To Be a Mother

by Rebecca Winters

  “That’s you on water skis!” the girl cried.

  “Yes. In this picture you can see your dad in the back of the boat, spotting me.”

  “You’re fabulous!”

  “Hardly.”

  “Dad’s still a good water-skier. That is, when he quits working long enough in the summer to go for a couple of runs on Jackson Lake.”

  “Your dad was good at everything. Turn the page and you’ll see some more photos of him. One of his friends took these pictures from another boat.”

  “Oh my gosh! Dad’s on a slalom ski! I can’t believe it. My girlfriends have got to see these pictures! Would you let me borrow this scrapbook sometime?”

  “It’s yours. That’s why I brought it. I want you to take it home so you’ll have it forever.”

  Her daughter’s blue eyes filled with tears. “Thank you,” she said in a tremulous whisper.

  “You’re so welcome. No one else in the world could ever appreciate this scrapbook the way you do. Someday when you’re married and have children, they’ll love to pore over these pictures. You can say, ‘See? There’s your grandpa and grandma when they were young.”’

  Jessica’s eyes held a faraway look before she finally lowered her head to finish reading the explanations below the snaps. “Horsetooth Dam. Where is that?”

  “Right by my old house in Fort Collins. You could always water-ski there until Halloween. Then the weather turned cold.”

  When her cell phone rang, they both looked at each other in consternation.

  “I’m sure that’s your father.”

  “I am, too.”

  Samantha let out a quiet gasp when she checked her watch and saw that it was close to midnight. Where had the time gone? Five and a half hours had passed in a blink. “I’ll get it.”

  If Nick was angry, let it be at her, not Jessica.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m in the foyer,” said the deep, familiar voice. “Will you please tell Jessica I’m waiting?”

  “Of course. Thank you for this, Nick. You’ll never know how grateful I am. She’ll be right out.”

  He clicked off before she could say anything more.

  Hardly able to breathe, she turned to Jessica. “As you heard, that was your father. He’s in the lobby.”

  Forcing her legs to move, she walked over to the bed and picked up Jessica’s jacket. After helping her on with it, she handed her the scrapbook lying on the table.

  Her daughter’s eyes never left Samantha’s face. “When does your plane leave tomorrow?”

  “At noon.”

  “Do you want to have breakfast together?”

  “I’d love it, but that’s up to your father.”

  Jessica nodded. “Can I call you in the morning?”

  Only if Nick lets you….

  “Of course. I’m always up early. Before you leave, I have one more gift for you.”

  She hurried over to the dresser and pulled another scrapbook from the drawer. With trembling hands, she handed it to her daughter. “This is the baby book I started when I found out I was pregnant with you.

  “I’m sure your father told you why I gave you up, but I’m equally certain you’ve still never understood how I could have done what I did. I wouldn’t be able to understand it if I were in your shoes.”

  At this point Samantha was shaking so hard, she couldn’t stop. “Though we can’t go back and do it over again, I’m hoping this book will help you realize I loved you with all my heart from the second you were conceived.

  “My parents didn’t know I kept a baby book. No one did. It was something I made for myself and for you, hoping the day would come when I would have the opportunity to give it to you. That day is here.

  “Just know that there’s never been a moment when you haven’t been a part of me, Jessica. You’ll always be a part of me. I love you.”

  She opened the door for her, then clung to it so she wouldn’t reach out and crush her daughter in her arms. If she ever did that, she wouldn’t be able to let her go.

  “Now you’d better hurry. Your dad’s anxious to take you home.”

  “Okay,” she replied in a quiet little voice. “I’ll talk to you in the morning. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Your father isn’t going to let you have breakfast with me in the morning. Goodbye, my darling, darling girl.

  NICK WAS ABOUT TO PHONE Sam once more when he saw his daughter come running around the corner of the lobby with her head down. She was carrying what looked like a couple of albums.

  Without saying anything, she rushed past him and hurried through the double doors to the parking lot. By the time he’d helped her into the car, she was sobbing her heart out. He’d never felt so helpless in his life.

  Right now she was too upset to talk. The scrapbooks seemed welded to her body. All he could do was start driving and wait until this first paroxysm of tears had passed.

  To his chagrin she was still broken up by the time they drove into the garage twenty-five minutes later. The second he shut off the motor, she slid out of the car and ran into the house.

  After he locked everything up and turned off lights, he entered her bedroom and found her under the covers poring over the smaller of the two albums.

  He sat down next to her. “Do you mind if I look at this?”

  She shook her head.

  He reached for the larger one propped against her knees and opened the cover. For the next ten minutes he was treated to a painful trip down memory lane. It was all there.

  Sam had preserved every conceivable memory of their love affair. She’d saved literally everything….

  The effort she’d put into its photographic presentation, not to mention the tiny mementos she’d placed under clear plastic, astounded him. Nick remembered she’d like to take pictures, but he’d had no idea she had this sentimental side.

  His incredulous gaze took in the halves of a pair of Denver Broncos football game tickets, his old student ID picture, a postcard they’d bought in Gillette, a program from a concert they’d attended, a napkin from a friend’s wedding reception, every card or note he’d ever written her.

  Each item had a history, one that worked his heart over until he had to close the scrapbook because he couldn’t take any more.

  “Jessica?” he whispered.

  She lifted tear-drenched eyes to his. “My mother loves me, Dad. This is the baby book she made for me.”

  Baby book?

  “Look—”

  Now he was the one who had trouble functioning as she put the photo album in his hands.

  When he opened the cover he saw the title Sam had printed there: “The Family Tree of Jessica Bretton Kincaid.”

  He blinked to see photographs of Sam, her parents and grandparents glued to one side of the tree. Photos of Nick, his parents and grandparents, his uncle Willard, had been glued to the other. She must have gotten the pictures of his family from his uncle when they’d gone to Gillette.

  Nick had had no idea….

  At the bottom of the page she’d put in a lock of her red-gold hair with the following note: “When you look at the pictures on your family tree, you’ll see you inherited your red hair from your great-grandmother O’Roark on my mother’s side.”

  There were photos of Sam posing sideways in front of her house in Fort Collins. One had a caption: “Today the doctor told me I was pregnant. I’m eleven weeks along.” Everything had been given a date and a time.

  The next pictures showed her at each stage of her pregnancy, with notations about what the doctor said at each medical checkup.

  Another picture showed a side view of her standing in front of the Bretton’s Tudor mansion in Denver. “Today I’m six months along.” Her flat stomach was now a tiny mound. More pictures showed her at seven and eight months. She’d even managed to get in a photo of herself two days before the delivery, when she’d blossomed.

  Stunned, he turned to the next page and saw a photograph of the h
ospital where Jessica had been born. Sam had even put in a picture of the doctor, which she must have taken at one of her office visits.

  She included a chart of her weight and blood pressure, the first time the doctor detected the baby’s heartbeat. Everything to do with the baby and its progress had been noted, including her feelings.

  On the inside back cover she’d put in a one-page letter under clear plastic. It had been signed and dated one day before she’d gone into labor.

  To my beloved baby—

  I don’t know if you’re a boy or a girl yet, but I’ve lived with you for nine months and you’re a part of me and your father forever. When the doctor told me I was going to have you, I couldn’t believe such a fantastic miracle had happened to me.

  I’ve barely graduated from high school, and my parents believe you’ll have a better life if you go to a home where there’s a loving couple waiting to adopt you.

  Your daddy has said he won’t let you go to anyone else, that he’ll take care of you by himself.

  I believe him and know he will honor that commitment because he loves you and he’s a wonderful man. I can promise you he’s going to make you the best father in the world.

  If the time should ever come when you read this letter, then know that I made this baby book just for you. All you have to do is put a picture of yourself in the center of the family tree and it will finally be complete.

  Since I can’t be there to put my arms around you and hold you close, I’ve asked God to help your daddy raise you. I’ll pray for both of you every night for the rest of my life.

  I love you, my dear innocent angel child.

  Your loving mother.

  Nick’s eyes swam until everything went blurry.

  He closed the baby book and got to his feet, too torn apart by conflicting feelings and emotions to articulate his thoughts.

  Sam had given their daughter two priceless gifts, gifts he hadn’t known existed. The baby book was the one thing he would never have credited her with making.

  Over the years he’d gradually come to accept the fact that Sam really had been too young psychologically and emotionally to be a mother, that her parents had understood their daughter’s immaturity better than he had.

  At the time, the knowledge that she hadn’t known what she was doing had helped him to forgive her for giving up their baby. But it had taken him many years to forgive her for not marrying him, for smashing all his dreams.

  The baby book, which she must have hidden from her parents, changed his perception of the situation, of Sam. Her moving, heart-wrenching letter to their unborn child contained the words and emotions of a woman, not a girl. The letter confused him in new ways he didn’t want to analyze, and filled him with fresh pain.

  “Dad? I asked her if I could have breakfast with her in the morning before she flies back to Coeur D’Alene. She said yes, but only if it was all right with you.”

  No.

  It wasn’t all right with him.

  Nothing was ever going to be all right with him again. But he couldn’t say that to his daughter, who’d been starving thirteen years for a moment such as this.

  Now that she’d feasted on every jot and tittle of these memory books—guaranteed to fill her hungry heart with joy—Nick would no longer be the wonderful, honorable father if he thwarted her wishes.

  “Wake me in the morning when you want me to drive you,” he muttered. His legs felt leaden as he headed for the door.

  “You’re upset, aren’t you.”

  He turned slowly toward her. “This situation isn’t about me, honey. I only want what’s best for you.”

  “Do you know what?”

  His eyes closed tightly. “What?”

  “I was afraid I wouldn’t like her.”

  Nick had been afraid she would. Now his worst fear had come true. Sam had become a breathtaking woman, exhibiting a depth of character he’d only this moment discovered. What daughter wouldn’t be thrilled, overjoyed to know this beautiful, intelligent woman was her mother? A mother, furthermore, who’d always loved and wanted her.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “Besides you, I like her better than anyone I ever met.”

  Jessica, Jessica. My poor, transparent daughter.

  “I can see why you loved her, Dad.”

  Don’t say any more. “That was a long time ago. We were kids.”

  “She really loved you.” Jessica spoke as if he hadn’t responded to her comment.

  Apparently not enough.

  Yet there was no doubt in his mind that giving up their daughter had affected Sam’s life as profoundly as it had affected his own.

  That was news he hadn’t suspected or expected, in spite of the role her cancer had played in the scheme of things. In spite of everything else she’d told Jessica.

  “Let’s drop the subject and say good-night. Morning will be here before we know it.”

  “I’m not going to sleep yet.” Jessica had survived her baptism of fire. The tears were gone. In their place a new light shone in her eyes, a tangible radiance only Jessica’s mother could have put there.

  “I’ve got to find a picture of me to put on the family tree in my baby book. If you want to talk, you can come back in after you get on your pj’s.”

  Reverse psychology from his thirteen-year-old? He watched her sort through the pictures in her wallet, trying to choose the right one, and was unable to process the fact that they were actually having this conversation.

  In truth, he couldn’t comprehend that the woman he’d consigned to the far reaches of the universe was back. Tonight Nick had learned a lot more about Sam than he wanted to know.

  Lord—she was staying in a hotel room only twenty-five minutes away from the house. All he had to do was drive over there and show up at her door.

  And then what, Kincaid? Take up where you left off before she told you she was pregnant?

  “Dad?” Jessica had found her scissors in her top dresser drawer. Now she was cutting the picture she’d chosen into an oval. “Before you go to bed, I need to talk to you about that school party next week.”

  He knew what was on her mind. No force on earth could stop it.

  “Tomorrow morning I’m going to ask my mother if she’d like to go with me. I know she might be too busy, but maybe she’ll say yes. The thing is, she told me she had a date tomorrow night and that’s why she has to get back to Coeur D’Alene. So you’re probably right that she has a boyfriend.”

  Nick felt the impact of that word like a blow to his gut.

  “I thought Leslie was beautiful, and she is, but my mother is even more beautiful. No wonder you kissed her after she dropped all her books to get your attention.”

  Good grief. Sam had told Jessica all that?

  “She said you were so handsome she fell in love with you on the spot, that it was the kind of love that went so deep it hurt. You must have felt the same way because I can’t picture you running out of the library after her and then kissing her in front of all those people. Whoa, Dad!

  “Wait till I tell Pierce and show him these pictures of you and Mom on your friend Joey’s motorcycle! He won’t believe it!”

  She taped the picture of herself to the root of the family tree. “How come you’ve never mentioned Joey to me?”

  “A week before our college graduation he died going around a mountain curve on his motorcycle.”

  Jessica lifted soulful eyes to him. “That’s awful.”

  “It was.”

  “So that’s why you hate motorcycles so much.”

  “Yes.”

  “I bet my mother doesn’t know he died.”

  “No. She was in Boston by then.”

  “She had to be superintelligent to go to Harvard, huh.”

  Nick nodded.

  “Is my grandfather Bretton superintelligent, too?”

  “Both your grandparents have fine minds. They met at Stanford, where he received his law degree. Your great-gr
andfather Bretton was a brilliant federal circuit court judge before his death. As for your grandmother Bretton, she has a masters in nineteenth-century English literature.”

  “They’re sure different from your side of the family.”

  Before the phone call from Sam on Halloween night, Jessica would have said, “They’re sure different from our side of the family.”

  “That they are, honey.”

  The Kincaids were ranchers from Gillette, Wyoming. None of them had gone to college except Nick. But that didn’t count to the Brettons, who were much more ambitious for their daughter.

  What a devastating blow to have found out Sam had been diagnosed with cancer, the one thing in life no amount of schooling could prepare her for.

  Her parents, along with Sam herself, had to be thanking God she was in remission. For how long would she be given this miraculous stay of execution?

  That was the question worrying Nick. His daughter’s newfound happiness could be destroyed if Sam’s immune system suddenly shut down again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SAMANTHA CHOSE THE TABLE next to the window of the Elk Inn’s restaurant so she could look at the magnificent snow-swept Tetons while she waited for Jessica.

  Her daughter had phoned at seven-thirty and said she’d be there by eight-thirty. Again there’d been no mention of Nick. Samantha knew he had to be impatiently counting the seconds until she boarded the plane and flew out of their lives.

  That gave her two more hours to cram in a whole lifetime with her precious daughter before she had to bid her farewell.

  The scrapbooks had been delivered. Since it was out of the question to live with Jessica and help finish raising her, the albums were the only tangible proof of love Samantha could offer.

  When she’d signed those custody papers giving up all her rights to Jessica thirteen years ago, they’d been final. She had no legal recourse to her daughter. None.