A Mother's Homecoming (3 page)

Screw that.
Pamela Jo forfeited any such chance a long time ago. And she was crazy if she thought to drag Faith through some sort of custody battle or belated “Mommy's home now, darling!” movie-of-the-week
moment. Despite his sister's well-meaning suggestion of hiring legal counsel, Nick favored a more direct approach.

One that centered around figuring out where Pamela Jo was staying, then running her out of town on a rail.

Shortly after nine in the morning, Pam's prepaid cell phone rang. The only reason she was still in bed was misplaced optimism. She hadn't managed to get any sleep the night before but kept hoping that, any minute now, slumbering oblivion would be hers.

“Hi, Annabel.” She'd known who was on the other end before she even pressed “accept call.” No one but her sponsor had the number. The phone had been a parting gift.
A reminder that you're not alone,
Annabel had said when she'd hugged Pam goodbye. Given how early it was on the west coast, Annabel was probably just now getting out of bed for her morning run before work.

“D'you make it through the night?” Annabel asked without preamble. “I've been worrying about you ever since you called last night. That was a hell of a lot dropped on you.”

“Tell me about it.” Pam felt like some hapless cartoon character with a big hole through her middle where a cannonball had been fired. “But, yeah, I made it through. Booze-free.”

One might assume that was a perk of being near broke—not having the funds to fall off the wagon—but
there had been a few years in her past when she simply would have undone a couple of top buttons, made her way to Wade's Watering Hole and struck up a conversation until some guy bought her a drink or two. Or six. She fought back a ripple of shame with the reminder that she'd been sober eight months and counting. She clenched trembling fingers into a fist.
Never again.

“I'm a little shaky right now,” Pam admitted, “but that's from lack of sleep.”

“And the announcement that your mother is dead,” Annabel said with brutal honestly. “
And
the news that your ex-husband and child are somewhere in the vicinity. Don't downplay what you're going through. You have a right to be angry and upset and conflicted.”

“I'm not in denial, I'm just numb.” Plus she was too exhausted to muster the energy for hysterics. She'd driven so far over the last few days, fueled by caffeine and a kind of grim eagerness. Having made the decision to confront Mae, she'd wanted to get it over with and, whatever happened between them, move on from there a healthier person. “I haven't had much rest lately.”

“I won't keep you then,” Annabel said. “When were you planning to see your aunt and uncle?”

“I'm going to call them after lunch, find out if they're back yet.” She wondered nervously what kind of reception she'd get from her only remaining family.
Not your
only
family.

Yes, they were, she argued with herself. Pam had given up any right to claim Faith years ago—probably the most responsible thing she'd ever done. Even at eighteen she'd realized what a train wreck of a mother she would be.

“If you're not going to track them down until after lunch, you still have a couple of hours to catch some
z's.” Annabel was half drill sergeant, half big sister. She was constantly admonishing Pam to eat, sleep and generally take better care of herself.

Rest, however, didn't seem to be in the cards. No sooner had Pam disconnected the call than there was a knock at her bedroom door. Surely it wasn't time to check out already?

“Coming, Trudy.” As she shuffled to the door, Pam spared a second's thought for her attire. She wasn't exactly dressed for the day. Braless and bottomless except for a pair of bikini briefs, she wore a thin cotton T-shirt that was so oversized the hem fell halfway to her knees. Oh, well. The basics were covered. Cantankerous though she may be, Trudy didn't seem like the type of person who shocked easily.

Pam swung the door open, her greeting to the landlady dying unspoken on her lips. A fuse overloaded in her brain. She thought she could actually smell something burning as her mental processes short-circuited. Her mouth fell open, and an unintelligible squeak escaped. She glanced up—was it possible he'd gotten even taller?—into Nick Shepard's piercing blue eyes; they used to look to her like a tropical lagoon, all the faraway paradises she longed to visit. Now they looked like Judgment Day.

She couldn't have been any more startled and horrified if her mother's ghost had appeared at her door. “Y-you can't be here.”

His lips twisted into a cruel line she couldn't reconcile with the boy who'd loved her. “You seem confused about which one of us doesn't belong here, Pamela Jo.”

“I meant, no, um, gentleman callers. Trudy's rule. And it's Pam.” Hearing him say the name she used to
go by brought back a flood of memories—the kind that required an ark if you were to have any chance at survival.

“What the hell are you doing in Mimosa,
Pam?
” The sneering tone made her think that even after all her years of resenting Mae, she was still just bush league when it came to anger. Here was a pro.

She swallowed, fighting the urge to huddle into herself for protection. Right now, his glinting, accusatory gaze was locked on hers. She was afraid that if she crossed her arms over her chest, she might draw his attention to the fact that she was clad only in a T-shirt. She doubted he cared what she was—or wasn't—wearing, but she felt painfully exposed already. “I came to town to talk to my mother.”

Surprise momentarily softened his expression. Blinking, he rocked back on his heels, hands hooked in the pockets of his jeans. “You came to visit Mae? Voluntarily?” A rhetorical question since he didn't give her time to answer or explain. Cloaked once again in cold hostility, he asked, “You do know you're too late?”

“I know.” She registered the taste of blood and realized she'd bitten her bottom lip. Hard. “I know I'm too late. I know I can't … fix anything.” A fragment of the usual prayer tolled in her head like mournful bells.
The serenity to accept what I cannot change.
Today, there was no comfort in the phrase, only bleak finality.

She gripped the edge of the door, steeling herself. A stronger person—one whose inner core hadn't been mindlessly shrieking
ohGodohGod
ever since she'd seen Nick's face—would pull herself together and try to turn this disaster into an opportunity. If she couldn't make amends for what she'd put him through, she could at least ease his mind, assure him she didn't have any
nefarious agenda.
Grant me the courage.
“Look. Nick.”

He flinched, no less affected than she'd been when he said her name.

“I'm not staying. I have to see my aunt and uncle today, but then I'll be moving on.” That's all she'd wanted for years, to be able to move forward, instead of uselessly spinning her wheels and looping in the same self-destructive cycle. She needed to let go of her past and build a new life with healthy habits and achievable, short-term goals.

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.”

W
ITH 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.

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.”

P
AM'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.