Break Away (29 page)

“I don’t even know where to begin…” I said, taking a seat next to Dex on the couch.

“How about we start at the beginning?” she suggested, taking a sip from her glass. “As you may already know, your parents—Laura and Tom—were high school sweethearts. Laura lost her mother when she was young and was being raised by her daddy, who didn’t know a damn thing about raising a daughter on his own. When Laura found out she was pregnant shortly after graduating high school… boy, was he was furious. He had big plans for her to go off to college and make something of herself, and since being a mother didn’t fit into that plan, he gave her an ultimatum – give up the baby or get out.”

I inhaled a sharp breath. My mom had never told me any of this. She didn’t talk much about her parents, but she always made it sound like both her parents died at the same time. I was beginning to realize that I didn’t know as much about my mom as I thought I did.

“But your mama… she was a tough cookie, that one,” Rose continued. “Fierce as a lion, but with a heart of gold. She loved you from the moment she found out you were in her belly, and she fought for you. Packed her bags, held her head high, and never looked back. I took her in here in a heartbeat. I loved that girl so much, and she was already like a daughter to me.

“Tom knew he needed more than a high school diploma if he was going to provide for a family, so he went off to college in the fall. He was only a few hours away, so he came home for weekends here and there to see you and your mom, but for the most part, it was just the three of us. As time wore on, he started coming home less and less, telling us he had to study or was busy with this and that. I knew it bothered your mom, but she never spoke up. He was the one person she could never stand up to, because she loved him so much and was afraid of losing him. She would make excuses for him and say that it was okay that he spent all that time away because he was working hard at school to make a better life for them. She thought that once he was done with school, he would come back, and you would be a happy family.

“Then, one weekend after months of him not returning home, Laura went up there to confront him. What she found out was that, while she had been at home raising you all on her own, my scumbag son had been seeing someone else for over a year. Laura was devastated, and the worst part was that Tom didn’t even seem remorseful. He said that they had been growing apart for years, and he wasn’t ready to be a family. It was all total bull, of course, but that’s just the way Tom was… selfish beyond belief, with no regard for the feelings of those around him. Don’t know where he got it from, because his father—God rest his soul—was nothing like that. As awful as it sounds, I always knew that Laura was too good for him, but I guess I hoped that he would turn out to be something other than what he was and prove me wrong.”

My mom’s story was remarkably similar to my own, and yet so much worse because she had a child with the man who betrayed her. It broke my heart to think about how much pain he caused her. She carried that pain with her for the rest of her life, never truly moving on or letting go.

Rose took a deep breath before continuing. “Laura came back completely heartbroken and determined to get as far away from him as possible. I begged her to stay with me, telling her I would do whatever it took to keep her here – even if it meant cutting ties with my own son. I would have done it too, and perhaps that makes me an awful mother, but what Tom did was unforgivable and all I cared about was protecting you and your mom. You two were my family.”

“It sounds like you really loved her,” I said softly.

“Oh, honey, I did.” She wiped a tear from her cheek. “I truly did.”

“Then why didn’t she stay with you?”

“She said that it wouldn’t be fair to Tom or me if I chose her over him,” Rose said tearfully. “Truthfully though, I think it was simply too hard for her to be here. Everything about this place, and me, made her think of Tom, and she no longer wanted anything to do with him or this life. So she took you, and she left.” She pulled out a handkerchief to dab her eyes. “It broke my heart, but I knew how much she was hurting so I tried to understand. When weeks and then months went by and I didn’t hear from her, I realized that I probably never would. She felt she needed to cut ties completely, and I’m guessing that’s the reason she never told you about any of this. I still regret letting her walk away, and I want you to know that not a single day has gone by when I didn’t think about you and your mom. I’ve missed you every day.”

My eyes welled with tears, and Dex reached for my hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “How did you find out about my mom… about her accident?” I asked.

Rose stood up and walked over to the bookshelf, pulling something out from behind the frames and handing it to me. It was a photo taken of my mom and me at my high school graduation, only a few weeks before she died. It wasn’t in a frame and it was worn, the edges ragged, like it had been handled often. I flipped it over and saw that there was a message written on the back in my mom’s handwriting.

I miss you. I’m sorry.

“She mailed that to me before it happened. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I opened it. After all those years, she was finally reaching out to me. There was nothing else inside, but there was a return address on the envelope, so I wrote her a letter begging her to contact me. When she didn’t respond, I wrote another, and another, until one day they were all returned to me, unopened. I called the Postmaster in New York, and they were the ones who told me she passed. It destroyed me, and all I could think about was you, Olive. I didn’t know if your mom had moved on and there was someone in your life to take care of you, or if you were out there all alone. I tried to find out, but no one could ever tell me anything.”

“We moved around a lot,” I explained, trying not to choke on my own words. “We were never in one place long enough to get to know anyone. My mom never moved on… there was never anyone else. It was… it was just us.”

“Oh, Olive…” she cried, tears racing down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry that you had to go through that all on your own. I should have been there for you… I should have tried harder to find you. I just didn’t know how.”

“It’s not your fault,” I assured her. “When I first met you, I was angry that my mom kept you a secret from me, but I think she wanted to tell me… she just had to do it in her own time. Unfortunately, she never got the chance. I’m sure things probably would have been a lot different for me if she’d reached out to you sooner, or told me about you from the beginning, but I did all right on my own, and I’m stronger because of it.”

“You’re so much like her, you know that?” Rose smiled. “Laura had a way of putting everyone around her at ease. Simply being around her could brighten my day, and even as a little girl you were the same way.”

“I’m starting to remember certain things,” I said. “Nothing specific, mostly foggy images here and there of you and my mom, but nothing about my dad. He and I weren’t close, were we?”

She shook her head, “No, not really. Like I said, he was hardly around, and frankly, he didn’t know how to be a father at all, let alone a good one. Most of the time, he was watching from the sidelines, preoccupied with his own life. It got to the point where you stopped asking for him and didn’t even really notice him when he was around.”

“Did he ever try to find me? Or even talk about me?” The question fell from my lips before I had a chance to stop it. Deep down, I knew the answer but I couldn’t help but ask it anyway.

Rose bowed her head sadly. “I can’t be sure whether he did or not, but if you want the truth… I would be surprised if he did. He did love you, though, Olivia. I know it sounds strange, given the circumstances, but in his own twisted, selfish way, he loved you.”

I nodded, ignoring the ball in the pit of my stomach, trying not to let it bother me. “Where is he now?”

“He’s a few hours away in Columbia, but he does a lot of traveling for work, so he’s rarely home.”

“Does he have a family?”

She nodded slowly. “He married the woman he met in college, and they have a daughter. Now, don’t start thinking that he turned into some great family man… because he didn’t. He’s still the same man that he was before, but this time, when he got the girl pregnant, her rich daddy threatened to kill him if he didn’t marry her. He’s absent from his daughter’s life, and his wife is no better. They send her off to boarding schools and sleep-away camps, and up until this year, she spent every summer here with me. If you ask me, you were better off without him, Olive. I really mean that.”

“I have a sister?” I’d never considered the possibility, and the idea made my head spin. I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about it. I would’ve thought that I might feel some kind of bitterness or jealousy toward her for getting the perfect family I never had, but from what Rose was saying, her life was far from perfect. I may have grown up without a dad, but at least I always had a mother who was there for me and loved me.

“Yup, you sure do,” Rose answered. “Her name is Harper. She’s nineteen, and she’s an absolute sweetheart, probably because her parents never spent enough time with her to tarnish her. She’s the only reason that Tom is a part of my life. I resented him for what he did to your mother, but when Harper was born, I knew that she needed to have someone in her life to love her and take care of her.”

I already hated my father for what he had done to my mom and me, but now I hated him even more for what he was doing to this poor girl. I didn’t even know Harper, and yet somehow I felt strangely protective. “Does she know about me?” I asked.

“Yes, she does. She doesn’t know that you’re here, but she’s known for a long time that she had a half-sister out there somewhere. She always wanted a sibling growing up, and she never quite understood why she couldn’t meet you.” Rose looked over at me tentatively. “I’m sure that you’re going to need some time to process all this, but when you’re ready… if you’re open to it… I know that she would love to meet you.”

It was all so overwhelming and I hesitated for a moment, mulling it over in my head. “I would like that,” I told her. “I’m not quite ready for it yet, and I might need some time to get used to the idea, but eventually… I would really like to get to know her.”

“You take all the time you need, darlin’. She’ll be there whenever you’re ready.”

After a while, Dex and I got up to leave. I promised Rose that I would come back again soon. She walked us to the door and pulled me in for a hug, holding me close for a long time.

“Olivia Rose Mason.” I recited my full name out loud, finally understanding the meaning behind it. “I remember once asking my mom where my middle name came from and she told me that it was a family name. She said that it came from the most important person in her life, and someday she would tell me all about her. I’m so glad that I found you, Rose.”

She smiled, her eyes pooling with tears. “Me too, Olive. More than you’ll ever know.”

I glanced over at Olivia after we pulled out of Rose’s driveway. She seemed a little shell-shocked, but after everything that Rose just told her, how could she not be? There were times during that conversation that I had to ball my hands into fists just to contain my anger. Olivia’s dad sounded like the most worthless piece of shit on the planet, and I hated him for not giving her the childhood she deserved.

“Are you okay?” I asked her. It was a stupid question because, of course, she wasn’t, but I didn’t know what else to say. I was afraid that if she had too much time to think about it, she would end up torturing herself.

“Yeah, I am,” she said. “It was just strange to hear some of that stuff. There’s so much that I didn’t know about and it was… different than I expected. After hearing the whole story and realizing how difficult things were for my mom, I don’t blame her keeping that stuff from me. I thought I’d be angry, but instead I feel strangely relieved. My mom is still the person I always thought she was. There’s no way she could have predicted that she would die before having the chance to tell me about my past… sometimes these things just happen.”

“You got here eventually, that’s all that matters.”

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” she let out a laugh. “Of all the places that I could have ended up, I happened to end up here, where I started. When I first visited with Nora, I felt an immediate connection to this place. I knew part of it was because my mom was born here, but it went deeper than that. Now I know why. It’s… home.”