by Lori Wilde
“You’re sure?”
“Are you calling me a liar, Mother?”
Sylvie held up her palms. “No, no. Don’t get testy, I was just telling you what I read.”
“Well, it was a lie.”
“It was in the paper.”
“In the tabloids, salacious gossip rags. There is a difference between them and a real paper. If there’s a UFO on the cover and the headlines are Brad Pitt Is an Alien and I’m Having His Out-of-This-World Love Child, a rational person can sorta figure out it’s not true. Then again, I’m betting no one has ever accused you of being rational.”
Sylvie tucked her lips together as if to keep from saying what she really wanted to say.
Holding back her opinion, was she? How very noble of her.
“You don’t have to be so cruel,” Sylvie whispered.
Oh, so now she was the cruel one? That gave her the courage to blurt the question that had been gnawing at the back of her mind for twenty-four years. “Why did you leave me, Mother?”
Sylvie’s eyes widened and she looked startled. “I…I didn’t leave you. I went to follow my bliss, to become an actress.”
“And you never once considered that in following your bliss”—she spat out the last word—“that you also left me motherless?”
Her mother notched her chin up and slanted a look down her nose. “Everything is not about you.”
Emma barked out a sharp laugh. “So tell me, Mother, where did your bliss take you? Were you ever in a movie? Ever been in a stage play? Did you get commercial gigs? Voice any audio books?”
“It’s a very difficult business.”
“I’m guessing that means the answer to my questions is no.”
“I want to talk about something more pleasant.”
Anger flared through Emma. Her mother had heard about her through the tabloids. Had known she was in New York after the Scott Miller incident, but her mother hadn’t shown up then. When Emma was in trouble and could have used a shoulder to cry on, no Sylvie, but now that Emma had made a success of herself, poof, here was dear old Mom. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Let’s talk about your movie.”
“Well, I did it. It took me a long time, but here I am.” Emma spread her hands to include the dressing room. “I did what you told me to do. I became a star.”
Sylvie looked startled. “I never told you to become a star.”
Emma drew back. “Of course you did. That’s my primary memory of you. You’d chanted over and over again, saying it like a lullaby. Then you gave me this.” Emma pulled the star brooch from her purse.
Sylvie made a noise, half grunt, half laugh. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“What?” Emma frowned. Had she imagined it? Was it all something she’d concocted in her head because she’d wanted so badly to believe that her mother wanted the best for her?
Sylvie placed her cupped hand against the hollow of her throat. “You thought I was talking to you?”
“Who else would you have been talking to? You used to rock me in your arms and whisper, ‘You’re gonna be a star, you’re gonna be a star, you’re gonna be a star.’”
“That was an affirmation.”
“And it worked. Whenever I felt down and kicked around by life, I’d just tell myself what you told me all those years ago. ‘You’re gonna be a star.’ It would renew my commitment. The fact that you believed I was capable of being a star kept me going.”
“It wasn’t an affirmation for you.” Sylvie laughed, dry and mirthless. “I was repeating it to myself.”
Before Emma could answer, before she could formulate any kind of a response, a knock sounded on her trailer and an assistant wearing a headset opened the door. “We’re ready for you on set, Miss Parks.”
“I’ve got to go,” she told Sylvie.
“Um…maybe we could have dinner later. There was something I needed to ask you.”
“I’m working all day. No time.”
“I suppose I deserve the brush-off,” Sylvie said. “Leaving you the way I did.”
So now she was having a twinge of conscience. Emma snorted. “Have you ever once thought about me in twenty-four years?”
“Sure I did.”
“When? When you heard about me on Entertainment Tonight?”
Sylvie looked so guilty that Emma knew it was pretty damn close to the truth.
“Let me guess, this thing you needed to ask me. Does it have anything to do with money?”
Sylvie hung her head.
Emma snorted, still holding back the pain thrashing around inside her. She couldn’t deal with it now. She had no time to process it. “How much do you need?”
“Ten grand would help a lot.”
Ten thousand dollars. The same amount Nina had paid her. Hauling in a steadying breath, she went to the bedroom and retrieved her checkbook. With a shaky hand she wrote her mother a check for ten thousand dollars, tore it out and thrust it at her. “Here,” she said. “Take what you really came for.”
Her mother stuffed the check in her pocket and mumbled, “Thank you.”
“No,” Emma said. “Thank you for teaching me a very important lesson.”
Somehow Emma managed to get through her fourteen-hour day. She played her part and the scenes came out well. She managed to unhitch her mind, at least for the time while she was working, from what her mother had said to her in the trailer that morning. She was professional and proficient. She was, after all, a star, even if she had come to it by repeating affirmations that had never been meant for her.
But once filming wrapped for the day, once she was back in her trailer all alone, lying underneath the quilt that the wonderful, wise women of Twilight had quilted for her and presented to her before she left, all the emotions she’d denied and channeled into her acting came rising up with a vengeance.
All these years, she’d been struggling to live up to her mother’s prophecy for her. All she’d ever wanted was to be a star in order to impress her mother and win back her love. All this time she’d thought that her mother had believed in her. Everything she’d ever done had been with this goal in mind. To become a star.
But now she understood how she’d twisted things around in her childish head. How she’d allowed her misguided beliefs to dominate her thinking. Her whole life was built on a bed of lies. Who was she if she wasn’t Trixie Lynn Parks turned Emma Parks vying for stardom? What was she if she wasn’t striving to be an actress in order to regain her mother’s love?
Her impulse was to pick up the phone and call Sam, but it was two in the morning Texas time. Besides, what could he do? Yes, she considered him her best friend in the world, but how could he begin to understand the loneliness, isolation, and betrayal she felt? He had a big, happy, close-knit family. He had his own life to live and he’d made it clear enough that she couldn’t give him what he needed.
It was okay. She could get through this. She’d gotten through much worse. In all honesty, she’d lost her mother twenty-four years ago. But today, she’d lost her sense of self.
She tossed and turned. He’d told her she could call him anytime. But did he really mean it?
Emma got up, went to her purse, dug out her cell phone. Then put it back. It was selfish of her to expect him to assuage her fears and worries when she was the one who’d left him. She’d turned her back on Twilight for the glamour of Hollywood.
But she couldn’t stem the longing and sadness. She reached for the phone again, flipped it open. She switched it on. Switched it off. Switched it back on again, and then plunked down on the edge of the bed.
Her thumb accidentally brushed against the video feature on camera mode, and it started playing the segment that she’d recorded of Charlie when he and Sam had come to see her off at the airport.
The minute she saw his sweet little face, her heart cracked.
He was smiling at her, big and wide, revealing the priceless gap-toothed grin of a six-year-old. Charlie, the child who’d lost
so much, was smiling at her like she was someone special. At the time, she hadn’t fully appreciated the significance of his smile.
She felt the sting of tears burn the backs of her eyes. She’d been his age when Sylvie had left her. The weight of it still haunted her. Empathy ripped through her, immediately replaced by deep guilt. She’d left him too; no wonder Sam hadn’t wanted her to get close to the boy. She wasn’t much better than Sylvie. Leaving a boy and his father, who’d come to care about her, in order to chase a career.
She’d asked Sylvie how she could just walk away from her, and yet Emma had done the exact same thing. She turned off the phone, stuffed it in her purse, collapsed back on the bed, self-loathing eating a hole through her.
You deserve to be alone. You don’t deserve to have a child like Charlie in your life, a man like Sam in your heart. In that moment, for the first time, Emma completely understood her mother and how she’d justified her choices, because the thought was in her own mind. If you can’t give them what they need from you, then you better stay far away from them.
Sylvie wasn’t evil. She was just emotionally damaged. Unable to love others the way she loved herself. It was a genetic defect that apparently Emma had inherited.
Grief-stricken, Emma rolled up tight in the special quilt the True Love Quilting Club had made for her and softly cried herself to sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The pattern of a quilt will always lead you back home.
—Quote carved into the Sweetheart Tree, Twilight, Texas
She finished filming her role in Malcolm’s film three days before Christmas and caught the first flight back to Texas.
Anxiety had dogged her the whole way home but the closer she got, the more nervous she grew. Heart in her throat, Emma approached the Twilight Playhouse. She was ready to throw herself on the quilting club’s mercy and beg them to help her win back Sam. She’d pinned the star brooch to the lapel of her jacket, and she reached up to stroke her fingers over the jewel to bolster her courage.
She paced the sidewalk in front of the playhouse, working up the courage to go inside. The lights flickered on, glowing ghostly in the December fog rolling in off the lake. The square was adorned with twinkling blue and white Christmas lights. A lavishly decorated, twenty-foot-tall tree stood on the courthouse lawn. Mistletoe and holly were strung from the Dickensesque streetlamps. Storefronts displayed nativity scenes and Santa with his reindeers. The smell of turkey and cornbread stuffing wafted over from the Funny Farm on the opposite corner. The town in It’s a Wonderful Life had nothing on Twilight.
Emma wanted to spend the rest of her life here. With friends and neighbors who cared about you, looked in on you. She wanted so badly to belong. Had she waited too late? Had it taken her too long to realize this was where she was meant to be? Would Sam still have her? Could she convince him that she truly no longer wanted fame and fortune? That the dream she’d been dreaming all these years had belonged to her mother, not Emma? That for her, Twilight was the real treasure. That yes, while she loved acting, it was the craft itself she loved, and she didn’t have to be in Hollywood or New York to practice it.
Too nervous to prance right in through the front door, she walked around the playhouse to the side entrance, the same entrance where once upon a time she and Sam had sneaked in and found a place to kiss in the loft. Remembering, she ran her fingertips over her lips.
She tried the handle. It wasn’t locked. She eased it open slowly and stepped into the short hallway that led into the theater. The sound of voices kept her rooted to the spot as the door whispered closed behind her.
“Thank you so much for helping us set up the nativity scene.” She recognized Nina’s smooth, cultured voice.
“No problem.”
She recognized that voice too. It was Sam. Her heart thumped restlessly, and she almost turned and ran, but then she heard someone else say, “How are you doing, Sam?” in a way that suggested he hadn’t been doing well at all.
“I’m fine.” He grunted. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Emma dared to shift her position, trying to peek into the theater from this vantage point. All she could see was the backs of two women’s heads. One was Patsy. The other was Terri Longoria.
“It’s okay to admit you’re hurting.” That sounded like Marva.
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” Patsy asked.
“Sure, I’m sure.”
“There’s no reason to hold it in.”
“I’m not holding it in,” Sam growled. “Just because you ladies all buy into the sweetheart myth this town perpetuates doesn’t mean I do.”
“You’re saying you don’t believe in the power of that first love?”
“I’m saying it’s all in your heads. If you believe it, then it’s true for you. If you don’t, well…”
Emma could almost see his dismissive shrug. Sam was fine. He didn’t miss her at all. Hurt rushed over her, immediately pursued by denial. Maybe he was just putting up a brave front. She’d discovered Sam was adept at tamping down his feelings. Or maybe she was just kidding herself that she’d meant more to him than a good time. She turned to leave, grateful she’d overheard the conversation before she made a fool of herself and confessed her undying love for him.
“Frankly,” Sam continued, “I think you obsess about this true love stuff. Plus, you feed into each other. I mean, come on, Patsy, everyone knows you’re still mooning over Hondo after forty years. Give it up and release yourself from the torture.”
Several of the women let out a collective gasp at his audacity in bringing up Patsy’s failed romance with the only man she’d ever loved. Emma was amazed by his soliloquy. She’d never heard him string so many words together at once, or be so forthcoming with his opinions.
“But maybe I’m just kidding myself because the alternative is too painful,” he said.
The women murmured in agreement.
“I’ve already lost my one chance at lasting happiness because the woman I’ve loved since I was fourteen years old can’t love me back the way I need for her to love me. So I’m doing my damnedest to forget her, and I’d appreciate it if you’d let me stay surly and bitter for a while.”
The murmurs of agreement turned to noises of sympathy.
Emma splayed her palm to her mouth. A chill chased down her spine. Inside that room was a world she so desperately wanted to be a part of. Did she stand a chance?
Spurred by a need to fix everything she’d screwed up, Emma stepped from the darkened hall and into the lighted theater. Sam’s back was to her as he set up the manger. He was kneeling on the stage, the members of the quilting club surrounding him as they set out Wise Men, Mary and Joseph, and baby Jesus. No one had yet seen her.
“You guys need any help?” Emma forced the words from her throat.
Slowly, Sam turned his head. He looked at her, but he didn’t move, his hands frozen around the wooden leg.
“Yep,” she said. “It’s me. The bad penny returns.”
The True Love Quilting Club stared at her, looked concerned.
Sam said nothing. His face reflected no emotion at all.
Emma’s heart took the roller coaster ride to her feet. Fear pleaded with her to run, but she pushed herself forward, moving down the aisle toward the stage. “I’m back for keeps. What do you think about that?”
She raised her chin, looked at the women who’d befriended her—Nina, Patsy, Marva, Terri, Dotty Mae, Raylene, Jenny.
Still, Sam said nothing. Neither did the women.
She’d just put her ass on the line. Committing to a future in Twilight, and no one said a word of welcome. Had she been wrong about them after all? Had she been kidding herself about these women, this community, this man?
Emma tried to think of the appropriate character or actress to channel for this situation, a line from a movie that would break the tension, make it all okay, but her mind went blank. She was on her own.
Gulping, she soldiered on.
She’d come this far. She wasn’t turning back. If Sam didn’t want her, he was going to have to reject her.
“Once upon a time,” she said. “I had no doubts. More than anything in the world, I wanted to be a star. I ate and slept and breathed acting. I avoided getting close to people because I didn’t want anything to stand in my way of stardom. I was going to do this thing or die trying. I worked and I hoped and I prayed for my dream to come true. Every night before I went to bed I chanted, ‘I’m a star, I’m a star, I’m a star.’”
She paused. Sam’s face remained unreadable. No one said a word. The silence deafened. If she was making a fool of herself, she wasn’t doing it halfway. It was all or nothing.
“But now…now I just…I’m not sure of anything anymore. Then I got a part in a major motion picture. It was supposed to be fulfilling. I was supposed to be fulfilled. It was supposed to make up for all the love I never had as a kid. But I didn’t feel in any way fulfilled or loved. Instead, I felt…empty.” She moistened her lips, blinked back against the tears threatening to trickle down her cheeks. “And it was because you weren’t there. I couldn’t touch you. I couldn’t bury my nose against your shirt and smell your puppy dog and spray starch scent. I couldn’t hear your voice or see your smile. I missed you so damn much, Sam.”
Sam straightened. His face gave away nothing. She had no idea what he was thinking. Whether he’d come down off that stage and gather her to his chest or tell her to leave.
Every muscle in Emma’s body tensed. She clenched her jaw, clenched her fists. “I’ve been so stupid and narrowly focused. So blind to what was right in front of me. I thought being a successful actress would make me feel like a star. It didn’t. I thought it would make me feel special. It didn’t do that either. The only place I’ve ever felt special was right here in Twilight with you.”
She couldn’t stop the tears now. They were streaming down her face. “It might be too little, too late, but I love you, Sam. You’ve made me whole.”
Sam shook his head.
Dear God, he didn’t want her anymore. Her heart quivered.
