Leanne Davis - Natalie (Daughters Series #2)

by Natalie (Daughters Series #2)

  My attention returns to the presence of my mother’s nephew/daughter’s boyfriend. He parks and gets out of his car. There is no doubt how comfortable he feels here. He has no qualms about stopping by like this. I cannot believe I allowed myself to come here.

  I assume he probably called her from the car. That would make sense. The front door clicks and starts to open. My heart nearly explodes with anticipation. I swear to God, my heart feels like it is detonating in my chest. My ears roar, my breathing increases rapidly, and my palms grow clammy. I can’t focus, although my gaze is riveted, and I stare hard at the opening door.

  And then… there she is. My mother.

  No, not my mother. My mother, the mother I loved and the woman who raised me, is dead. The woman who stands before me is no more than blood and tissue. The source of my life, yes, but not the person who took responsibility for it. Before me stands just a woman. A woman with no real significance in my life. I must cling to that thought. I have to cling to it.

  I’m fine. I’m fine, I mentally chant. I finally command my racing thoughts and heart to slow down. Shut the fuck up! I am fine.

  I’m simply meeting a woman named Jessie Hendricks.

  She shuts the door behind her and leans back onto it. She is wearing ordinary clothes. I mean, what did I expect? A ball gown, or fancy suit, out here in middle of nowhere, on a Thursday? It’s not like we planned this encounter. No getting all spiffed up for a proper introduction. I glance down at myself, feeling road weary. My jeans are crumpled, torn and frayed on my thighs and under the knees, as well as faded and old. I wear a dark gray jacket over several t–shirts and tanks that I’ve layered. My hair is a heavy hunk that I hastily wrapped up on top of my head.

  Jessie wears slacks, the kind of dressy–for–work black pants I would not be caught dead in. She is average weight, with large breasts. Her blouse is muted in color. She wears a loose scarf, which she knots elaborately around her neck. It’s splashed in a rainbow of colors. She has shiny, black, straight hair that ends at her shoulders. She’s pretty. Even from a distance the length of my car and ten feet of pavement, I can tell that. I don’t know what I expect. A series of distorted, grotesque images fill my mind. Fat. Slothy. Pristine. I don’t know, but I don’t expect her to look the way she does. I don’t know if I’m disappointed or glad.

  Christina is breathtakingly similar. That fact becomes clearly evident after only thirty seconds of scrutiny between us. Jessie’s face is solemn, serious and strained. Locking her jaw, she rivets her eyes on mine.

  I step back, still holding her gaze, just as unfriendly and serious as she appears, and push my car door closed. It echoes with a “clonk” that all of us hear. Max walks towards Jessie, thankfully coming between us.

  When he reaches her side, he leans in with a quick hug, and says something into her ear. She nods, breaking eye contact with me to respond to him. I think she takes some small comfort in Max’s reassuring and familiar presence. Then, he goes around her, entering the front door and shutting it.

  We are alone.

  I step forward. Standing there, frozen in place, is a sure way to convey how scared I am. Not acceptable. She ditched me! She abandoned me! She should be miserable! Not I. She should be ashamed and nervous and horrified. Not I. My righteousness boosts my courage. I suck in a breath and force myself to walk the symbolic distance it takes to reach her.

  What does a woman feel upon seeing the baby she once gave birth to and subsequently abandoned? Is Jessie overwhelmed with regret? Longing? Relief? Hatred? Is she glad I am alive and well? Or does she wish she aborted me to avoid this critical moment almost thirty years later?

  There is no feeling of instant connection. As I look into her eyes, no sudden, overwhelming sensations of love or daughterly affection fill me. I don’t really feel anything. She’s just a woman. I’m a woman and we are looking at each other. That’s all I feel.

  But still, it’s so awkward that it’s painful. Jessie finally approaches me, away from the safety of the front door. She’s shorter than I am. She tilts her head back just enough, and a chill runs down my spine. I can’t believe I’m here. Doing this. Today.

  “Hello, Natalie.”

  So, so simple, isn’t it? After all these years, the most simple of greetings. Yet, it’s also kind of epic. As far as I know, she never heard my name until about a year and nine months ago. I sort of put together that Christina found out about me, and insisted on hunting me down. Not Jessie. Not this woman. So really, it’s rather epic that after several decades, she now knows my name. She is standing before me, offering the most ordinary greeting one can say to any stranger. Hello.

  “Hello…” I almost blurt out Mrs. Hendricks. Or should I call her Jessie? I have no idea what to call this woman. “What shall we do now? Introduce ourselves?” I try to ignore the banal greetings. I’m tired of pretending like this is all normal and shit. It’s so not normal. I can’t bear to pretend it is for another second.

  A small, barely–there smile lifts the corners of Jessie’s mouth. Okay, she might get sarcasm. Maybe there is some humor inside her.

  “Or did you want to pretend to welcome me here?”

  Her eyebrows rise. “You’re not unwelcome here.”

  “Let me guess? For Christina’s sake?”

  She nods. “Yes as well as… yours.” She adds the “yours” softly. Like she just barely dropped it in there.

  I search her face. Yes, naturally I’m looking for any indication of similarity to mine. Our eyes are similar. Same shape, same shade of brown. Our hair too, same color, texture and thickness. Like Christina’s. I noted that when we met. But Christina’s was brown, not black. And Jessie’s? My exact shade of black. “She found me all on her own, didn’t she? You never looked for me, did you?”

  Silence as she considers me. Perhaps she’s trying to decide how honest to be. Finally, she gives a small nod. “No. I never did. I didn’t know your name until after Christina went looking for you.”

  I want to ask so many things… Like, didn’t her heart twist? Or did she ever long or want to know me? Especially after hearing that her daughter, whom she seems to have legitimate feelings for, was looking for me, didn’t this woman want to know what happened to her firstborn? In many ways, it might have helped if she were a strung–out drug addict or mental patient, drooling in a dark corner, or even a nasty, mean drunk, spouting obscenities at me, and yelling at me to Get out! Then I’d know it was because of her, and not me that she decided to give me up.

  But this? She seems so normal. Nice. I know nothing, of course; and being a cop, I’m fully aware of what nice exteriors can hide. All kinds of nasty. But this time, I think I was expecting some of the nasty to be more apparent.

  It means, she chose not to keep me.

  “She showed up at my house out of absolutely nowhere. You didn’t send her there. She admitted that much.”

  “She was mad at me for hiding your existence. She believed you two could forge some kind of relationship. She is smart and resourceful. But she surprised even me in how she actually found you. She had a family friend hack into old records of the place where I gave birth to you. She deduced which one was you, and managed to track you down through that small piece of information.”

  A weird shudder travels over my body. I never expected her allusion to the circumstances of my birth only minutes after meeting me.

  “Did Max tell you I was coming?”

  “Yes, but I asked Max to try and convince you to come here.”

  “Why?”

  “For all of us, I think. You exist. You are here. Christina knows about you, and my other two daughters will find out soon enough. I expect you have a lot of questions. Why don’t you come inside, and I’ll try to answer them?”

  I stay rooted to the spot. Is this woman for real? She intends to answer everything I’ve wanted to know? After all these years of knowing nothing, can it all be revealed in a single afternoon? I can’t believe it could be so freaking easy.
/>
  Except there is not one easy thing about any of it.

  Compliantly, I follow Jessie inside. The interior is spacious and homey, appearing comfortable and well cared for. It’s four times as large as the apartment I grew up in. Does that mean anything? Not really. I don’t feel bitter about having just enough while growing up. We were working–class poor. We always had just enough, and not a bit more. But I was loved, and wanted, dearly. I was cared for and was shown by example how to work hard. I loved the neighborhood that became as much a part of my personality as my IQ, or my skin color, or my hatred of onions.

  I don’t bother with idle comments. Max isn’t inside there. I guess I thought he’d be waiting for me. Jessie walks forward and invites me to sit down. I choose the breakfast bar where she’s gone to the kitchen counter, to what? Get coffee? Make this all nice and civilized? I sit on the rotating bar stool and watch her. I refuse to be relegated to the living room like a formal guest. I’m definitely not that, nor am I a casual friend stopping by. So what am I?

  She serves me a cup of coffee, and I wonder why she assumes I drink it. It’s still warm from the coffee maker. I grip it in my hands, glad to have something to do, and idly play with the handle before taking a breath. Jessie turns and leans back against the counter. She hooks her hair behind her ear, then presses her hands flat on her thighs. “I don’t know what to say to you. Do you want to ask me something? We could start there?”

  I also don’t expect her to let me ask questions. I shrug listlessly as if it’s never occurred to me until now that I’m in the presence of my birth mother to ask why the hell she gave me away when I was only days old.

  “Were you young when you had me?”

  “Twenty–one. Matter of opinion if that’s young or not. I wasn’t sixteen, or anything like that.”

  “Married?”

  She hesitates. “Yes.”

  “To my… father?”

  “No. Will.”

  “Will Hendricks?” As in, the guy she’s married to now? This isn’t a scenario I ever considered. Could it be as simple as she cheated on Will? And to save her marriage, she gave me up? I shudder in disgust. It’s so close to why I’m here. My head immediately bounces back to now. To Sam. To Sam and that strange woman. On the desk. He’s moving… he’s inside her. He’s—

  No. I have enough trauma to deal with.

  “You cheated on him?”

  “No. I was pregnant when we got married.”

  Oh. Okay. So… what? Will just couldn’t handle it? I instantly hate the smug SOB who wouldn’t have me because he came into the picture after I was conceived.

  “Do you know who my real father is?” I ask, cutting to the chase. I guess there are any number of reasons why a mother would give away her baby, and maybe they’re valid. Maybe not so valid. Right now, I need a fact. I need something concrete I can grab on to.

  She shakes her head in denial and my heart sinks. “I’m sorry, Natalie, but I’m afraid I don’t know the true identity of your father.”

  I stare at her in disbelief. A one–nighter? After all this time, I’m simply the unwanted by–product of the oldest story there is? A one–night–stand that turned into a life–changing mistake?

  I try not to judge. I fully support the idea of women sleeping around just as often and with as many partners as society approves of men having. I just didn’t expect it was the most ordinary reason of how I got here and why she didn’t want me.

  “I see.”

  She shrugs, and her lips compress into a tight line. “It’s not easy to hear the truth.”

  “Is that why you never told your kids? You were embarrassed?”

  She stares right in my eyes. “Yes.”

  “Your husband was with you when you gave me up?”

  She sighs. “No, we separated and divorced for a while afterwards. We didn’t remarry until later.”

  “So… I was just the result of a hook–up gone wrong?”

  Silence stretches between us. I sense she must be working very hard to keep her facial muscles from twitching. She is visibly concentrating on retaining her composure and remaining unfazed and neutral. I don’t know why, or what it might possibly mean. “Yes.”

  She is terse and succinct. To the point. There are no ugly details, but she seems honest enough.

  “You don’t even have a remote idea of who my father is? It’s a small town, I mean…”

  I’m desperate. And surprised at how badly I want to get a name.

  She shakes her head. “It wasn’t here. We lived on an Army base in North Carolina.”

  That only spawns a million more questions to ask. How did you end up here? Why did she live on an Army base? Who was she? What was her life like then? What is it like now? How did she feel when she found out she was pregnant with me? How did she feel when Christina found out about me? I shake my head, physically ordering myself to stop. There is no reason for this sudden hunger for more details. She is a woman I know nothing about. And should or will never know. “A soldier?”

  “No. Not a soldier, Natalie.” Her tone of voice is freakishly calm. She must be struggling, I think, to remain so stoic. She holds my gaze, but offers no smiles to me.

  “So… just some guy? You met him at a bar or something?”

  “I really don’t know who fathered you. I’m genuinely sorry I can’t give you anything more.”

  I suppose it must be hard. Being middle–aged and seemingly respectable now, having to relive a past she obviously wasn’t proud of and which ultimately resulted in me; sure, I see her discomfort.

  “You didn’t tell Christina that story, did you?”

  “No. I didn’t tell her.”

  “I imagine that would have been awkward.”

  “What’s not awkward about this?”

  “Nothing,” I finally concede. She might have done the deed, but I was suffering for it too. I wished she would feel physical discomfort, if only because it was that way for me too. I stare at my fingers clasped on the counter before me, my best effort to stop fidgeting. No surer way to betray me than expressing my nervous anxiety and true feelings by fidgeting.

  She glances at the clock over my head. “My daughters will be home from school in half an hour. Would you like to meet them?”

  I shrug. Do I? I could walk out the front door immediately and drive away from here. I could take along the mental picture of who and what my mother is. I know her name, her house, her voice. I know something about myself now. It fulfills some of my longing and lifelong questions. My bio–dad, however, seems like a dead end. I know that for sure now. At least, I have more information than I did this morning, and more answers than I’ve had in a lifetime of questions. I could let this be done. And let this lifelong fiasco rest. I could go back to Sam and try to face what I should be dealing with.

  Thinking of Sam, I reply, “How do we do that? They don’t know about me.”

  “I can simply introduce you as a friend of Christina’s. They are fourteen and fifteen. They won’t overthink it too much.”

  “Do you want me to? It seems rather odd to me that you’d even offer.”

  “I’ve hidden your existence from everyone for a lot of years. Decades, really. It was almost a relief for me when Christina finally discovered you. Now? I know the answer isn’t to continue hiding it. I will tell them, eventually, but only after they can process what I did and hid from them. You saw how far it wigged Christina out.”

  She doesn’t seem such a terrible mother, and I really don’t know how I feel about that. I mean, it’s not like I want her kids to be miserable, or for her to be a bitch, or obviously flawed right off, but it also doesn’t fit with some of my long-held fantasies about her identity. Do I want to pursue this by meeting more of them? More sisters? It feels surreal. I was raised as an only child. I was lonely until I met the Ford brothers. And then? They became my family more than any real siblings could be.

  Before I can answer, Max strolls out from the hallway. He stops at the
end of the bar and casually leans on it, studying each of us. “So Christina will be here in about an hour. Tell me you’ll stay that long, at least?”

  “I… guess so.” They both nod their heads, and I can see my reply pleases Max, but Jessie? She isn’t rude, but she isn’t especially nice either. She doesn’t really want me here. I think she’s paying penance by suggesting she tell her other kids, and only because her back is against the wall. I see the strain in the tiny muscles around her mouth as she listens to Max. She has to do this, if only for her other kids.

  Sisters? I try to formulate what that is like, and what it means. Are we sisters? Would it change anything? Especially finding out so late in my life. It’s not so late in the younger ones’ lives. But Christina definitely thinks it matters. I can’t believe she’s dropping everything to drive over here.

  Max nods. “Good, cuz I think she skipped out on her last final.”

  Jessie groans. “She can’t do that!”

  “You think you could talk her out of it?” Max raises his brows at Jessie as if she just suggested they take a quick shuttle trip to the moon. Jessie sighs and nods. I watch them. There is a visible comfort and ease between them, even though the kid dates her daughter. Interesting.

  I have to admit, if not for Max, I really doubt I’d be sitting in my mother’s kitchen. I actually once considered they were racists who didn’t want me because of my ethnicity. But Jessie seems to embrace Max, and approves of him dating her pristine, lily–white daughter; while Max acts so blasé and like it’s normal for him to be so readily accepted. And I haven’t forgotten that Max dared me to come there. I don’t back down to a direct challenge. Probably a not–so–attractive quirk of mine.

  “Natalie?” I shift my gaze back to Jessie, who is wiping off the counter. “I know this must be hard for you, being one against us all, but why don’t you stay for dinner? I think with all that’s going on now between us, and the girls, please, just stay for dinner. You’re already here. You found us, and I think for making that effort, the least that needs to happen is for all of us to spend a few hours together. Perhaps then, we could all relax and let things unfold a little more naturally.”