast, but those weren’t the norm. Whatever you have to say, go ahead and get it off your chest. Maybe we’ll both feel better afterward.”
“All right.” Julia took a shaky breath. “Your mother didn’t want you, at least not at first. She saw being pregnant as a burden. And I was incensed with rage that she would be so cavalier about the gift of life, especially knowing that I’d already lost one baby—the second miscarriage came later. Mae was always the life of the party, but the hard drinking and sleeping with other women’s husbands didn’t start until after your father left. She fell through a stained-glass window at a Christmas Eve celebration when you were four. It was then that I truly started to worry. Ed and I tried to help her, but it never worked.”
“You can’t help someone until they’re ready,” Pam said. “That’s something I know personally.”
“We reached the same conclusion, that we couldn’t help her if she didn’t want our help. But we thought maybe we could help you. When you were eight, you stayed after school for a special choir rehearsal and she forgot to pick you up. Nobody could find her, and the music teacher called me to come and get you. When Mae finally thought to come looking for you hours later, I was furious, even threatened not to give you over to her and she laughed! ‘Why, Julia Lynn, that’s kidnapping.’ Ed and I scraped together money and consulted with a lawyer, but this was right after my second miscarriage. The legal advice was that we didn’t have strong enough grounds for the state of Mississippi to separate a girl who hadn’t been harmed from her rightful mother. We were also told that, in court, Mae’s attorney would paint me as a grief-ridden, hormone-addled woman out to steal someone else’s child because I couldn’t have one of my own.”
“Oh, Julia. That’s awful.” Pam heart squeezed as she thought of what her aunt had been through. And then, after everything else the woman had endured, her teenage niece accidentally got pregnant. Insult to injury—like mother, like daughter. No wonder Julia had so often seemed bitter; she’d had cause to be.
“I should have fought harder,” Julia lamented, “instead of leaving you with her. I was angry and ashamed. On some level, I was afraid the lawyer was right about me.”
“He wasn’t. You were trying to look out for me. The same way you’re always trying to look out for Uncle Ed with that awful tea and the bacon that isn’t really bacon,” Pam teased gently.