Almost Home (37 page)
"It's true," Claire replied. "I spoke
to Katherine yesterday afternoon. She has Margaret's hope chest and quilt, and
when I showed Katherine a photograph of Margaret, she told me the woman was her
mother."
"She could be lying, trying to ingratiate herself
with you," Leeanne said. "In fact, what do we really know about this
woman? She could be lying about everything."
"She didn't know her mother was Margaret until I
showed her the picture. She was shocked."
"But we buried Margaret years ago," Leeanne
said. "Harry had her body—"
"It was a lie," Claire cut in with ruthless
determination. "He did it so I'd stop looking for Margaret. He told me
everything last night."
Mary Jo couldn't believe what she was hearing. Harry
Stanton had faked his own daughter's death and lied to his wife about it? Was
there no man in
the truth?
"Is Margaret really dead then?" Mary Jo
asked.
"Yes, but she died fifteen years ago in an auto
accident when Katherine was twelve. I don't know anything more than that.
Katherine took off before I could ask her any more questions."
"Took off as in left town?" Leeanne
questioned.
"I hope not."
Mary Jo leaned back against the couch. "It seems
there's no end to the secrets in this town." She thought of J.T.'s
photograph of Margaret and wondered if she'd ever really known her childhood
friend.
"I can barely believe it," Claire said
softly. She suddenly looked old, the weary lines of too many lies, too many
heartbreaks, showing through her makeup. "I'm not sure I can ever forgive
Harry for what he did."
Leanne stood up and paced restlessly around the room. "Let
me get this straight. Katherine Whitfield comes to
begs the question, if Margaret is Katherine's mother, then who is Katherine's
father? The woman I saw in
Katherine's innocent question turned up another little nasty secret."
"I wonder if that's the last of them," Mary
Jo said with a sigh. Because deep in her heart she had a sinking feeling that J.T.'s
picture of a naked Margaret could only mean one thing—that he was Katherine's
father.
* * *
Katherine dug her
hands
into the earth, wondering how many times her mother—Margaret—had done the exact
same thing. She'd intended to go back to the hotel after slipping out of Zach's
bed, but instead she'd found herself once again in the garden. She'd meant to
stay only for a minute, but it was going on two hours and she still couldn't
tear herself away. Here amidst the lavender plants, she felt warm and safe and
secure.
"You should have told me," she whispered to
herself, to her mother, to the wind. "You should have told me who you were
and where you came from and whether or not I should let these people into my
life."
There was no answer in the breeze that lifted her hair
off her neck, no whispers on the wind. With a sigh, she turned her attention
back to the weeds. The morning sun was pouring heat down upon her head and
shoulders. It was a new day, a new beginning, but she didn't know how to begin
or what to do next.
She'd left Zach because she couldn't spoil the night
they'd shared with a morning after of confessions and questions. The lies had
gone on for almost three decades; they could last another day. And she could
cling to the memories for a few more hours.
She'd hoped he might ignore his pride and try to find
her. He would never run after a woman, never admit such a deep personal need.
She knew there were limitations to the man she'd come to love, barriers and
walls that might be impossible to tear down even if Zach would let her try.
Everything was going wrong. The search for her father
had led her to learn that her entire life was a lie. A kiss with Zach had
turned into a raging, out-of-control love affair that threatened to consume
her.
She wondered if her mother had felt that way about her
father. If making love to him, having his baby, had been more important than
her family, her home. As much as Katherine wanted to be angry at her mother,
she couldn't deny the fact that Margaret had given up everything to have her
baby—to have
her.
She put her hands back in the earth and continued
piling weeds on the cobblestone path next to the flower bed. She needed better
tools, but all she had today were her hands and a willing heart. If she managed
to accomplish one thing before she left
it would be to weed this garden, to put to right the only piece of her mother's
life that she had the ability to reconstruct.
A few minutes later, she heard someone come into the
garden, and she knew without looking who it would be. She went on with her work
even as her pulse began to race and a dozen questions formed in her mind. She
was scared of the conversation to come, terrified of the relationship between
her and the woman standing behind her.
"I thought I'd find you here," Claire
Stanton said.
Katherine pulled her hands out of the soil and looked
up at her grandmother. Claire wore comfortable beige slacks and a blouse tucked
in and made fashionable with a gold belt. As always, she looked like she'd
stepped off the pages of a magazine. Maybe Margaret hadn't been able to compete
with that kind of perfection, that kind of control. Lord knew, Katherine had a
hard time doing it herself. She pushed a piece of hair out of her eyes. "I
can't seem to find anyplace else to go," she admitted.
"You
feel close to your mother here?"
Katherine shrugged, as if she didn't care, even though
they both knew it was a lie. "I'm not sure who my mother is anymore."
"I can tell you about her."
"I don't know if I'm ready yet."
"Then maybe you can tell me about the woman who
raised you. I'd like to know what became of my daughter. Not just what she
looked like, but how she felt about life, if she was happy, if she was healthy,
if she suffered."
Katherine slowly stood up, mindlessly wiping her dirty
hands on her jeans. "You make her sound like two different people."
"I think she was two different people. The young
girl from
I know this is difficult for you. It's hard for me, too. But we're connected,
Katherine. We're family."
Katherine felt her stomach turn over at the word
family.
How she'd longed to be part of someone's family tree. But it seemed unreal
the way it had happened, and not at all the way she'd imagined.
"I loved Margaret," Claire continued. "I
adored her. She was my precious baby girl, even when she wasn't so precious.
She was imaginative and impulsive and quick to temper, but she was also funny
and generous in love. She made friends easily. And if you told her she couldn't
do something, it only made her work harder just to prove you wrong."
Claire paused, her gaze kind and compassionate. "I know you may feel angry
and bitter towards us, Katherine, knowing that we forced your mother out when
she was pregnant with you, but it wasn't as cold-blooded as you think."
"Wasn't it?" Katherine did feel angry. Ever
since her earlier conversation with Claire, she'd realized that the
her. She had been the crux of their fight with Margaret. Her very being was
what had shattered the family apart.
"No, it wasn't," Claire answered. "When
Margaret told me she was pregnant, I was shocked. She had just turned nineteen
and I saw her life slipping away from her. Even she agreed that getting
pregnant was going to cost her something. I tried to reason with her, but I got
nowhere, and her refusal to tell us who the father was only put a bigger wall
between us. I was ashamed for Margaret. I admit it. I let my pride and my
husband's pride get in the way of our love."
"You wanted my mother to have an abortion?"
"No! Heavens, no. I don't believe in that. We
wanted Margaret to give you up for adoption, so she could go on with her life."
"And you could pretend she'd never had a baby."
Claire turned pale. "Yes, I suppose that was part
of it, at least for Harry. My husband—your grandfather—he's very strong in his
belief of what is right and what is wrong. Having a baby outside of marriage
was a sin in his mind, a sin that should be punished. He felt the only way
Margaret could pay penance was to give her baby away."
"To some family who could love her the way you
couldn't," Katherine finished, her voice turning hard as Claire's painful
words tore away another illusion of a happy family reunion. The
her. No wonder her mother had run away. "I understand," she said to Claire.
"It all makes sense now."
"You don't understand. You weren't a person to us
then. You weren't real. You didn't even show in Margaret's body. You were a
nameless, faceless reminder of how we'd gone wrong in raising our daughter."
"And God forbid anyone else should see your
mistakes. No matter what you thought of my mother getting pregnant without a
husband, I was still your grandchild, and you were willing to turn your back on
me."
"We had a fight with Margaret. We all said things
we didn't mean. And Margaret left. I thought she'd come back. I thought we'd
all cool off in a few days. But I was wrong. By the time we realized Margaret
was really gone, she was lost to us. Haven't you ever said something you didn't
mean and regretted it? I regretted what we said to Margaret the moment we said
it. And even Harry was sorry as time passed and he realized what we'd done. But
it was too late."
"It's too bad you can't apologize to my mother,"
Katherine said, not sure she was quite ready to accept the explanation or the
apology.
"It's also too bad Margaret never gave us the
chance," Claire answered back, her eyes flashing with anger and pride. For
a brief second Katherine saw a hint of her mother in Claire, and it caught at
her heart.
"What did I say?" Claire asked, her eyes
searching now.
Katherine blinked back her tears. "You reminded
me of her just then. She was very stubborn, very proud. She hated to be wrong,
absolutely hated it. I don't think I ever heard her say the words, 'I was
wrong. I made a mistake.'"
"She was like her father in that way. I tried to
be the buffer, to keep the peace, but it didn't always work. Harry loved this
farm and he wanted Margaret to love it, too. When she didn't, it broke his
heart. And you have to believe me when I tell you that Margaret hurt me as much
as I hurt her. You don't understand, Katherine, because you weren't here all
those years ago, but I loved my daughter. I spent hours with her, braiding her
hair and reading her stories and teaching her how to sew and listening to her
problems. When she went away, I felt sad and confused, but I never stopped
loving her. I thought she would come home eventually. I really did."
As much as Katherine wanted to defend her mother, as
much as she wanted to rail against Claire for what she'd done all those years
ago, Katherine felt torn. She was angry with Claire, but she was also angry
with her mother for never telling her the truth, for never telling anyone the
truth. Evelyn or Margaret or whoever she was had deprived Katherine of her grandparents
and her father, whoever that was.
"I practically ripped Harry apart last night. I
was so angry with him for faking Margaret's death," Claire continued. "He
says he did it to stop me from going crazy with searching for her. Maybe that
was his reason. I'm not sure it even matters anymore. Margaret is still dead.
And what he did doesn't really change that, although I might have had a few
more years to find you, to find her." Claire drew in a deep breath and let
it out. "But I've been married fifty years to that man. And we're both
old, too old to start over. We've done what we've done and we are what we are.
I don't want to look back anymore. I want to look forward, to you. I'd like you
to meet Harry."
"I don't know," Katherine said.
"He's ill, Katherine. I know you don't know him
and probably don't care, but I would like him to see you just once, if that's
all you'll give us."
Katherine wandered over to the cement bench and sat
down. "I used to make up families when I was growing up. I'd write down
names on pieces of paper and imagine a big family with lots of brothers and
sisters and a really great father and mother and grandparents."
"What about your stepfather and his family? Were
they kind to you?"
"Yes," Katherine said. "They were nice.
They kept me. That's all I could ask."
Claire hesitated, then sat down next to her, careful
to keep her distance. "Do you think there's a chance we could get to know
each other?"
"I don't know. I'm confused. I came here to find
my father. I had no idea I'd find grandparents instead."