What Mother Never Told Me (11 page)

The water cooled, the scent dissolved, and Parris, with great reluctance, pulled herself up from the comforting embrace and stepped out.

A soft tap on her door made her draw her belt tighter around her robe. She ran her hands through her damp hair, pulling it up and away from her face as she approached.

“Yes?”

“It’s Marie. May I come in?”

Parris took a quick look around. It had taken her nearly an hour, but her room finally resembled the one she’d rented. Her
clothing was packed. All that was left to do what settle her bill and go home.

She turned the knob and stepped back out of the threshold.

“I didn’t know if you’d planned to go into town for dinner or if you’d like Marc to fix you something.” Her eyes scanned the room as she spoke and settled on the suitcase. She focused on Parris. “Leaving?”

“Yes.” Parris closed the door behind Marie. “In the morning. I was going to come down to tell you after my bath.” She folded her arms.

“Oh. I see. Well,” she said on a long breath, “I will be sure your bill is ready.” She paused, angled her head to the side as she took in Parris’s still slightly swollen eyes. “Did you find her?”

Parris turned away and walked to the center of the room then to the French doors. “No.” She raised her chin a notch. “And it’s just as well. This search has brought me nothing but…”

“More questions.”

Parris turned around. Marie’s brow arched with her question, her mouth soft with compassion.

Parris nodded. “Questions I may never know the answers to.”

“Which may be just as well. Too often we hunt around and around, dig and dig only to discover that it is a very dirty business. What is past,
chérie
, is done,” she said with a wave of her arm. “Nothing can change what has already happened. Not even knowing.” Her eyes widened with her conclusion.

Parris almost smiled. “I’m sure you’re right. It simply doesn’t feel that way right now.”

“And it may never feel that way. But—” she shot her finger toward Parris “—you can either let it consume you or you can be like the phoenix and rise from the ashes!” she said, her voice flooded with bravado and theatrical passion.

Parris bit back a smirk. “I’m really going to miss you.”

“And I you,
chérie
. But as they say in the dressing room of life, the show must go on.
Oui?
”

“Oui.”
For the first time in several hours she actually felt a little better. Yes, she would certainly miss Marie’s optimistic enthusiasm and cavalier attitude about life.

Marc was tapping on Parris’s door promptly at nine the following morning. Nick had rebooked her on a flight leaving at one that afternoon, but with the sudden surge in terror attacks around the globe, airports were on higher alert than usual and unprecedented delays due to security added to the time needed to board.

“I came to take your bags.”

“I can manage.”

“Ahh, but why should you?” He winked and Parris saw once again why Marie was so taken with him. Marc exuded that European sexiness that was as much a part of who he was as his name.

“You know what, you are absolutely right.”

“But of course!”

Parris stepped aside to let him in. He took her two small bags and before she knew it she was sharing a hug and words of wisdom from Marie.

“Tomorrow is not promised,” she whispered in Parris’s ear before they separated at the door. “Enjoy your today.” She pressed a piece of paper into her hand with her number. “Stay in touch.”

“I will. I promise.”

Marie kissed both of her cheeks and waved as she got into Amin’s cab en route to the airport.

“I’m so happy that you kept my number. How was your stay?” Amin asked as he headed toward the highway.

“I didn’t actually find what I’d come looking for.” She watched the town slowly dissolve in the rear window and the open landscape of rolling hills and valleys take its place.

“I am sorry to hear that.”

Parris leaned on the armrest and braced her chin on her palm, reliving the past few days. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to put into words the depth of her sadness. The enormity of the sham that was her family. Family is the foundation. The rock. The fabric of individuals and society. Her frown deepened. What was hers? A mere figment.

It would take her time to reconcile it all. Some of it she would never understand, but she knew that the most difficult part would be to forgive. That pained her most of all.

The cab came to a stop at the intersection before entering the roadway to the airport.

Parris sat straight up then leaned forward, gripping the back of his seat. “Amin, can you turn around? Quickly?”

“Turn around? Go back to Le Moulin?”

“No, back to the villa. The house you took me to the night I arrived.”

Amin stole a glance at her over his shoulder, the staunch determination that set her delicate expression left no room for doubt of her intention. He was certain that if he said no, she would jump out of the cab and find her way without him. He bobbed his head. At the next opportunity he turned around and headed for the Loire Valley.

Parris chewed on the nail of her thumb, staring at the images of what could be, reality disappearing into the background. She didn’t know what she was going to do, what she would say. All
she knew for certain was that she could not return home without stamping out the final smoldering ash of her make-believe life. She checked her watch and prayed that there would be enough time.

“I really don’t know why you didn’t at least talk with me about this first before you made these plans,” Michael grumbled as he put on his shirt, looking at his wife in the reflection of the mirror. “Why the big hurry to take a sudden trip?”

She came up behind him and slid her arms around his waist, pressing her head against his back. “I wanted us to be spontaneous for a change. No weeks of planning and deciding, just go on the spur of the moment.” She came around to stand in front of him, then perched on the edge of the dressing table. “Besides—” she reached up and began to button his shirt “—we could use the time alone to be pampered.” Her expression danced with mischief.

Michael physically relaxed. The straight line of his mouth softened. “I suppose you’re right.” He stroked her cheek. “It may be just the thing we need.”

She leaned up and kissed him lightly on the lips. “I know it is.”

He turned away in search of what she didn’t know and she drew in a silent breath of relief. The night before they’d gone round and round in circles about the trip, the money being spent, the suddenness, the reasons why. The questions and his surliness went on and on. She’d almost broken down and given in when he finally relented, albeit with great reluctance, sleeping with his back to her. But she’d won as she always had.

“I’m going to take the bags out to the car. We should get
on the road before the traffic gets too heavy.” He walked out, shrugging into his jacket.

Emma glanced down. Her hands were shaking. She balled them into fists. Soon this would be over. This ugly turn in her life would be done. She would come up with a plan and she would execute it.

Michael brought out the two large suitcases, turned on the car to warm it up and put one bag then the other in the trunk of the car. Their hand luggage could go in the backseat, he decided as he closed the truck and came face-to-face with his past. It was Emma. Younger. The same but different. He involuntarily staggered back a step.

“Hello. I’m sorry if I startled you. I was wondering if Emma Travanti was here. My name is Parris. I came by a few days ago, but I was told she wasn’t here.”

A tumbling sensation began in the pit of his gut and spun upward to his head.
Parris.

They both turned to the sound of the house door being opened. “Michael, I—” Emma gasped at the sight of her daughter standing on her doorstep. Her gaze tore between the stunned expression of her husband and the dawning light of understanding that shimmered in her daughter’s eyes.

Michael gripped the trunk. “Emma?” The word, a ragged indictment.

Parris’s accusing gaze stripped Emma down to the root of her selfish evil. She stood naked and accused before them.

Emma’s hand rose to her chest. A million explanations raced through her brain but no words came from her opened mouth.

Parris turned to the man before her who’d visibly aged in a matter of moments. She spoke only to him. “My grandmother,
Cora, told me that my mother, Emma, was not dead as I’d been told all my life.” She blinked back the tears that flamed her eyes. “She wanted me to find her. I promised her that I would. On her deathbed I promised her.” She saw the lines of agony carving a path across Emma’s perfect face. A part of her relished it. Enjoyed the pain that paled her skin even further. “I wish I could say that I’d fulfilled my grandmother’s request.” She raised her chin a notch. “Sorry to have bothered you.” She turned and hurried back to the cab that sat at the end of the driveway, her heart breaking into a million pieces. Tears blinded her as she stumbled down the road, half-walking, half-running.

Her pulse pounded so violently in her ears that she didn’t hear Michael call out to her or the limping footsteps that tried to catch her before she got in the cab and demanded that they leave. Pounding on the backseat. Now. Now. Drive!

Michael banged on the trunk of the cab as it sped away, kicking up dirt and gravel. For several moments he stood there, frozen as he had been only moments ago, and watched the car become smaller and smaller. He turned to see Emma standing in the doorway. Then as quickly as his bad leg could take him he reached his car, tugged the door open. Emma grabbed his arm. He shoved her roughly away and got in. His hands shook as he tried to insert the key.

“Michael!” Emma yanked on the door handle.

Vicious, cold eyes turned on her. “Get away from me,” he roared through the window and took off.

Emma crumbled to the ground, her agony echoing in the stillness of the morning.

Michael drove faster than the law allowed in the hope of gaining sight of the cab along the winding roads that led out
of the valley. He could hardly think. The sick sensation in the pit of his stomach threatened to overwhelm him. The images played again and again in his mind’s eye. It felt like an eternity but it was only a matter of minutes. He’d been stunned, frozen in place as he listened to his daughter’s lilting voice, saw the very image of her mother outlined on her face. He should have done something, said something, claimed her. But he hadn’t been able to process what was happening, as if it was happening to someone else and he was merely a spectator.

He’d foolishly allowed his unbridled love for Emma to make room for forgiveness for what she had done. They were young. She was afraid. But her deceit had damaged them. He knew that. He wanted to believe that their love was strong enough to sustain them. But this. He shook his head in grief and stepped down harder on the gas.

When Emma received the letter from her mother telling her that she’d finally told Parris the truth and that she would one day come to find her, Michael never in his wildest imagination would have believed that yet again, after forgiving her for the unforgivable, she would have been willing to continue the lie. He saw the fear in Emma’s eyes. And the kernel of painful acceptance in Parris’s. They’d met before. Right there at his home.

My God, what kind of woman had he married? He had to find his daughter.

A
min’s concern for his passenger grew with each passing moment. The shuddering sobs that she tried to hide behind her clenched fist pierced at his heart. He had no idea what happened between those white people that she’d gone to see, but it had devastated her. He continued to steal glances at her through the rearview mirror. She looked suddenly small and vulnerable and desperately in need of someone to take care of her, at least for now.

“Is there someone I can call for you?”

She sniffed and shook her head. “No. Thank you,” she mumbled. Her voice was hoarse. “I just want to get on the plane and go home.” She released a long shaky breath and turned her face to the passenger window.

They approached the last exit before the entrance to the
airport. “We will be there shortly.” It was nearly eleven. “You should have plenty of time to make your flight.”

She nodded numbly as the daymare of the previous hour replayed behind her swollen lids. Emma had known all along who she was, from the moment she appeared at her house, during the time she sat opposite her at the table in the bistro. She knew. She looked her in the eyes and knew that she was her daughter. Yet, she did nothing but continue the farce that had been her entire life. And that man. Was he her husband? Was he part of the ruse, as well? The knot in her throat grew, threatening to cut off her breathing. She pressed the button on the armrest, let down the window and gulped in the exhaust-filled air as the airport loomed ahead.

Amin pulled up behind the line of parking cars, jumped out, took Parris’s bag from the trunk and set it on the curb. He opened her door and helped her out.

The sadness of her eyes twisted his heart. “If you ever return, look me up. You have yet to meet my daughter.” He squeezed her shoulders.

“I will.” Parris pressed her lips into a tight smile, and tried to blink away the tears that threatened to spill. “If you’re ever in New York, you be sure to come see me. Hopefully, I’ll have a singing job soon.” She sniffed and tried to look hopeful.

“I will do that.”

She reached for her bag. “Thanks for everything, Amin.” She bent a bit and pecked him lightly on his rough cheek. “Take care.” She turned and merged with the passengers flooding the airport terminal.

Michael had long ago lost sight of the cab and was now driving aimlessly through the streets of southeast Paris. He
drove by rote, stopping and going as need be. His mind was in turmoil and his spirit in disarray. Whatever semblance of a life he thought he and Emma still had was finished. For more than three decades he’d lived with a woman that he didn’t know, one he’d only imagined. That realization sickened him. And she’d allowed the fantasy to be nurtured. She fed it and watched it grow, entangling him like the vines that crawled along the walls of their home, until he was unable and perhaps unwilling to extricate himself.

Parris
. She had no idea who he was. Perhaps she didn’t even know of his existence. There was no telling what Emma had convinced her mother of so long ago. He pounded his fist against the steering wheel. The shock of the pain shot up his arm, jolting him. He squeezed his eyes shut for an instant until it subsided. A car horn blared behind him. He glanced up at the green light, flexed his fingers and moved across the intersection.

All the years they’d lost. They would never be recovered. Never. And he didn’t know how he could live with that, how he could live with Emma.

Emma paced the gleaming wood floors, swinging between near hysteria and resolve. Tears clouded her vision. Pain squeezed her heart. At every sound she dashed to the window, praying that it was Michael and hoping that it wasn’t. How could she face him? What could she possibly say to explain the horror of what she’d done? And what of Parris? When she’d looked into her eyes and saw the recognition turn to revelation then disgust, she knew there was nothing that she could do. As the old folks in Rudell would have said, the chickens have come home to roost.

She grabbed a vase from the table and threw it across the floor. It exploded against the fireplace into brilliant crystal
pieces. Her life. Broken pieces. Her life as she knew it was over. If there had been a chance to salvage her marriage that, too, was gone. All she could do now was wait for her sentencing. After all, she’d been tried and convicted. No one cared why she’d done what she did, why she lived a life of lies, what had compelled her to do the unthinkable—give up her child and pretend to be dead all these years. She swallowed over the tightness in her throat. No one would understand the torture she’d lived with every day of her life, the torment that had permanent residence in her soul from the stain that she’d been born with and been forced to endure.

Did anyone give her a choice? Did anyone care about a little girl who was hated, mistreated, looked down upon and laughed at? A girl who grew up with not a friend in the world, not even her mother, a woman who could barely look at her.

Who knew what that was like, what that did to the soul? She withdrew to the window and sunk down into the chair. To wait.

“Can I get you something to drink?” the flight attendant asked, stirring Parris from the turn of her thoughts.

She glanced up. “No, thank you.”

The flight attendant pushed the cart up the aisle.

So many emotions flooded her that she was actually numb, as if she were on some kind of overload and the anger, hurt, confusion, rage, sadness and acceptance all merged together into a huge ball of nothingness that settled in the pit of her stomach and spread outward like anesthesia. She curled a bit tighter in her seat, gathered the thin blanket around her shoulders. This was worse than losing her grandmother. This was an inexplicable loss, one that she struggled to wrap her mind around. A mother who not only played dead for decades, but
once resurrected and face-to-face with her own mortality also chose to disavow its existence…still. She had a choice to claim what was lost between them or live as she’d always lived. Again, Emma chose her own life over that of her child.

Parris looked out of the window, the sky midnight black, bottomless. She closed her eyes and prayed for a bottomless, dreamless sleep.

After the unbelievably long walk from the plane through the winding corridors of customs at Kennedy airport, Parris handed over her passport for inspection.

“Welcome home,” the customs agent said, returning her passport with a smile.

Home
. She actually appreciated the sound of it. During the flight, between sleeping in stops and starts, she’d arrived at a place in her consciousness that France was another world, a life that she was not, and would never be, a part of. She would take the good from it; meeting Marie and Amin. The rest…She’d spent all of her life to date without her mother in it, and she would live the rest of it the same way. Her grandmother’s dying wish had been fulfilled. She was no longer obligated to anyone other than herself. She would pursue her career and, most important, her relationship with Nick.

Thoughts of him, the idea that they could be a “we,” made it all bearable in a scary way. She hoisted her tote bag over her shoulder and pulled her carry-on behind her along the bumpy carpeted floors following the signs to Baggage Claim and Ground Transportation. As soon as she pushed through the glass doors she saw Nick and her insides seesawed. She felt the smile begin deep in her center, wiggle its way upward and spread across her mouth. Her heart thumped.

Nick walked right up on her, his gaze fixed, took her bag from her shoulder and lowered it to the ground, unwrapped her fingers from the handle of her rollerboard, hooked his arm around her waist, pulled her so close that air couldn’t get between them. And he kissed her. Long, deep and slow, and he didn’t give a damn who was looking. It felt too good and he’d waited too long to feel her in his arms and have her mouth meshed with his.

Murmurs of longing shifted between the air they shared.

“God, I missed you,” he said against her mouth.

Parris held him tighter, feeling for the first time in days that she was finally on solid ground. “I missed you,” she sighed.

He took a reluctant step back and stared down into her eyes. A string of emotions passed across them resembling a line of traffic, every make and model on display.

“Let’s get you home.”

A shadow of a smile tugged the corners of her mouth. “Home. I like the sound of that.”

He kissed her forehead. “Let’s go.”

The car ride from the airport to Nick’s Harlem apartment went by in a flash, perhaps because her eyes drifted closed from the moment she was strapped in, to the time Nick gently shook her shoulder.

She blinked, trying to orient herself. “Here already?” She glanced around, surprised to see that they were in front of his building.

“Jet lag will get you every time. One minute I was telling you all about the club, then I glanced back and you were out like a light.”

She grinned sheepishly. “I could have sworn I heard every word.”

“Hmm, riiight.” He turned off the car and hopped out, came around to her side and opened her door. “Here, go on up.” He handed her the keys. “I’ll get your bags.”

She covered her mouth and yawned. “Okay.” She took the keys, got out and felt every muscle groan in protest as she went inside and up the stairs. When she opened the door to the apartment a genuine wave of relief, or maybe contentment, floated through her. The knots that were wrapped around her stomach began to loosen and the sinking sensation, the feeling of emptiness, didn’t feel quite as empty.

The door closed behind her. “You didn’t get very far,” Nick teased upon finding her still in the foyer.

She turned suddenly, her expression set as she approached him. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“That’s something you don’t ever have to worry about.” He stroked her cheek. “I promise you.”

She stepped into his open embrace and rested her head against his chest.

“I hope you don’t mind that I have no plans to continue to treat you like a guest.”

She tilted her head back to look at him, her brow creased.

“The guest room is for guests. My bedroom is for me and my lady.”

Her green eyes sparkled. “Would I be presumptuous if I took it to mean that
I’m
your lady?”

“Not at all,” he said, spacing each word for emphasis. He pecked her on the lips and walked past her with the bags to deposit them in his room.

Nothing further needed to be said. She followed him to
their
room.

Nick had no intention of pressing her for details. He’d pretty
much pieced it all together during that painful conversation they’d had while she was in France. Bottom line, her mother disowned her, refused to acknowledge her existence and was bold enough to look her in her face and have a conversation with her. Every time he thought about it his temples pounded. He wanted to hurt that woman, the way she’d hurt Parris. He wanted her to feel the pain and humiliation that Parris experienced, only worse. He’d never tell Parris just how much what happened to her affected him, the ugly thoughts that ran through his mind, ways to make her mother pay. That dark side of him, that part of his life, he worked really hard to keep in the past, tucked away and out of sight. When it had reared its ugly head, it had taken Sammy to make him realize that doing something stupid would be just that—something stupid.

“Those days are behind us, man,” Sammy had said. “We’ve come a long way from the street life. We were the lucky ones. Most of the brothers we came up with and ran with are either dead or in jail. We had something to fall back on, our music, our skills. It saved our asses. And being your boy all these years, there’s no way I could stand by and watch you do something that you’ll regret. And you know I can’t let you roll alone, which means I’d have to get my hands dirty, too.”

Nick was hunched over his drink. His red eyes stared into the melted ice. He’d been talking about taking a flight to France and paying a visit to this Emma or sending someone from the old days to do it for him. Someone who’d do just about anything for a price.

“What do you hope to accomplish, man? You hurt this woman—or worse—and then what? You sure as hell can’t tell Parris. So this isn’t about fixing this for her or making her feel better. This is about you. If you want to do something for
Parris, if you want to help her, then just be there for her, man. Simple as that.”

He was glad he’d listened to his old friend, he thought as he cuddled next to Parris, listening to the soothing rhythm of her even breathing. His blood had been boiling and all he could think about was hurting the one who’d hurt Parris. He pressed his face into the downy softness of her hair and silently vowed to keep her safe and happy, no matter what.