A Mother's Homecoming

Right now, her most pressing goal was to survive this conversation.

“I see.” Finally he broke eye contact, and Pam’s lungs remembered how to expand.

She took a much needed breath, assuming he would go now.

But instead he took a challenging half step toward her, his voice a blade. “So your plan is to run away. Again.”

WITH THE ELEMENT OF surprise on his side, Nick Shepard had believed he was prepared to see her—until she’d opened the door. Shards of the past cut into him like slivers into the tender spot of a foot, an excruciatingly sharp wound that doesn’t even start bleeding immediately, as if the skin is still trying to process what the hell just happened. Dozens of disjointed memories sliced at him, most involving Pamela Jo, some more recent—such as a conversation he’d had with his daughter about impulse control and making good choices.

Where had his impulse control been just now? What on earth had possessed him to blurt that jab about her running away? It was what he wanted, for her to get as far away from Mimosa as geographically possible and never return. But he’d made it sound almost as if … he were daring her to stay.

She looked as perplexed as he felt, her eyes narrowed in confusion.

Faith had her mother’s eyes, but that meant something different on any given day, the changeable hazel reflecting various amounts of gold, brown or green depending on her mood and what she wore.

For instance, Pamela Jo’s eyes were a particularly vivid green because of that damn T-shirt. He’d been battling throughout their conversation to somehow un-notice that she was braless beneath that flimsy material. She was almost too thin, but certain curves had not diminished with time. And what kind of woman answered the door with no pants? He stubbornly ignored the fantasies he used to harbor about this exact woman opening doors to him wearing even less.

That had been a different reality. He was a single father now, not a horny teenager.

“So are you angry that I’m here,” she asked cautiously, “or angry because I’m leaving?”

Both. Neither.

If someone had broached the subject of Pamela Jo two days ago, before he’d learned she was in town, he would have said his long dormant anger had faded away. She no longer meant anything to him; so long as he was with his daughter, everything had worked out for the best. The swell of fury he’d experienced when Pamela Jo had met his gaze had knocked him off balance.

He shoved a hand through his hair. “I didn’t want you here—don’t want you here—but it’s a small town. There’s a chance that …” It was more difficult than he could have imagined to say their daughter’s name, as if a superstitious part of him worried that by mentioning Faith, he was somehow putting her at risk. “People know you’re in Mimosa, and people gossip. It’s likely that Faith will find out you’re here, and I don’t know how she’ll react.”

Pamela Jo’s eyes were wide. “I wouldn’t have … I thought you … Damn it, why aren’t you in North Carolina?”

As if he owed her any explanations? Like hell. Still, the words tumbled out. “I moved here after the divorce. My wife betrayed me,” he said with deceptive matter-of-factness. “Story of my life.”

“Nick, I—”

He held up his hand. “Don’t you dare apologize.” There was no way that all they’d shared, and ultimately hadn’t shared, could be encapsulated in a trite I’m sorry.

Her chin lifted, that one action suddenly making her look like the lover he’d once known, instead of a pretty stranger with short hair and eyes too like his daughter’s. On closer inspection, he saw that there were shadowed crescents beneath Pamela Jo’s eyes, yet another detail he didn’t particularly want to see.

“My condolences on your mother’s passing,” he said brusquely. He didn’t care overly much about what Pamela Jo was going through, but he needed a return to civil conversation. To normalcy.

She hesitated only briefly before reverting to their previous topic, the one that made him the most uneasy. “You think my passing through will hurt Faith?”

“It might raise some questions, some conflicted feelings, but she and I will deal with them. I shouldn’t have brought that up.” He was Faith’s family, the one constant in her life—as she’d been in his since she was born—and he would find a way to give her whatever assurances she needed. Despite his resolve, however, he couldn’t help thinking about all their recent arguing. Was his daughter pulling away from him? I won’t let that happen.

But standing in front of Pamela Jo, who looked so much like their daughter and had once ripped his heart out by walking away from him, magnified his uneasiness.

Coming here had been a mistake. “Don’t worry about us. Faith and I will be fine,” he insisted. “I won’t bother you again. Conclude whatever business you have here, and have a nice life.”

With one final nod, he spun on his heels and walked toward the staircase. He regretted his earlier taunt more than ever. Because, despite his calm manner and deliberately slowed stride, it felt very much as if he were the one running away.

Chapter Four

Nick’s retreat was almost as unexpected as his arrival. That’s it? Pam stared out into the empty hall, knowing she should be relieved but feeling strangely bemused. Considering what he must have gone through after she’d left him and their infant daughter without a word of warning, he was entitled to be angry, enraged even.

So it seemed almost … anticlimactic that he’d suddenly calmed down, told her to have a nice life and left. Granted, there’d been an unmistakably implied “and stay the hell away from us” at the end of his farewell, but that was still far gentler than she’d deserved. She shut the door, shaking her head at her irrational discontent. What, did you want him to scream at you?

Maybe. It might have been cathartic for him to get it off his chest, they might have achieved some measure of closure. She sank into a sitting position against the wall, too drained from their encounter to walk back to the bed. Instead of feeling they’d reached any resolution, now she worried about what he’d let slip before backpedaling. Would her being here, no matter how temporarily, have negative repercussions for Faith? That Pam hadn’t expected her daughter to be anywhere near Mimosa when she’d planned this trip didn’t stop a small kernel of guilt from forming.

But trying to second-guess the emotional reaction of a near-teenager she didn’t know was impossible. Pam’s mind stumbled back to Nick, someone she’d once known intimately. It had been amazing how quickly he’d reined in his emotions today. In his younger years, he’d been very direct. Whether he’d been on the football field or romancing her, he’d always been clear about what he wanted and let others know that he would pursue his goals diligently. The only times she’d ever seen him censor himself had been during their brief, ultimately doomed, marriage, when they’d lived with his parents.

Truth be told, he’d reminded Pam a little of his parents just now. Polite, by way of the Arctic Circle.

As a teen, Pam had liked to believe she was tough, impossible to intimidate. After all, she’d grown up alone in a house with a temperamental alcoholic. But she’d been scared to death of Gwendolyn Shepard. Instead of raging when she’d learned about the pregnancy—Mae’s diatribe had blurred in Pam’s memory, but “ungrateful whore” had been the recurring theme—Nick’s mother had been icy calm.

Well, then, I suppose that’s that. Welcome to the family… . Naturally you’ll be wearing ivory for the wedding instead of white.

Prior to announcing that his girlfriend was pregnant, Nick had never let his parents down. He’d been the slightly spoiled baby of the family who spent his short marriage trying to win back parental approval. The diplomatic balancing act couldn’t have been easy on him, but, at the time, all Pam had been able to see was the way he didn’t stand up for her. When she’d complained to him about it, he’d insisted she had to be patient with his parents, that they’d adjust in time. Meanwhile, she’d felt as if the entire Shepard family had ganged up on her—including the newest Shepard, a baby girl who shrieked all the time.

Pam’s recollections of those awful postpartum months were hazy, but she remembered Faith crying constantly, as if the infant had been channeling her mother’s confusion and misery. She was better off without me.

“Miz Wilson! You up there?” Trudy’s footsteps sounded on the stairs, nearly as loud as her strident voice. A frail old lady, Trudy was not.

“Yes, ma’am,” Pam called back, summoning the energy to stand. Get back on your feet. It was a life lesson it seemed she was always learning. Some day, she vowed, all of this would be behind her and she truly would be able to stand on her own, without daily calls to Annabel. Maybe—in the distant future—Pam would even be stable enough to be there for others, help them regain their balance.

Some day. Pam opened the door to her room, checking the impulse to ask Trudy why she’d let Nick up here? “Good morning. You’re the second surprise visitor I’ve had today.”

Trudy’s snowy brows lifted. “And this is how you greet visitors? Where are your clothes, girl? Day’s half over.”

“I drove to Mississippi from California. I had some sleep to catch up on.”

“You just be sure and catch up on your sleep alone.” Trudy craned her head, scrutinizing the bedroom. “That Nick Shepard isn’t still up here, is he? He promised he’d take only a few minutes of your time and that he needed to see you immediately because it was a family emergency.” She snorted. “I suppose you’re gonna try to tell me you two are cousins?”

“No, ma’am.” Given how bleak her morning had been so far, Pam couldn’t help the small, perverse moment of humor she took in startling Trudy as she revealed, “He’s my ex-husband.”

Trudy’s mouth fell open, but she recovered quickly. “You’re the gal who cheated on him in North Carolina?”

So it had been an affair? He’d implied as much, but Lord knows, there were lots of different ways to betray a loved one. Pam couldn’t imagine any woman throwing away marriage to Nick. She herself wouldn’t have left him if it had been just the two of them. He’d made her feel safe in a way no one else ever had, before or since. Plus, he was a wickedly good kisser, although, now that she’d seen him, that memory was uncomfortable. Nick was no longer abstract nostalgia but a living, breathing, solidly male part of her present. There’d been such heat coming off of him that Pam fancied a red-and-yellow outline of his body might still be visible if you were looking through one of those thermal scanners they used in movies.

“I’m not the one from North Carolina,” she said. “And I didn’t cheat on him.”

“Just how many wives does this guy have?”

“Only two that I know of.” She recalled his saying he’d moved back to Mimosa “after the divorce.”

Reassured that Nick wasn’t a bigamist, Trudy turned her disapproval back to Pam. “And I suppose you think you can do better than him?”

Pam smiled sadly. “Not really.” She’d feared more than once that Nick Shepard would be the best thing that ever happened to her. “But that doesn’t mean I get to stop living, just because the good old days are behind me. Right?”

Trudy pursed her lips. “I wouldn’t know. I’m smack in the middle of my prime.”

PAM’S FIRST SIP of god awful tea in her aunt’s antique-filled living room dredged up a long buried memory.

“Mom, do I have to drink it?” Even as a first-grader, Pam had been appalled by the idea of unsweetened tea. Iced tea in the south was synonymous with generous amounts of sugar. The bitter flavor of the special herbal blend aside, she’d also been alarmed by the long list of “beneficial” ingredients her aunt had recited. “She said there were geckos in this.”

Mae had looked blank for a second, then laughed, smiling at her daughter with amused affection. “Ginkgo, Pammy Jo. Not gecko. Although lizards probably taste better.”

Now, decades later, Pam’s fingers clenched around the glass. It seemed surreal that the frosted vintage set her aunt had used since the seventies was exactly the same when so much else had changed. “I can’t believe she’s dead.”

Julia Danvers Calbert sniffed. “Then you’re deluded. The way my sister drank and carried on, the mystery isn’t that she’s passed, it’s that she lived so long.”

“Julia!” The one-word rebuke from quiet Uncle Ed was unprecedented. It was clear just from the seating arrangements who reigned over conversation. While Julia sat as regally and straight-shouldered as a queen in a richly upholstered wing chair, Uncle Ed was wedged into a ridiculously dainty chair with a heart-shaped back and gilded gold legs. It looked very expensive and very uncomfortable.

“I’m only telling the truth,” his wife protested. “And she’s grown up enough to hear it. She’s not little Pammy Jo anymore.”

“Still …” Flushing a bright pink that shone through his salt-and-pepper beard, Ed gave his niece an apologetic smile. “Whatever her age, she’s a woman who just lost her mama.”

“Just?” Julia shot to her feet. “No, Mae died months ago, if you’ll remember. And we had to deal with everything. Because this one—” her words illustrated by an accusing jab of the index finger “—was off gallivanting who knows where.”

“California,” Pam declared reflexively.

“Exactly!” Julia nodded, repeating the word with some venom. “California. I suppose you’ll content yourself with putting a few flowers on your mother’s grave and then head right back to the Sunshine State with little thought for the rest of us?”

Pam opened her mouth to inform her aunt that the Sunshine State was actually Florida, but bit her tongue. She’d never seen Julia, the proper, understated Danvers sister, quite so worked up before and didn’t want to add fuel to the fire. Pam never would have said that her mother and aunt were close—indeed, they seemed to hold a mutual contempt for each other’s lifestyles—but Julia’s hands were trembling and she blinked as if determined to keep tears at bay. Was she grieving Mae’s death?

“I won’t be returning to California,” Pam said. She doubted she could scrape together the gas money to get as far as Alabama, much less the west coast. “I don’t honestly know what my plans are from here, but—”

“You don’t have a job you need to get back to, then? A husband waiting for you?” Julia’s voice had softened, more weary resignation than censure.

“No, ma’am.”

Her aunt, like most normal people, might view the lack of a family and a career as failure. But what Pam did have waiting for her if she chose to return were weekly meetings and a sponsor. Which meant there was at least a chance for some kind of eventual success; that was more than she’d been able to say in a long time.

“I should bring out the rest of the tea,” Julia announced abruptly. Never mind that all three of their glasses were still full.

Pam shot a questioning look at her uncle. Since when was Julia so high-strung? When he said nothing to fill the ensuing silence, she prompted, “Is Aunt Julia okay?”

“The circumstances have been hard on her,” Ed answered, so quietly that Pam strained her ears to follow his words. “Losing her sister, to some extent. But mostly … losing you.”

“Me?” Pam had grown up with the vague sense that Julia didn’t like her. Julia had never seemed to much like anyone.

“There were things between your mama and your aunt.” He stopped himself, shooting a guilty look toward the kitchen. “If Julia was ever hard on you, it’s because she wanted better for you. She loves you. You know how she always finishes her Christmas shopping so early? That fall, when you left town, I found her in our room, crying over a package with your name on it. It’s still in her closet. She’s refused to donate it to charity, even though we didn’t know if you were ever coming back. Or if you were even alive.”

Tendrils of guilt curled through Pam like smoke, making it difficult to breathe. After her reckless flight from Mimosa, she’d spent sleepless nights alternately regretting the way she’d left Nick and hatefully hoping that her mother was worried sick. It had genuinely never occurred to her that her sudden absence might hurt Julia and Ed. Even with the picture he painted, Pam still couldn’t imagine her starchy aunt shedding tears. I wasn’t worth them.

“Uncle Ed, I’m …”

“You’re what?” Julia asked from the doorway, her expression suspicious. “Sorry to interrupt, I just couldn’t contain my curiosity. What have the two of you been discussing? Pam’s exciting life beyond Mimosa?”

Exciting was one word for it. Pam reached for the ends of her hair, a nervous girlhood habit. She had a moment’s disorientation before she remembered that she’d hacked a good six inches off of it last year and had been keeping it short ever since. She rose. “Can I help you with that tray, Aunt Julia?”

A pitcher of tea sat between a plate of muffins and—hallelujah—a china bowl of sugar.

“I think not,” her aunt said. “This pitcher is vintage. Everyone knows fatigue makes people unsteady, and you look like you haven’t had a full night’s sleep in a month of Sundays. You’ll stay with us tonight, not out there at Trudy’s.”

It took Pam a moment to process the imperious decree as an invitation. “Thank you. It’s kind of you to offer.”

“Well, we’re kin.” Julia sniffed. “Not that you could tell from the number of messages and letters we’ve had from you over the years.”

Now, beneath the criticism, Pam heard the decade plus of worry. “I’m so sorry I never let you know where I was.” Sorry for all of their sakes. If she’d allowed herself that familial anchor, would she have turned to them for help before she hit rock bottom?

Probably not. Hitting rock bottom was why she’d finally admitted she needed help.

“We knew you were in Tennessee, of course,” her uncle offered with exaggerated joviality. “It was something else, seeing you on television!”

“Oh.” Pam had only been on a regional cable channel, and she’d never been entirely sure whether her show was available this far out. “Thank you. I went to California after that. Guess I was hoping to do even more television, but it didn’t pan out.”

She’d first been “discovered” playing guitar and singing in a Tennessee bar. All those juvenile dreams she and Nick used to spin—about her eventual fame, and his leading an NFL team to the Super Bowl, where she would naturally sing at halftime—had kept her afloat when she was alone and scared out of her mind. Despite a small-time talent agent’s attempts, she’d never progressed beyond the periphery of the music industry. In the fading heyday of music videos, she’d briefly held a job as a video jockey, hosting a weekly country music countdown and reading entertainment-news bulletins.

But she’d yearned to find validation through stardom and quickly grew unhappy reporting on other people’s fame. So she quit a perfectly good job—the best one she’d ever had, really—to go with her loser boyfriend of the time to California. What followed had been a downward spiral of bad decisions and bad boyfriends.

Ironic. Pam remembered clearly the day she’d looked into her infant daughter’s squalling face and panicked at the flare of resentment that pierced her postpartum numbness. In that moment, Pam had realized how easily she could become like her own mother—a former prom queen who took her disappointment in life out on her kid and anesthetized herself with booze and men. So Pam had fled, wanting more for herself and more for baby Faith. I ran like hell, all the way to the opposite coast. Where I promptly turned into Mae.

The silver lining was that she hadn’t dragged her daughter down with her.

“You and your mother,” Julia chided, unknowingly echoing Pam’s thoughts. “Always so ambitious, always wanting more.”

“Like what?” Pam asked. “I never heard Mae mention wanting to be an actress.” Pam had grown up with the sense that her mother was deeply unhappy without ever having any idea what it would take to fix that.

“She wanted to be adored. Everyone was so surprised when beautiful, outgoing Mae married your father, who, let’s face it, was a shy, awkward man. But I know what the attraction was—that mile-high pedestal he had her on. He worshipped her like a goddess, and she treated him like … Well, he snapped after just a year and ran off with a clerk from the bookstore. A man needs to be nurtured! He can’t stay married to a woman who intimidates him.”

Pam wondered absently if Julia had become a more nurturing wife over the past decade; it wasn’t how Pam remembered her aunt and uncle’s relationship. Then again, what did Pam know? She’d always had the impression that her father had left because of her, because he wasn’t sure he was ready to be a father and because his physical interest in Mae had waned during her pregnancy.

“I’ll never be beautiful again,” Mae had complained one summer, meeting her young daughter’s eyes in a dressing room mirror. “Pretty, sure, but I was stunning once. You ruined that. See these stretch marks? I got huge with you. No wonder your daddy left us.”

To Pam, daddy had seemed as exotic and nonsensical as unicorn. Her biological father had never been more than the name on her birth certificate and monthly checks. Who knew what his side of the story sounded like? In her first year after leaving Mimosa, she’d suffered periodic anxiety attacks, waking in the middle of the night, worrying what Nick would tell their daughter about her own absent parent. For herself, Pam didn’t care—she deserved anything he had to say about her—but she’d prayed he was careful with the girl’s feelings, that Faith would never blame herself.

Faith. The name came more naturally to mind after this morning’s talk with Nick. For years Pam had continued to think of their daughter as “the baby,” long after she’d no doubt been enrolled in school.

“Speaking of ex-husbands,” Pam began hesitantly, “do either of you see Nick Shepard much? I understand he’d moved away but is back in town now.”

Julia and Ed exchanged a glance that made Pam ache inside. For all that Julia could be domineering and Ed could be oblivious, they clearly shared a bond. An entire conversation seemed to pass between them in a single moment of crystalline silence.

“That’s what we heard, too,” Julia said. “But, no. We … stay out of his way.”

“Right after you left, he used to come by,” Ed added. “A lot. He was convinced we knew where you were. Or that you’d contact us. After a few months, he realized we were as in the dark as he was.”

Pam winced. “I’m sorry. For any worry I put you through. I didn’t—I’m sorry.”

“It’s done now,” Julia said decisively. “Maybe you could start fresh, now that your mama left you the house. Move back to Mimosa. Your uncle might even be able to hire you on part-time at the furniture showroom—”

“Absolutely not.” Once the words were out, Pam regretted shooting down her aunt so quickly. Maybe she should have pretended to consider settling here for a millisecond, to spare Julia’s feelings.

But really? Move back to emotional ground zero? No. She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around doing that even if Nick and Faith hadn’t been in Mississippi. With them here, it was impossible. Recalling the furious intensity in Nick’s blue eyes, she could just imagine the fit he’d throw if she announced she was staying. Pam shivered.

“I don’t know exactly what my plans for the future are,” she reiterated gently. “But I can’t see myself in Mimosa long-term. How can I start fresh by going back? I want to stay for a little while—at the house, if I become an imposition here—and I want to keep in touch with the two of you when I go. But I will be moving on.” That part was imperative.

Uncle Ed cleared his throat. “We understand,” he said, overtop of his wife’s entreaties. “The important thing is, you’re here now.”