A Mother's Homecoming (7 page)

That makes one of us.
“All right.” He stood. “Just let me grab my keys, and—”

“Got 'em!” She jangled the key ring in her hand. “And your wallet's on the counter. You can get it on our way out the door. Let's go!”

Tension pinched the back of Nick's neck. One would think they were on their way to a circus, or—realizing that she was a young woman now and not a happy-go-lucky six-year-old—some kind of sweepstakes giveaway shopping spree. Faith gave no sign of being on her way to meet a mother who had ditched her and then never bothered to send so much as a birthday card for the next twelve years. He prayed his daughter would be the same person on the other side of this meeting, that however Pam answered the girl's questions, she would do so with gentle diplomacy. It would kill him for Faith to feel unwanted or unworthy.

Mimosa was not a big town—you could generally get from any Point A to Point B in under fifteen minutes. But today, it seemed like they made their trip in three. Not a single light turned red in their path, no cars pulled in front of them on the narrow roads.

The moment of reckoning had come.

Faith yanked off her seat belt while he was still parking. “Do you think she's already here? Do you think I'll be taller than her? These boots have a heel on them. You're not staying, right?”

“We've already been over that,” he grumbled. Could his daughter make it any clearer that she wanted him nowhere on the premises? He'd agreed to go across the street and browse the hardware store to give the two ladies their privacy. “But I'll have my cell phone in my hand the whole time. Yours is charged, right?”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course, Dad.”

“Call me or text me if you—”

“Relax,” she teased. “I'm the one who should be nervous. You already know this woman.”

He held open the door to the diner for Faith, scanning the room over the top of her head to see if he
spotted—
Thank you, God.
The bunched muscles in his neck and shoulders unclenched when he saw Pam sitting in a booth over to the side. Even though she'd given her word, he'd had his doubts that she would follow through.

“There,” he told his daughter softly. “That's her.”

Faith stopped so suddenly in the entrance that he almost tripped over her. He gave her shoulder a squeeze of encouragement, and she was off again. Even though his legs were far longer, he had to quicken his stride to keep up with her.

Pam had stood, rising to meet them. She lifted a hand to just below her shoulder, where it fluttered for a moment before dropping to her side. He recognized the incomplete gesture; she used to fiddle with the ends of her hair all the time. Faith did, too—when she was little, if she'd been feeling shy, she actually stretched her hair in front of her face. Maybe it was a girl thing.

Pam smiled tremulously at their daughter. “You must be Faith.”

She nodded. “Hi, M—” Abruptly she swung her gaze back to Nick, asking in a stage whisper, “What do I call her?”

“Pam,” he said. “Pam Wilson, meet Faith Shepard.”

Pam cleared her throat. “Won't you have a seat?”

With one last nervous glance at her dad, Faith slid into the booth opposite her birth mother. Nick took that as his cue to make himself scarce.

“If you two don't need me, I have some errands over at the hardware store. Just across the street,” he reminded his daughter. He didn't want her to forget for a second that he was close if she needed him.

Faith nodded impatiently, but Pam looked stricken. “You're not staying?” she asked.

“I thought the two of you would rather chat alone. Girl talk.”

After a second's hesitation, Pam nodded gamely. “Of course.”

Despite her even tone, her expression was unmistakable. He would know it anywhere because he'd seen that same expression countless times in his own reflection:
Don't let me screw this up.
Parenting—particularly parenting a soon-to-be teenage girl—was like juggling flaming objects while walking a tightrope blindfolded with no safety net. Even if it was only for thirty minutes, Pam was getting a taste of what he experienced every day. Feeling an unexpected bond with her at that moment, he smiled at her. She smiled back, and he had the oddest realization.

He'd relegated Pam Wilson and her role in his life to former love. It had never occurred to him that she might still be someone he could like.

F
INALLY
. F
AITH HAD
felt like her dad would never leave! Now that he was gone, she turned eagerly to study her mother across the table.

When Faith had been little, her father gave her a picture frame, the kind that held multiple photos and had a little kickstand on back so it would stand up on a shelf or piece of furniture. That frame held the only three pictures she had of her mom. One was a shot of her mom sitting on a picnic blanket by some water; another was of her dad and Pam's wedding day. It hadn't looked like a fancy ceremony—he was only in a jacket and tie, not a tuxedo, and the gown had been a simple yellow dress with lacy sleeves and beading on the bodice. They
were so young, it looked more like someone's prom picture than a wedding photo. But they'd been smiling happily at each other. Faith's remaining picture was from right after she was born. Her parents were sitting on Grandma Gwendolyn's couch, and her dad was holding her. She hated that one. No one looked happy in it, especially Faith, whose face was screwed up into a red scowl. She was obviously about to cry.

She'd asked Grandma Gwendolyn once if she'd cried a lot as a baby, but her grandmother assured her she'd been an “angel.” Faith wasn't stupid. If she'd been such an angel, why had her mother left her? She could ask Pam that very question, but her stomach knotted. Faith wasn't sure she was brave enough to hear the answer.

“You look different than I thought,” Faith said. “Different than in the pictures, I mean.”

Pam smiled, but it looked kind of fake. “Imagine how I feel. You look a lot different than in my picture, too.”

My picture?
Surely Pam didn't mean she only had one. “You're pretty,” Faith said timidly. It probably sounded like she was just sucking up, but it was true. Even though Faith liked long hair, she thought her mom looked good with shorter hair. And although Pam wasn't wearing makeup and was way older than she'd been on her wedding day, she was still a lot prettier than Morgan's mom—a single woman who always flirted with Faith's dad whenever he came to pick her up from her friend's house.

Pam laughed, and her smile seemed more natural now. “Thanks. Back atcha, kid. So—” she toyed with the laminated menu “—you hungry? We could order food or split an appetizer if you want. Or just stick to the shakes. There's nothing bad on this menu.”

“What's your favorite flavor of milk shake?” Faith asked, hoping her mother would say cookies and cream. That was Faith's favorite.

“Plain old chocolate. In my opinion, it's hard to improve on a classic.”

“Oh.” Well, that was okay. Faith and Morgan didn't like all the same stuff, either. “Just a milk shake for me, please. I already ate lunch.”

Pam nodded, then waved to the waitress. They started to place their order, but Faith interrupted, pulling out her phone.

“Hold on!” She hit the camera function on the menu screen. “I want the waitress to take a picture of us. You don't mind, do you?”

Pam seemed surprised by the request, but not angry. “No, that's fine.”

Faith breathed a sigh of relief. “Great.” Both of them leaned across the table, so that their heads were close together in the center, and smiled at the waitress. “Thank you.”
Now I have four.

P
AM WAS IN AWE OF
the way her adolescent companion managed to down a shake yet never stop talking. Pam's own milk shake had melted into a sad chocolaty puddle while she tried to keep up with Faith's questions. Most of them were blessedly superficial—what was Pam's favorite color, had any of Faith's teachers taught at the middle school back when Pam was a student there?—but a few had been more heavy-hitting.

“Why did you …” Faith hesitated, bending her straw back and forth with such intense focus that Pam expected it to snap. “What made you agree to meet me?”

“It's the least I owe you,” Pam said quietly. “To tell
the truth, I'm surprised you wanted to. I wouldn't blame you if you hated me.”

Faith frowned, then said with a directness that sounded much like her father's, “Only sometimes.”

The two of them locked gazes, neither sure what to say. If Pam tried to explain the paralyzing depression that had engulfed her after she'd given birth to Faith, would the girl somehow feel responsible? Pam would rather say nothing and let her daughter be angry than risk Faith blaming herself.

“At least,” Faith blurted suddenly, as if unnerved by the silence, “divorce is a clean, honest break. Not like what Jenna did when she cheated on Dad. She was his wife in North Carolina.”

“Do you miss her?” Pam asked. After all, that woman had been far more of a mother than she herself had.

“I don't know. Most of the time I'm cool with it being just Dad and me.”

The words warmed Pam.
I knew he'd be a good father.
Even in the short while she'd shared Faith with him, she'd glimpsed it. One Nick as a parent was worth twenty of Pam in the same situation.

“But then something will happen,” Faith continued, “that he gets weird about. You know, girl stuff, so he makes me talk to Grandma Gwendolyn or Aunt Leigh. I love them, but Aunt Leigh only has sons, and Grandma Gwendolyn …”

Been there.
No one had to explain to Pam how difficult Gwendolyn Shepard could be. Pam should steer the conversation in a different direction before she ended up saying something she regretted about the girl's grandmother. “Your dad tells me you have a great singing voice. Do you plan to pursue that?”

“Pursue? Like how?”

“Voice lessons or high school choral group or maybe singing professionally one day.”

“I don't know. It would be such a cool job to star in one of those musicals that tours all over the place, so I could travel to lots of cities. But I think what I want to do is get a job at NASA in Alabama. Dad took me to the Marshall Space Flight Center, and it rocked.”

Pam leaned back in her booth. If she'd been harboring any delusions that Faith was a Mini Me, they'd just been blown out of the water. Pam had barely passed her math and science courses in high school; even if she had, she never would have thought a career using those skills was exciting.
This kid sounds more together at twelve than I was throughout my twenties.
“I'm impressed. You must be really good in school.”

“I am!” Inexplicably the girl sounded exasperated. “Which is what I keep telling Dad. I'm an A student, so he and Grandma Gwendolyn should ease up. They don't need to be on my case all the time like I'm some kind of delinquent.”

Pam bit her lip. Gwendolyn's son had knocked up his teenage girlfriend. Had Nick and Pam's past behavior caused her to err on the side of prison warden when it came to her granddaughter? And while Pam knew in her bones that Nick adored Faith and would do anything for her, it wasn't difficult to imagine him being overprotective. Didn't he understand that kids who felt suffocated by rules and regulations were often the ones who rebelled? Pam couldn't stand to think of the bright, beautiful girl across the table doing something stupid that would mar her future just because she felt the need to defy her elders.

A chiming sound came from Faith's phone. She
glanced at the screen and sighed. “Dad just texted. He's on his way. Must be thirty minutes on the dot. He's kind of a stickler.”

Half an hour had passed already. Pam wasn't sure how she felt about that. On the one hand, their conversation hadn't been nearly as excruciating as she'd anticipated. On the other, she'd had the underlying sensation of walking on eggshells this entire time, afraid that the next thing she said might be the wrong one, and she was looking forward to being able to breathe normally again.

“Thank you for the milk shake,” Faith said, her formal manner making her suddenly seem more childlike. A little girl hosting a tea party for imagined royalty. “And for answering my questions. I only have one more. Don't you think everyone should have a mother?” She kept her tone carefully neutral, as if she were asking in the abstract rather than about herself.

Ignoring the pang in her midsection—under wildly different circumstances, could she have been a real mother to this girl?—Pam chose her words carefully. “In a perfect world, sure. But in reality, maybe it's better sometimes not to have a mom than to have one who's terrible.” Images of Mae flashed through Pam's mind. It was occasionally difficult to remember what the woman had looked like smiling, but it was second nature to envision her raging drunkenly about how Pam had ruined her life.

Faith straightened, her face alert and anxious. “Were you a terrible mom?”

I was going to be.
“Oh, there's your dad.”

Faith craned her neck, looking back toward the door. She heaved a sigh, clearly not sharing Pam's ambivalence that their visit was over. “Goodbye.”

Rather surprised by the lump in her throat and how hard it was to get out a farewell, Pam nodded in response. By the time Nick reached the table, she was able to add, “Take care of yourself. And listen to your father.”

Faith crossed her eyes and made a face.

“Hey!” Nick reached out to playfully tap his daughter on the shoulder. “What happened to respecting your seniors?”

“Sorry.” Faith giggled, clearly not.

“You ready to go?” he prompted.

Obediently she stood, but then threw one last imploring glance at Pam. “Maybe I can see you again?”