Her Very Own Family (11 page)

Considering how she’d hoped the evening would go, Audrey had a better time than she expected. She and Nelson found lots to talk about, but as the conversation wound down she noticed him looking at her with sympathy in his eyes.

“Wow, I think my day is catching up with me,” she said as she pushed herself to her feet. “If you don’t mind, I’ll send the dessert home with you.” She hurried off to the kitchen before Nelson could say anything. Once a wall stood between her and Nelson, she let her fake smile drop away and gave herself a mental pep talk.

You barely know Brady. So you had sex one time. What is that? Not exactly a promise of lifelong commitment. You knew the risk when you took it.

She’d hold her emotions together until Nelson left. Then she’d have a good, long cry before pulling herself up by the proverbial bootstraps and getting on with her life—a new life that despite heartbreak held a lot of exciting possibilities.

With the lemon pie in her hands, she returned to the main room. “Maybe you two can dig in to this after Brady gets back.”

“Audrey—”

She held up a hand. “There’s no need to explain or apologize. I’m a big girl. Plus, we’re the lucky ones. We got to enjoy our dinner instead of working all night, right?”

Nelson stepped forward and gave her a hug. “Thank you for dinner. Based on what my taste buds are saying, this place is going to be a huge success.”

“Thanks.” She planted a kiss on his cheek and kept the smile on her face until he drove away.

For the next few minutes, she cleared the table, washed the dishes, basically anything that could delay going upstairs. Being alone up there was worse than being alone down here. Soon she’d have customers filling this lower level, but when she went up to bed at night she would still be alone.

After finishing in the kitchen, she walked through the dining area, running her fingers over the carved flowers on the tables. She’d have to cover them with circular pieces of glass before opening, but for now she wanted to feel the evidence of Brady’s thoughtfulness.

He wasn’t a bad person, and part of her didn’t blame him if he was having second thoughts about getting more involved with someone who came with so much baggage. Still, it hurt. It surprised her how much his actions caused her heart to ache, how quickly he’d come to mean a great deal to her.

When she couldn’t put it off any longer, she climbed the stairs. The loft, however, felt cavernous and lonely. She sank into the chair and let her thoughts wander. As the minutes ticked away, she came to the conclusion that
in order to go forward, whatever her future might hold, she had to make peace with the past. And that meant going to visit her mother.

She wouldn’t sleep a wink tonight anyway, so she went to her closet, pulled out her suitcase and started packing. That completed, she called the airline.

“Yes, I need to book a flight for tomorrow morning, the earliest one you have from Nashville to Denver.”

If she couldn’t sleep tonight, she might as well spend the next several hours driving halfway across the state to catch a direct flight. Hours when she could think, hours to plan, hours to prepare herself for what awaited her in Denver—and when she returned to Willow Glen.

B
RADY’S EYES BURNED
as he stared at the blueprints spread out in front of him. The sound of the door opening startled him.

“What are you doing here?” Craig asked as he stepped inside. “Aren’t you supposed to be having dinner with Audrey?”

“Change of plans.” Brady returned his attention to the blueprints and realized he’d been staring at them for who knew how many minutes without even seeing them.

Craig stalked across the room until he was standing in front of Brady. “You’re the biggest damn idiot I’ve ever met. You let seeing Ginny screw with your head, didn’t you?”

“I just have work to do.”

Craig cursed. “You have got to let your…baggage, or whatever the heck shrinks call it, go. So Ginny did a
number on you. It’s over. Move the hell on. Audrey isn’t like Ginny.”

Brady’s fists clenched. “How do you know?”

“Because she doesn’t have dollar signs flashing in her eyes. Come on, man, what are the odds you’d hook up with two money-hungry women in one lifetime? Besides, it’s not like you’re freaking Bill Gates or something. You ain’t
that
rich.”

The words sank in, past all the stupid doubts. His father and sister had said similar things to him over and over, but it took his best friend confronting him about his warped view on things to make it click.

“Besides,” Craig said as he flopped in a cushy chair in the corner, “if you don’t hurry up and get with this woman, I’m going to sweep her off her feet.”

Brady narrowed his eyes at Craig before surging to his feet and toward the door. As he drove back to Willow Glen, he felt like he’d been up for three straight days. He hated that he’d talked himself into missing dinner with Audrey, but he hoped she’d forgive him and maybe invite him in for some leftovers.

And then, maybe, they could spend the rest of the night together. Just talking if that was what she needed. He rubbed his hand over his face, not quite able to believe how often he thought about her, how much he wanted to be near her when he wasn’t.

The clock in his truck read 10:46 p.m. when he turned onto the lane leading to the mill. He probably should have waited until morning. Audrey might even be asleep. But the need to see her and apologize in
person wouldn’t loosen its grip on him. He didn’t want her going to sleep tonight thinking the worst, that he was no better than all the other people who’d abandoned her.

He second-guessed himself, however, when he pulled into the clearing and saw that the mill sat dark. Damn. She’d been working so hard and now was facing a really difficult situation with her mother, so she needed as much rest as she could grab. Coming here so late had been selfish.

Hoping he hadn’t ruined her sleep, he turned off his headlights as he circled around to leave. That’s when he realized her Jetta wasn’t there. He flicked the headlights back on. Where could she be? To be sure she really wasn’t home, he slipped out of the truck and went to knock on the door. Nothing moved, and he heard no sounds other than the truck engine running. Audrey wasn’t here.

She might be at his dad’s house. He hurried back to his truck. His excitement died, however, when he pulled into his dad’s driveway and saw no Jetta. Maybe his dad knew where she’d gone.

He found his dad in his recliner watching the eleven-o’clock news. Nelson looked up when Brady walked in the door then returned his attention to the TV as if he was disappointed in him.

“There’s a lemon pie in the fridge if you want a slice.”

“Lemon pie?”

“Yes, your favorite, remember?” Nelson’s sarcasm cloaked each word. “Audrey made it for you.”

She’d made his favorite dessert. How had she…She
must have asked his dad. His guilt for skipping dinner, for allowing doubt to stick its claws into him again, grew.

“Do you know where she is?”

“She called, said she had to go out of town for a few days. I assume it has something to do with her mother.”

Brady walked to the center of the room. “She told you about her mom?”

“She didn’t have to,” Nelson said in a tone that told Brady he didn’t give his dad enough credit. “I read the paper. I put two and two together.”

“So you know?”

“That her mother is Thomasina York? Yes.”

“And it doesn’t bother you?”

Nelson clicked off the TV and met his son’s gaze. “Why would it? Audrey isn’t the one who stole the money.”

“I know that.” Brady sank onto the arm of a chair. “Her mom’s sick. She’s got cancer.”

“Is that why that guy was there the other day?”

Brady’s fists clenched. “No, he was a reporter looking for a story. But he’s how she found out about her mom’s illness.”

“Damn.” Nelson shook his head. “That poor girl.”

And Brady had made everything even worse.

The need to hear Audrey’s voice, to make sure she was okay, swamped Brady. He grabbed the cell phone from his belt and headed out the door. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

He dialed her cell and paced the front walkway until she answered.

“Audrey, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, sounding confused.

He relaxed some, glad to know that she was at least safe. “Where are you? I came by, but you weren’t home.”

“You did?” Surprise weaved itself around her simple question.

Guilt gnawed at him. Craig was right. He’d been an idiot.

“Yeah. I wanted to see you, to apologize for missing dinner.”

He thought he heard a sniffle. “Audrey?”

“I’m fine, on my way to Nashville. I’m flying to Denver in the morning.”

“To visit your mom?”

“Yeah.”

He hesitated for a moment, unsure of the right thing to say. “Do you want me to come with you?”

Silence greeted him on the other end of the line, and he gritted his teeth. He had said the wrong thing. Damn, he’d done nothing but make bad decisions all day.

“That’s sweet of you to offer, but I…I think this is something I need to face on my own.”

Disappointment that he couldn’t help her tugged at him. “Will you call if you need me, even if you just want to talk?”

“You surprise me, Brady Witt.” He welcomed how her voice lightened.

“How?”

“I never pegged you for the type to give phone therapy sessions.”

“Hey, even a guy like me can listen,” he said, lightening his own tone to match hers. He leaned against the
bumper of his truck and wondered if maybe she needed a little humor to get her through. “You know, there are other things we could talk about on the phone.”

“Really? Do tell.”

He lowered his voice. “So, what are you wearing?”

Her laughter lifted his mood. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Brady couldn’t help smiling then teasing her some more. In fact, he stood out beneath the stars and talked to her for more than an hour, until his cell-phone battery started to beep at him.

“Is that your girlfriend beeping in on the other line?” she asked.

“Nah, just another client calling in for a late-night session.”

“Brady!”

He laughed and felt great that he’d helped improve her mood, that in some small way he’d begun to make up for his absence earlier. “Really, it’s my dying cell battery. Call me when you get to Denver?”

“Sure.”

“Good night, gorgeous.”

“Good night, handsome.”

Brady clicked the phone shut but stood outside a few minutes longer, until his stomach growled loud enough for the neighbors to hear and swear Bigfoot had taken up residence nearby. Time to raid the fridge.

His dad had already hit the hay by the time Brady stepped inside, so he tried not to make too much noise. He should really eat a sandwich or something substan
tial. But one look at the lemon pie with perfect meringue sitting on the top shelf of the refrigerator had him pulling it out and grabbing a knife and fork from the silverware drawer.

The first bite had him thinking he’d died and gone to dessert heaven. The pie was enough to make him fall the rest of the way in love with Audrey York.

Who was he kidding? Her cooking had nothing to do with the falling.

The wet soles of Audrey’s shoes squeaked on the floor of the hospital corridor as she walked from the elevator to the nurses’ station at the end of the hall. The cold of the air-conditioning made her shiver. The quick rainstorm had caught her midway between her hotel and the hospital without an umbrella.

When she reached the nurses’ station, a middle-aged nurse in daisy-print blue scrubs said, “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Thomasina York’s room.”

Audrey wasn’t surprised to see the tightening around the nurse’s mouth. “She’s only allowed limited visitors. Are you family?”

Audrey met the woman’s gaze and held it. “Her daughter.”

There it was, that guilty-by-association look. To her credit, the nurse hid it better than most. Must be part of her training. After all, she probably had to hide her feelings a lot, what with having to sometimes treat people she didn’t like.

She pulled a file out of a stand-up, metal file holder, opened it and consulted a paper inside.

“Your name?”

“Audrey York.”

“You’re on the prison-approved list,” the nurse said with what sounded like suppressed disdain. “She’s down the hall on the left, around the corner, Room 514. The one with the guard.” That last part felt like a deliberate dig.

“Thank you,” Audrey said in her kindest voice, as if the nurse had been as sweet as sugar. When she turned, however, the smile faded away. Some people really struggled with that innocent-until-proven-guilty concept.

She felt as if she were walking through wet cement as she headed for her mother’s room. On the drive to Nashville then the flight to Denver, she’d played endless possible conversations in her mind and still didn’t know what would be the first words out of her mouth.

When she reached Room 514, she met another nurse coming out of the room with a blood-pressure cuff and thermometer. A uniformed guard followed her. The sight of the guard there, as if he were protecting the nurse from her mother, hit Audrey like a large fist to the chest. Yes, her mother was a criminal, but she wasn’t a violent woman. It wasn’t as if she was going to strangle a nurse with oxygen tubing.

“Are you here to see Mrs. York?” the pixyish blond nurse asked Audrey.

She almost denied it and kept walking down the hall, but then she chided herself for being such an enormous chicken. “Yes.”

“I need to see your ID, please,” the guard said.

Audrey pulled her wallet out and handed the man her driver’s license. After examining it and his list, he handed it back.

“I have to check your bag.”

Audrey wanted to ask him if she was going to be subjected to a cavity search, too, but she bit down on her lower lip and handed him her purse instead.

“You’re her daughter, aren’t you?” the nurse asked.

Audrey braced for more hostility, so she was unprepared for the genuine smile the young woman offered her.

“She’s talked about you a lot when she’s been awake, showed me your picture. You’re even prettier in person.”

“Uh…thank you.”

Audrey glanced at the nurse’s name tag. Holly—the name fit her outward appearance and personality.

The guard, satisfied that she wasn’t packing a gun or a shank, handed her purse back to her and took his seat in the chair next to the door.

Holly placed her hand on Audrey’s arm in a friendly gesture. “It’s good that you’ve come. I can tell she’s been wanting to talk to you.”

Audrey didn’t know how to feel about that. Did her mom want forgiveness? Could she give her mother that? Or was there too much hurt and betrayal still between them?

She glanced at the door that led into her mother’s room. “How is she?”

“Tired. The chemotherapy has been a bit rough on her.”

Audrey sucked in a sharp breath. “She’s taking chemo?”

“Yes. She has a tough path ahead of her, but the cancer was caught in time if she responds well to the chemo.”

Audrey met Holly’s eyes. “When will you know if she’s responding well?”

“Probably a couple more treatments. I’ll let Dr. Sandefur know you have some questions for him. He’s your mom’s oncologist.”

“Thank you.”

With an encouraging pat on Audrey’s arm, Holly made her way toward the nurses’ station. Audrey wished she could tell her how much it had meant for her not to look at Audrey like a criminal. In fact, she hadn’t even sounded accusatory when talking about her mom. Holly struck her as the type of nurse who looked at patients as people who needed her help, no matter who they were or what they’d done outside the hospital’s walls.

Audrey stood in the corridor staring at the door for a long time before she took a deep, painful breath and walked in.

She’d known her mother was sick, but she still wasn’t prepared for how small and old Thomasina looked lying in the bed, hooked up to monitors and IV poles. Tears popped into Audrey’s eyes despite how estranged they’d become.

At first she thought her mother was asleep, but then her eyes opened. She squinted them as if she couldn’t see, and Audrey wondered if the cancer or chemo treatments had somehow affected her mother’s vision.

“Audrey?” Thomasina uttered the single word in a disbelieving voice.

“Yeah.”

Tears pooled in Thomasina’s eyes, the sight of that emotion sucker punching Audrey so hard she found it difficult to breathe.

“How did you know?”

“A reporter showed up on my doorstep.”

Thomasina closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Audrey didn’t ask why her mother hadn’t let her know herself. She’d told her mother she never wanted to talk to her again. Those spiteful words still echoed in Audrey’s memory. She took a few more steps into the room and tossed her purse on the floor as she seated herself in a recliner in the corner.

She had no idea where to start, if she could even have a conversation with her mother without her blood pressure shooting through the roof. And no matter what her mother had done, it was just wrong to have it out with someone as sick as her.

Thomasina opened her eyes again and shifted so she could raise the head of the bed. The pain on her face as she moved caused an ache of guilt to surge through Audrey, as well. When her mother settled back against her pillow, she let out a slow breath and offered a small smile, one Audrey felt sure was forced.

“I’m glad you came. I’m surprised.”

Audrey looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. “I didn’t know if I would, not at first.”

Thomasina gripped the edge of her blanket. “I
wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d stayed away, after everything you went through because of me. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to tell you how sorry I am.”

“You said that before.” Audrey tried to ignore the fact that now there was a ring of truth to her mother’s words. A year ago, they’d seemed to be uttered because that’s what was expected.

“Yes, I did. I might have meant it then, too, on a superficial level.” She sounded ashamed and breathless.

Audrey wondered if the latter was a result of her illness. She looked her mother in the eye. “And now?”

“Hurting you is the great regret of my life. Not a day goes by when I don’t wish I could turn back the clock and undo everything, not fall into the trap that I did.”

“Trap?”

“I…” Her mom winced with what must have been another pain in her chest. “I’ve been meeting with a therapist since I was sentenced.”

Audrey got to her feet and paced across the room, her shoes still squeaking. “I’m not sure I can handle hearing about how something in your childhood made you steal money from thousands of people.”

They were quiet for several seconds until Thomasina responded. “I deserved that.” She took a shaky breath that made her sound like the sick woman she was. “I have no right to ask, but I would like to request one favor.”

“And that is?”

“I’ve been thinking about what I wanted to say to you if I ever saw you again for a long time. All I ask is that you let me say those things. If you want to leave after
ward, I will respect that and never bother you or expect you to visit me again.” The words came out in a rush, as if she was afraid Audrey would interrupt and rob her of the opportunity to speak. Sadness hid behind the strong front Thomasina was presenting.

Audrey rubbed her bare, damp arms against the coolness of the room. Without saying anything, she walked back to the chair and sat. She’d listen. After all, she’d traveled a long way.

Thomasina sighed and clasped her hands together. “If I could go back, I would have done things so differently. I think I would have stayed at that secretarial job and just volunteered at the church like most normal, churchgoing folks do. If I’d known how growing the ministry would have clouded my judgment, I would have never headed down that path.”

Flashes of battered women hugging their children at shelters, of health-education centers in AIDS-riddled Africa and little girls in developing countries attending school for the first time played through Audrey’s mind.

“But you helped lots of people.” The words tumbled out of her mouth, the need to defend at least part of her mother’s past surfacing.

“I hurt a lot, too, made people doubt supporting worthwhile programs.” She looked up at Audrey with deep sorrow in her eyes. “And I hurt the person who means the most to me. If I had to live in a cardboard box in an alley in order to have never hurt you, I’d do it gladly.”

“Why did you do it, Mom?” Audrey had asked this
question before, but her mother had been in avoidance mode in those days after her arrest and had never given a satisfactory answer.

Thomasina exhaled a slow breath. “I believed I deserved it. At least that’s what I thought at the time. I know now that I was weak and let myself be influenced by what those around me were telling me. They said that I’d helped so many people that I deserved to live life a little easier.”

Audrey pictured the large mountaintop home, the rock-and-timber construction, the huge picture windows affording gorgeous views, the sumptuous leather sofas and giant fireplaces. “A little easier doesn’t equal posh.”

Her mother lowered her head, like a scolded child. “I know. It’s just…you lose all perspective once you start down that road. I should have never pulled myself out of the field. Maybe if I’d kept doing the hands-on work instead of staying in the office, I wouldn’t have given in to temptation. I would have been happier.”

Something about that admission caused an incredible sadness to well within Audrey. “So all the things didn’t make you happy?”

“No. Theresa—she’s my therapist—she helped me realize the deeper reason behind my surrounding myself with wealth and lots of beautiful things. Despite being around people all the time, I was lonely. I was trying to fill a void that your dad’s death left in my life, and there was nothing that could do that.” Thomasina shook her head and sniffled. “In a million years, I wouldn’t have figured out that’s what I was doing. But when she sug
gested that as the reason, it clicked into place like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle I’d been trying to finish for more than twenty years.”

Thomasina twisted the edge of her covers. “I was so ashamed,” she whispered, her voice raw with emotion. “I knew your father would be so disappointed in what I’d done, what I’d become. How I’d hurt you, his little girl.”

Audrey hadn’t expected a discussion of their estrangement to come up quite so soon, but she was glad they were diving right in. Tiptoeing around it would only make her stomach churn and the anxiety build until it was difficult to breathe.

“I believed in you, in what you were doing,” Audrey said, not cloaking the hurt coloring her words. “When I found out the charges against you were true, I’d never felt so betrayed in my life.”

“I know, and I’m sorry that I didn’t have this conversation with you then. I…” Thomasina shook her head. “I felt like I wasn’t even in my body before, like all of these things were going on around me and I was watching them from a distance. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I felt as if I hadn’t actually been me in a long, long time.”

“What about now?”

Thomasina laid her head back against her pillow. “I’m more at peace, especially since I’ve talked to you. I don’t expect people’s forgiveness. I know it’s hard to forgive another person when that person has betrayed your trust. I have no problem with serving my sentence or with dying first if that’s my fate.”

Fear gripped Audrey at the thought of her mother’s death. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Death is nothing to fear, not when you’ve made things right.” Thomasina sounded like she had in the early days of her ministry, tender and reassuring. “And that’s what I’m trying to do. I’ve arranged for what’s left of the estate and all my holdings to be sold and the money to go back to the people it came from. I’m sorry, but there will be nothing left for you.”

Audrey sat back and crossed her arms. “I don’t want money.”

“I know, dear, but it’s a sad thing that I messed up so much that I have nothing to pass on to my only child.”

Audrey took a deep breath, released it slowly as she looked out the window toward a cloudless blue sky that had appeared in the wake of the rainstorm. “You have given me something.” She paused, marveling at what she was about to say. “Honesty.”

“You believe me, then?”

She looked back at her mother. “Yes. I’m not saying all the hurt is magically gone. I lost a lot because of what happened. But I’m tired, Mom. Tired of being angry, tired of always looking over my shoulder like the past is going to sneak up on me. Just plain tired.”

The door to the room opened, and Holly walked in followed by the guard. The clock on the wall revealed an hour had already passed.

“Time for your vitals,” Holly said in a chirpy voice that reminded Audrey for some reason of a bright yellow finch.

The guard stood in the corner and watched as Holly
checked Thomasina’s blood pressure and temperature, then all the various tubes and IV bags.

“Well, looking good.” Holly squeezed Thomasina’s hand. “You need to get some rest soon, you hear. I know you’re anxious to catch up with your daughter, but I bet she won’t mind if you snatch a few winks.” Holly glanced at Audrey with meaning in her eyes.