Seeing Catherine’s puzzled look, Jamie knowledgably informed her, "She throws in an Irish expression every once in a while just to keep you on your toes. I think that one means we’ve got food and drink."
"Mighty!" Ryan agreed enthusiastically.
"It’s hard enough to keep up with her when she’s speaking English!" Catherine moaned.
PART THREE
They decided to go to the PCH Grill for lunch, and Ryan brought all of the brochures and documents that Catherine had been given at check-in. She pored over the material as though she was drawing up plans to invade a foreign country, finally coming up with a master plan that she was happy with.
Ryan folded her hands on the table, looking at each of her adult companions with an expectant look on her handsome face. "Well?" Jamie asked, knowing that her partner wanted to share, but that she liked to be cajoled a bit.
"Well, what?" The dark head cocked slightly, bright blue eyes shimmering with impish pleasure.
"Spill it, General Schwartzkopf! I know you have every minute planned."
"Not every minute," Ryan huffed. "I’ve allowed for one hour a day for personal time. You may spend that as you wish."
"Buffy…" Jamie threatened, narrowing her gaze.
"Okay," Ryan said excitedly. "Here’s the plan. We wait until Bitsy is ready for her nap. Then we go on the ‘Welcome to Disneyland Tour’ that’s part of the package. I don’t think the baby would like it, and it’s only an hour and a half, so we could go and be back while she sleeps. This presupposes that you don’t mind watching her," Ryan said, addressing Catherine.
"Of course not," Catherine agreed. "I could use a nap as well."
"Okay, we’re set," Ryan declared, smiling at the server as lunch was delivered.
"That’s it?" Jamie asked. "That’s all you’ve planned?"
"Nope. The rest is on a need-to-know basis," she decreed, giving her partner a fiendish grin.
Caitlin was pretty riled up after lunch, and Ryan decided that she needed some cuddling and calming to get ready to nap. So she took the baby into their room and sat on a comfortable chair to read to her from one of her storybooks.
The Evans women sat in the living room and chatted while Ryan performed her "sand man" act.
They had been chatting for just a few minutes when Catherine’s cell phone rang. Finding the little device, she hit the button and said, "Hello."
Jamie’s brow furrowed when her mother’s face fell, a pained look crossing her features for just a moment before a familiar mask of studied indifference settled there. "I didn’t have plans to do this before, Jim," she said as she got up to go to her room. "You don’t need to speak to me in that tone," she snapped as the door closed, preventing Jamie from hearing the rest.
She was gone only a few minutes, her composure back in place when she re-entered the living room. "I’m sorry about that, Honey. I don’t like for you to hear that type of bickering."
Jamie looked up, focusing her eyes on her mother’s face as the older woman sat back down. "Mom, will you level with me?" she asked softly.
Catherine blinked a few times, finally nodding her head slowly. "Of course, Dear. What do you want to know?"
"Is my relationship putting stress on your marriage? I…I couldn’t stand it if I thought you were having trouble because of me."
"Come here, Jamie," Catherine said softly, patting the cushion next to her. The younger woman crossed the room and sat next to her mother, automatically leaning her head on her shoulder. "Yes, your father and I are having problems. No, it’s not because of you."
"But it certainly seems more than coincidental, Mom," Jamie insisted. "I mean, I’ve never heard you argue about things…"
"Jamie, just because we didn’t argue doesn’t mean that everything was all right. A little arguing is a good sign, Honey. It shows that you care enough to feel hurt."
"Are you hurt, Mom?" she asked with concern, reaching over to grasp her mother’s hand.
"Yes, Dear, I’m hurt, and I’m sure that your father is, too. He wouldn’t behave as he has been if he wasn’t acting out of fear and pain."
Jamie’s brow furrowed as she thought that her father had no reason to feel anything other than shame for the way he treated Ryan. "Why is he hurt?"
"I doubt that you look at it this way, Dear, but he’s had to deal with some very big changes in the last six months, and he hasn’t handled them well. I think it really shook him when you broke up with Jack, even though I doubt that he ever told you that."
"No, no he didn’t," she said, shaking her head a little. "But why…?"
"I think he liked the path you were on, Jamie. It mirrored the choices he would have made for you. I think he felt that he’d done his job as a parent, and now you would go on your way and give credence to his choices by making the same ones for yourself."
The younger woman nodded, realizing for the first time that her breaking up with Jack might have seemed like a slap in the face to her father.
"Your falling in love with Ryan put a fine point on your decision to follow your own path, Jamie. This isn’t what he wants for you, and it isn’t who he thinks that you are. It’s made him question your entire relationship, Honey. As angry as I’ve been with him, I still have some empathy for how this has hurt him, and I hope that you can find some of that in your heart, too, Jamie."
"It will take a while, Mom," she said, feeling the need to be totally honest. "He’s going to have to back off from harassing Ryan, or I’ll never forgive him."
Catherine nodded slowly, knowing that Jamie had just as hard a time forgiving people as her father did.
"So why is he angry with you, Mom? You didn’t encourage my choices."
"Of course I did, Honey," Catherine corrected. "Not at first, of course, but as time goes on, and I’ve realized how right this is for you, I’m very supportive. I would honestly say that this is the first time in our relationship that I have openly defied him. It’s not easy for him to take, Jamie, and he’s lashing out."
"So it is my fault," the younger woman moaned. "I knew that he was angry with me and taking it out on you."
"Not true, Dear," Catherine assured her. "It’s about time we had a disagreement. We’ve been like business partners for years now, but I was the silent partner, letting him make all of the decisions. I think this will either make us examine our marriage and try to fix it or…" she trailed off, not wanting to say the words, but knowing that Jamie understood her message.
Jamie released her hold and slumped back onto the sofa. "I just didn’t have any idea…" she said slowly. "I thought you were happy."
"We weren’t unhappy, Dear," she assured her. "We’ve each played our part, and kept up the façade, but we haven’t had any emotional spark in a long, long while."
"How long?" she asked tentatively, not having any idea when things had changed for her parents..
Catherine looked like she was not going to answer but she finally said, "I’d say at least 15 years."
"15 years!" Jamie cried. "You’ve only been married 22 years! What happened? How does the emotion just leave a marriage?"
Catherine patted her thigh in a comforting manner as she said, "Maybe some day we can talk about this. But I don’t think this is the time."
Jamie looked over at her with her face full of unanswered questions. "But hearing this makes me worry, Mom. Now I feel that I need to be the peacemaker so that you and Daddy don’t divorce." Her stomach was pulsing in a knot of tension, and she knew that she was moments from being sick.
Catherine saw the warning signs on her daughter’s pale face with the slightly green cast beneath her pallor. She knew that she needed to reassure her, but she didn’t want to lie to her, so she was torn about what to say.
Not getting her answers fast enough, Jamie tried again. "You say that you’ve had trouble for over 15 years, Mom. Do you think you got married too young? Is that part of the problem?"
"I’m certain of it, Dear," Catherine said in an ungu
arded moment, the truth of the question hitting her hard. "It was too soon, and too rapid, especially for your father."
"Then why did you do it so soon? It’s not like you had to…"
Catherine didn’t respond directly. She just gazed at her daughter's pain-filled features and felt like her heart would break at the anguish she saw reflected in the watery green eyes. Jamie held her gaze until the answer became obvious to her. "You…had to."
An almost imperceptible nod was her answer. Catherine looked down at the floor with a look of shame as she admitted, "I think he’s always blamed me for that."
Jamie was too stunned to move at this point. She heard Ryan open the door from their room, but it closed again just a few seconds later. Catherine scooted closer and slid her arms around her daughter as she whispered, "You were the best mistake I’ve ever made, Honey. Both of us were overjoyed to have you. It was just a little earlier than we had planned."
Jamie took a deep breath and asked the question that was burning in her mind. "Did you ever consider…aborting me?"
Catherine sat up in alarm as she cried, "NO! Not for a second! We never even discussed that with each other, Jamie!"
There was something in her mother’s statement that niggled in the back of her mind, and Jamie finally asked, "Who did discuss it? Did someone try to talk you into having an abortion?"
Catherine mentally cursed her daughter’s perceptiveness, wishing that she could lie and answer in the negative. But she knew that her face would betray her lie, and she didn’t want to perpetuate any more lies or half-truths with her daughter. She nodded slowly, her head moving almost imperceptibly.
"Who?" Jamie asked, her voice quiet, yet determined.
"My mother," Catherine finally whispered. "She felt that I was ruining my life to get married so young. She…she didn’t think of you as a person, Jamie, please believe that."
The younger woman nodded, understanding that an unplanned pregnancy could seem like nothing more than an inconvenience. "You thought of me as a person, didn’t you, Mom?’ she asked softly, somehow knowing the answer.
"From the first day," Catherine whispered, wrapping her in a bruising embrace. "As much tumult as it caused, I knew from the first day that you were going to be a gift to us, Jamie. I’ve never—not for one minute—regretted my decision to give birth to you." She sniffed a few times, her composure shot, as she added, "Neither has your father, Honey. He wasn’t really ready to get married, but he was never unhappy about you. It was just the timing that was hard for him."
She closed her eyes and nodded as she took in a deep breath. "I believe you, Mom. It’s just a shock for me. One of the things I always believed was that you were both very much in love, and that your decision to have me was just that…a decision. It’s hard to hear that my arrival caused you to decide to marry."
"You caused us to decide to marry sooner than we might have," Catherine corrected, "but I believe we would have done so anyway, Jamie, I really do. I loved your father and I really wanted to build a life with him. I can’t speak for him, but I believe he loved me too."
"Do you still love him?" she finally asked.
"Yes, I do," she replied without hesitation. "But I don’t like him much at the moment."
"I don’t like him much either," Jamie agreed, "but I don’t think I could ever stop loving him."
"He doesn’t make it easy sometimes, Jamie. He can be a difficult man to love."
They were quiet for a few moments, their arms still wrapped around each other, when Ryan’s dark head poked through the door again.
"Come on in, Honey," Jamie said, sitting up and extending a hand in Ryan’s direction. When the tall woman settled her frame onto the couch, Jamie leaned into her, placing her head on Ryan’s chest to allow for a much needed hug. The silence was uncomfortable, but Ryan wasn’t about to ask why both women had been crying. She just offered as much comfort as her body could convey, knowing that Jamie would tell her what was wrong when they were alone. "We’d better get going if we’re going to make it back before Caitlin wakes," Jamie reminded her partner as she regretfully pulled out of her grasp.
"I’m ready," Ryan said. "Are you sure you don’t mind this, Catherine?"
"I not only don’t mind, it’s what I choose," she assured her.
As they headed for the door Jamie reminded her, "I’ve got my phone on and I left the number right on the table. Call us if you need anything. Promise?"
"I promise," she said, sparing a fond smile for her daughter. "Now, go have fun!"
As they hopped onto the monorail for the short ride to the park, Ryan tried to contain her enthusiasm over the transportation in order to gently ask, "Wanna talk about it?"
A small nod preceded her answer. "My parents had to get married, and now they might get divorced," she said flatly.
"What!?! Did she say that in so many words?"
"Which part?" Jamie inquired.
"About getting divorced!" Ryan replied with alarm.
"Yes, basically she said that in so many words." After a beat she asked, "You’re not surprised that she was pregnant?"
Ryan blushed a little as she conceded, "Not really. I thought as much when you told me how young she was when they got married. I also saw those pictures of their wedding, and it looked like it was the middle of the summer. That didn’t add up to having you in February."
Jamie slapped herself in the forehead, muttering, "I’ve never known them to celebrate their anniversary. I have no idea when they got married."
"No big deal, Love. I also didn’t think it was that common for wealthy young women to get married when they’re 19 without some mitigating circumstance. But I’m shocked that they might get divorced! She just seemed so accepting of your dad’s behavior—like she was used to it."
"I think she is used to it, Ryan, but I also think she’s had enough. I think she’s finally trying to be an equal partner, and he doesn’t like it."
Ryan looked at her as she bit her lip anxiously. "Jamie, I care very much about how all of this affects you, but there’s a great big flower bed in the shape of Mickey’s head, and I can see Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, and it’s getting to be too much for me to stay focused." The look on her face was nearly pleading, asking for permission to lose herself in the fantasy, and Jamie happily acceded to her wish. She decided that a couple of hours of fantasy was what they both needed, and she resolved not to think about the whole mess until they returned to the hotel.
Against all odds, the pair spent a totally enjoyable hour and a half on their tour. Summoning powers of denial that she didn’t know she had, Jamie was able to lose herself in the moment, likely aided by Ryan’s boundless enthusiasm for the entire experience. The larger woman hopped around on the tram like a three-year-old, bubbling with excitement as they were shown nearly every part of the park along with a good bit of the behind the scenes workings of the enterprise.
As soon as the tour was finished they rushed back to the room, the monorail expediting their journey. Ryan regaled Catherine with minute details of nearly everything they had seen, while Jamie went in to check on the baby. When she emerged from the bedroom 15 minutes later, she carried a gurgling infant with her. The baby wore a fresh diaper and nothing else as she held out her little arms to her cousin. Ryan gladly accepted the bundle and spent a few minutes talking softly to her, filling her in on the tour and their plans for the evening.
Jamie brought Catherine up to date simultaneously. "We thought we could go over to the park and have dinner and just walk around. They have a big parade at six that I think Caitlin would enjoy, so we’d like to do that. Then we thought we’d bring her back here and put her to bed. If we did that, would you be averse to watching her while we went back to go on some rides?"
"Not at all," Catherine said agreeably. "There are a couple of movies on pay-per-view that I’d like to see, and I’m in the middle of a fantastic book. I can easily entertain myself."
"Great. Let’s go over around five so we
can be sure to find a space to see the parade. You don’t mind just grabbing a hot dog for dinner, do you?"
Catherine gave her daughter a fond smile as she teased, "You know how I love hot dogs, Honey." At Jamie’s droll grin, Catherine suggested, "Let me take care of dinner. I have an alternative to hot dogs that I think you’ll be happy with."
"Um...okay," Jamie agreed as she joined her companions on the floor. Ryan was lying flat on her back and Caitlin was climbing all over her like she was a living jungle gym. Both the gymnast and the human apparatus were giggling as they played their little game. Before long Jamie had joined the game as an auxiliary gym, lying shoulder to shoulder with her partner as Caitlin expanded her territory. She poked and prodded and teased her big babysitters as she explored their faces with a thoroughness that amazed Catherine when she came back into the room to watch. Whatever part Caitlin grabbed, they would identify it for her verbally and then touch her corresponding part in a more gentle fashion. Her concentration and enthusiasm seemed endless as they continued for nearly an hour, accompanied by Caitlin’s frenzied laugh.
As they rode back to the park on the monorail, Catherine could not help but ask, "How did you learn how to treat Caitlin with so much patience, Ryan? Is that how you were raised?"
"I think so," she agreed reflectively. "I think my Aunt Maeve was the truly gifted one. She taught my parents a lot about raising children, according to my father."
"She’s your father’s sister?"
"No, she’s my mother’s older sister. According to my father, Maeve spent a terrific amount of time sharing her gifts when they had my brother Brendan. Her youngest was three or four when Brendan was born, so she had the opportunity to help out a lot."
"How did she learn?" Catherine asked.
"My father says it surely was not from my grandmother, and I’m inclined to agree," she said with a laugh. "I’ve spent a lot of time with my grandmother, and I must admit that her childrearing techniques are mostly along the lines of ‘children should be seen and not heard’."
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