Not My Daughter

by Barbara Delinsky

  By mid-afternoon, they were on the road, two SUVs loaded with people, flowers, and balloons. Susan kept looking back at Lily, who smiled every time. She kept thinking about the baby, whom she had seen on a sonogram again that morning and who was adorable, balloon and all. She kept thinking about Rick, who had watched that screen with the same vulnerable look as Lily--kept thinking about the follow-up tests and the doctor's appointments, but with optimism now--kept thinking about her school, her students.

  And Ellen? She let that one ride.

  A gentle snow began to fall shortly after they crossed into Maine, and though it remained light as they drove up the coast--the Penobscots had known what they were talking about when they named the town for its moderate weather--it accumulated enough to cover the January dirt. With night falling before six, they saw lights as they entered Zaganack. Main Street was largely Perry & Cass crimson, with the harbor lights more blue. Between the masts of diehard fishermen, festive colors outlining restaurants, and clusters of seagulls overnighting on the town dock, it was so picturesque, that if Susan hadn't already forgiven the town for doubting about her, she would have now.

  And that was before they approached her little house, which was spattered with color well beyond sea green and teal. A rainbow of balloons was tied to the mailbox, a large WELCOME HOME SUSAN AND LILY banner hung between windows. More balloons flanked the door, a navy-and-yellow bouquet for Lily, a fuchsia one for Susan, and on the steps were a mound of foil-covered bundles, food from friends, left to chill in the snow. Two cars sat out front, disgorging a gaggle of girls the instant they turned into the driveway.

  If Susan had wanted her mother to see that she and Lily had a rich life with friends who loved them, she couldn't have asked for a better homecoming.

  Chapter 28

  Susan settled Lily in the den. When Rick disappeared soon after, she found him upstairs packing his things.

  "What are you doing?" she asked in alarm.

  He shifted socks from drawer to duffel. "I'll stay at the inn in town with my dad. You need the bed."

  "I don't," Susan argued. "Ellen can stay at the inn."

  "She's your mother. She's come a long way, and she should stay here." He opened the next drawer.

  "Don't leave me alone with her." He smiled chidingly, but she was serious. He was a buffer--between her and the town, the media, and now Ellen. "I want you to stay. You can sleep in my room."

  His smile turned wry. "Now there's an interesting proposition. What was it, less than two days ago that you dodged the morals bullet?" Dropping shirts in the duffel, suddenly unsmiling, he straightened. "We need a bigger house."

  "We?"

  "You and me. It's time, don't you think?"

  "For what?"

  He put his hands on his hips. "Us. Let's pool resources. Get a bigger house. Maybe even get married."

  Married? Married? "You don't want to get married."

  "How do you know?"

  "You love your freedom."

  He stared at her. "I think you love yours more."

  "Not true. I just don't want to be hurt."

  "Me, neither, which is probably why I've never said the m-word before. Only this is ridiculous." His eyes softened. "Hell, Susie, I've always loved you."

  Her heart tripped. They had never used the l-word either. Oh, she had said it to friends over the years, as in Rick is a love, or I just love Rick, but never aloud and face-to-face. "You loved me even when you were twenty-two?" she asked skeptically, because the declaration was too neat. One intimate summer; that was it. They had been young and unformed, certainly different from the adults they were today.

  "Smitten," he said without blinking. "There was never a doubt. Do you not love me?"

  She barely had to think. "Of course I love you."

  "So what's the problem?"

  Susan tried to think of one. Yes, love was a given, she realized. She and Rick got along too well for it not to be. Formalizing their relationship was something else. Somewhere around the time she left home, pregnant with Lily, she had crossed marriage off her list of dreams. She had her daughter; that was enough.

  "See?" he argued. "You always push me away."

  "No. You always leave."

  "And you let me go, like I'm not worth keeping."

  "Are you kidding?" she cried. "Why do you think I've never looked at anyone else? No one ever came close."

  "Okay," he said, amending the charge, "then you let me go like you're not worth keeping. Is that your father's legacy? That you aren't good enough to keep?"

  Susan thought of recent weeks, when everything she had worked so hard to achieve had been questioned. Yes, this was what she brought from the past, and it haunted her still. She was a good educator. She was a good mother. But good enough? "I'm flawed."

  He made a frustrated sound. "We're all flawed. So we can either be flawed separately or together. There's your choice."

  "It's not that simple."

  "It is. None of us is perfect. God knows I'm not, or I would have pushed this issue a long time ago."

  She studied his handsome face. He had lost some of his tan to the New England winter, and his hair was longer than usual, but his eyes were as blue, his voice as rich. She couldn't imagine his not having shared that with people all over the world. Marriage meant giving it up.

  "You wouldn't have," she said.

  "You're right. Because I got a rush being in war zones or running alongside trucks bringing rice to the starving poor. My high was being recognized, adulated, which makes my point. I am totally flawed. So we make mistakes. So we're sometimes slow to see them. Slow doesn't mean never."

  "But what if I can't be a good wife?"

  "What if I can't be a good husband? C'mon, hon. We'll do our best."

  She rubbed her forehead. "This is a big step."

  He came closer. Framing her face with his hands, his mesmerizing blue eyes steady, he asked so gently that her heart melted, "What scares you most?"

  "You," she whispered. "Me. Change. I'm used to controlling my life."

  Slipping his fingers into her hair, he lifted her face and gave her one of those kisses that tasted of longing, the kind of kiss that made her mindless, the kind she remembered most when he was gone.

  Clutching his wrists, she drew back. "Oh-ho, no. That will not work. This has to be a rational discussion."

  "About control," he conceded. "Would it be so awful to share it?"

  Terrifying, she thought. I'd be hurt.

  Granted, Rick had never hurt her. What he promised, he gave. But then, she had never asked for much.

  You let me go, he said, and he was right. Like you're not worth keeping, he said. Right again. But how does one get rid of old baggage?

  She felt the loss of his warmth when he stepped back. "Lots to think about," he said and returned to his packing.

  Susan couldn't think about much else, what with a houseful of friends who were happy to wait on Lily, cook dinner, and occupy Ellen. Once Rick left, she took refuge in his room. It always smelled woodsy when he was around. She breathed it in for a bit before reluctantly stripping the bed.

  She had just unfolded fresh sheets when her mother appeared and went to the far side of the bed. Catching a fitted corner, Ellen stretched it over the mattress. "It's good of you to have me here." She smoothed the sheet with a hand.

  "I wouldn't have you any other place."

  "I'm displacing Rick."

  Who wanted a bigger house. Who wanted marriage. "That's okay." Susan needed to think. She whipped the top sheet out over the bed. "How long will you and Big Rick stay?"

  Ellen brought the sheet down on her side. "I can't speak for him. We're just friends who happen to share a granddaughter." Susan was thinking that Ellen was finally out from under her husband's thumb and could do whatever she wanted with any man, when Ellen added, "He can either drop me off in Oklahoma on his way back west. Or I can stay. I don't want to put you out."

  "I invited you."

&n
bsp; "I'll only stay as long as I can help."

  Help? Susan eyed her blankly.

  Ellen spoke quickly. "The doctor wants Lily off her feet for a few days, and you have to get back to work. And they want to keep checking on the baby, so Lily will have to go for tests. And once he's born he'll need extra care."

  The implication was that she might stay awhile. Rick. And Ellen? And a baby? If change was an issue, this was a triple whammy, and that was totally apart from the history Susan had with her mother. Tension? Disapproval? Rejection? Did she want it? Need it?

  "I could fly back and forth," Ellen said, sounding defensive. "I have the money."

  "You hate flying."

  "I can do it."

  "You don't really want to."

  "How do you know?" She softened. "Not that you need me here. You have Rick. You have friends."

  "I need you here," Susan said. It was a knee-jerk reaction--but not. The only way to deal with old baggage was to open it up and sort through. How else to know what to keep and what to toss?

  "There are hard feelings."

  "I always wanted us to be closer."

  "You must hate me for what I did," Ellen insisted, seeming determined to confront the issue.

  "It was a long time ago," Susan said, not wanting the confrontation just then, but her mother wouldn't let it go.

  "You can't have forgotten."

  "Okay. I still try to understand the why of it."

  "Aha. You do have hard feelings."

  Pushed far enough, Susan cried, "How could I not? You threw me away. I was young and scared, and you banished me for something I didn't even know I'd done until it was too late. Do you think I planned to get pregnant? My daughter did plan her pregnancy, and when I found out, I was furious. So I did what you did. I shut her out. If I have hard feelings toward you right now, it's because you set a bad example."

  Ellen seemed taken aback by the outburst.

  Telling herself her mother had asked for it, Susan continued. "So how do you feel about Lily being pregnant?"

  Ellen swallowed. "Not as bad as I'd have felt if your father were still alive." It was quite an admission. Susan was trying to process it, when her mother went on. "I'm sorry she's pregnant. I'm sorry about this scare with the baby. I'm sorry these things happen."

  "But they do. And you need to be okay with it. Because, honestly, Mom, much as I want you to be part of my life, it won't work if you don't accept my daughter. I don't want history repeating itself."

  "It can't. I wasn't a good mother. You are."

  Of all the open sores, this one went deepest. Needing encouragement from the voice that mattered most, Susan asked, "What makes you say that?"

  "I saw you with Lily back home. I see you with her here. There's a connection between you. You like each other."

  "I love her. She's my daughter."

  "It's more. You're friends."

  "I let her get pregnant."

  "Like I let you get pregnant?" Ellen smiled sadly. "I was a bad mother, but not because of that. I didn't stand up for my child. I didn't speak up to your father."

  "That was your relationship with him."

  "It was wrong. He was wrong." Her eyes held Susan's, daring her to disagree.

  Unable to, Susan bent over to tuck in the sheet. "I survived."

  Ellen tucked in her side. "Without my help."

  "I forgive you."

  "Maybe you shouldn't. I don't know my own granddaughter. What kind of person does that make me?"

  "It's circumstances."

  "No. It's choices. I made bad ones." She paused. "Lily seems like a very nice person."

  "She is," Susan said. "So are her friends. If she had to be involved in a pact, I'm glad it's with this group." She drew up the comforter.

  Ellen did the same on her side. "Isn't a pact just a group of people who bow to peer pressure?"

  Remembering the discussion in the car Thursday night, Susan said, "Sometimes."

  "Then my friends and I formed a pact against you."

  Susan straightened. "I'm okay with it, Mom. Really. Let's try and forget all that."

  "Hard to do back home. All the memories." Ellen frowned for a minute. "I met a young woman on the plane. She asked about my knitting, and we got to talking. She said she didn't have the patience to knit. I told her she had it backwards, that knitting gave me patience. She said her grandmother says the same thing, and that maybe she'll feel that way when she gets old."

  "You're not old," Susan said, because fifty-nine wasn't old and Ellen looked good. She was stylish and trim. If there were wrinkles on her face, they were faint.

  "Not in years," she replied. "In mind-set. But I keep hearing that word--old--and not wanting to be. Old is stiff, unable to bend. Funny, I'm okay when I knit. When I make a mistake, I rip back to where I botched it, even if that means ripping out hours of work to get it right. Why can't I do that in life?"

  "It's a luxury we don't often have."

  "I have it now," Ellen said with a direct look. "I want to know Lily. And I want to know her baby."

  Still afraid of being hurt, Susan made light of it. "Oh, a baby is a total blob. You don't want to be changing diapers."

  "There you go again, telling me what I want. Y'know, Susan, you're just like your father. 'I know what you want,' he always said. But he didn't, and it got so I didn't either. We both assumed he knew best. But maybe he didn't. Maybe he needed to ask once in a while. Maybe he needed to listen. But he's not here anymore, so it's too late. And maybe I wouldn't have had the courage to say it to him, anyway. But I'll say it to you. You need to listen."

  Susan had never had an open discussion with Ellen--certainly not about mistakes--but her mother kept talking. "You invited me, so I'm here. I got on that plane. I could do it again. I don't have to be entertained, y'know. But I could help. I could be a good mother."

  Listening, Susan heard her say mother. Not grandmother. Not great-grandmother. Mother. And suddenly the old baggage was wide open, lots of bad stuff, but one big thing she knew she wanted to keep. It brought a lump to her throat, along with the dire need to hug and be hugged.

  But she didn't have a physical relationship with Ellen, never had.

  So she simply nodded, swallowed, and said a soft, "I'd like that."

  The need to hug and be hugged lingered. Back in her own room later that night, Susan thought of calling Rick, but hesitated. Something else came back to her from the discussion in the car Thursday night. Mothering was elemental. It was life's first relationship, the one from which everything else sprang.

  Ellen. Susan. Lily.

  Light-footed on the creaking floorboards, she crossed the hall to her daughter's room. In the faint glow of the butterfly nightlight, Lily was still just a blip under the quilt. Lily and her baby. Not as bizarre a thought as it had once been.

  The girl stirred, but it was a minute before she realized Susan was there. Scooting back, she opened the quilt.

  As soon as Susan was underneath, Lily snuggled against her. She was quiet, breathing evenly. Susan was beginning to think she had fallen back to sleep, when there was a whispered, "Awesome."

  "What?" Susan whispered back.

  "Your mom. She's different from the way she was in December."

  Place played a part, Susan knew. So did time, no funeral now. And mind-set, Ellen's own word. She had chosen to visit.

  "She's evolving," Susan whispered against the top of Lily's head.

  "Awesome."

  "Would you be okay if she stays a little while?"

  "Totally."

  "Rick, too?"

  "Mmm."

  "He asked me to marry him."

  Lily went very still. "Really?"

  "Yes."

  She scrambled up. "Omigod." She threw her arms around Susan's neck. "That is awesome."

  "Y'think?"

  "Don't you?"

  The idea was growing on her. "Actually, yes."

  "Omigod. Wait'll I tell the others. They'll die."
She sat up. "My baby did this. He brought us together. How poetic is that? So. When'll you do it?"

  Susan tucked Lily's hair behind her ears, leaving her thumbs to trace the familiar heart. "I don't know. I haven't accepted yet."

  "Mom. You won't find a better man than him."

  Susan didn't need a man at all. But maybe Lily would. Besides, there was a difference between need and want. Rick's being here had been wonderful during a very hard time. He didn't seem bored hanging around. And when there was a baby for him to play with, how exciting would that be?

  "Life is a work in progress," she finally said. "For me. For your grandmother. She wants to know you and your baby."

  Lily hung her wrists over Susan's shoulder. Their noses were inches apart. "He's going to be okay. I know that, Mom. With so many people pulling for him, how could he not?"

  "People pull for him because they love you. You're a kind person."

  "Because you are. I mean, how lucky am I? So many babies have worse problems."

  Susan nodded. She had to be doing something right if her daughter realized that.

  Lily settled against her again. "Mom?"

  "What, sweetie?"

  "I still can't call her Nana."

  "Give it time."

  "I think it's neat she came because of the baby."

  "She wants to make up for what she missed."

  "Because she messed it up the first time? What if I do? What if I make mistakes, too?"

  You'll rip it and reknit, Susan thought, remembering what her mother had said. "You'll try again."

  "Will you love me anyway?"

  "Always."

  Lily's breathing steadied, warm against her throat. "You're a good mother," she whispered.

  "I try."

  Epilogue

  "What do you think?" Susan asked, standing back for a better view. She was with Kate, Sunny, and Pam in the attic of the old Victorian that was her new home.

  She had married Rick at the end of May, but they didn't find the house until July. Rick wanted a stone front, Susan five bedrooms and a studio, and it went without saying that a lawn with an abundance of grass and trees was a must. This house had barely gone on the market when they grabbed it. Sited on an acre of land, it was closer to the center of town and twice as large as Susan's old one, and though it needed work, Rick was game. Directing the renovations, he kept a crew of locals moving quickly, so that by mid-September, new heating, plumbing, and electrical systems were in place. As soon as the hardwood floors were sanded and sealed, they moved in.