“It does hurt when it falls apart,” Ginny whispered, almost as if to no one. “Even when it’s family instead of a man.”
Andie held her breath. Aunt Ginny had to be talking about her and Cassie.
A beat later Ginny grabbed Andie’s arm, and they once again headed slowly back toward the house.
“Your mother and I were once the best of friends, Andie.” Ginny squeezed her arm. “The best.”
It was hard to imagine the two totally different sisters being in the same room together, much less being best friends. “I find that a bit hard to believe.”
Ginny laughed, but the sound was small. “I can understand that, child. Your mother is a different person than she was fifty years ago.”
“How?”
“Well …” Ginny thought about the question for a minute and then grinned wide. “She and I once went skinny-dipping, right here on Turtle Island.”
Andie turned loose of both her aunt and the skirt of her dress. It dipped into the water. “No you did not.” She shook her head. “No way. My mother is all about being serious. She’s worked sixty hours a week my whole life. No way did she take off her clothes and jump in the water with you.”
Andie wasn’t even sure that was something
she
would do.
Ginny merely nodded, her natural smile coming back. “We did. When she was nineteen. And yes, your mother has always been serious in the way of wanting to make something of herself, but she used to be a whole lot more like me than you realize.”
They were walking again, Andie’s wet skirt plastered to her legs, and she couldn’t help but think of her and Mark in the water the night he’d arrived. She could see herself skinny-dipping with him. But her mother and her aunt?
It was too much.
They could now make out lights in the distance, and the two women slowed even more — an unspoken agreement between them not to get back too soon. They still had things to discuss.
“What happened, Aunt Ginny?” Andie asked. “What turned my mother into the woman she is today?”
“It was my fault,” Ginny admitted, and the sadness in her voice broke Andie’s heart.
She wanted to demand answers, ask how that could possibly be, but she sensed that Ginny needed to tell the story in her own time. So Andie remained silent, squeezing her aunt’s arm lightly for encouragement.
Once again she thought of Mark. He was good at giving her the same kind of gentle encouragement.
“The first time we came to the island, your mother was about to branch out on her own. She’d just graduated from high school and was looking forward to college. Athena was older and had a boyfriend she didn’t want to leave, but we talked her into coming with us. That’s the only way our parents would let us all come down here together. And we had the best time. We all agreed to come back the next summer, only when it rolled around, Athena didn’t show up. It was just me and your mother.”
Aunt Ginny paused before continuing. “And James. We met James here that second summer.”
“Your husband,” Andie stated.
“Yes. But I was only seventeen then, and he was more interested in your mother than me. He was several years older than me, so I was simply the little sister of Cassiopeia.” She smiled. “He loved our names. Always called both of us by our full names.”
So she’d been right, Andie thought. There had been something between her mother and James. “She told me last night that she’d met him before you two got married, but she didn’t say it had been anything more.”
Ginny nodded. “It was. She fell in love with him that summer.”
A wave slammed into Andie’s legs, and she looked down. They’d drifted farther into the water, and Aunt Ginny’s skirt was getting wet, too. Andie angled them back toward dry sand but squeezed her eyes shut at Ginny’s next words.
“Of course, I fell in love with him that summer, too.”
“Oh, Aunt Ginny,” Andie whispered. She wrapped one arm around her aunt. “I’m sorry. That couldn’t have been easy.”
Ginny shook her head. “No, it wasn’t. Nor was the next summer when we came back and once again met up with him. He spent all his time with us. With your mother. It hurt me to watch them together, yet that’s what I did all summer long. And then she went back to college, and I moved here and got a job. I’d just graduated high school. Pop had passed during that year, and Mama had to focus on taking care of her mother. So I packed my bags and headed here for a job.” She paused again, then admitted, “And for James.”
The pieces started clicking into place. Her aunt had stolen James from her sister.
“Mom really loved him?” Andie asked.
Ginny nodded, looking so ashamed. “She did. But I wanted him. I wasn’t the type to want college, and I couldn’t see anything else ahead of me in life. Other than James. I knew if I could win him, I would have everything I ever wanted. A husband, kids.” Her voice broke and she lifted a hand to wipe tears from her eyes. “I told him that your mother had moved on. Said she’d never really cared for him.”
Ouch. It wasn’t merely that he’d chosen her Ginny over her mother; Ginny really had stolen him.
“I take it Mom had done no such thing?”
“She was planning to look for a job in Jacksonville when she got out of college. It’s a long drive, but within driving distance of here. She wanted to marry him.”
“But you married him first.” Andie didn’t have to ask; she knew. Ginny had married James the spring that her mother had been a junior in college.
“She didn’t come for the wedding, of course. Only Mama. Athena had passed away from an overdose a couple months before, and Grandmother wasn’t healthy enough to make the drive.”
They’d originally been from a small town in northeast Georgia. Andie’s grandmother hadn’t passed away until Andie was seven, and she and Cassie had never visited her. She seemed to remember Cassie going to the funeral, though. Alone.
“Mama couldn’t forgive Cassie for not coming down for the wedding, especially after losing Athena earlier in the year. She didn’t know what had transpired between us.”
That made sense. So Cassie had lost the love of her life, her sister, and her mother all at the same time. Not to mention her other sister dying that same year and her father the year before. No wonder she was so hard.
They were nearing the back of Aunt Ginny’s house now, so they both trudged through the sand and sat down on the wooden steps of the walkway. With their backs to the house, they stared out at the water.
Neither of them touched the other, and Andie didn’t know whether to reach out and take Aunt Ginny’s hand or not. It almost seemed like she was purposely drawing in on herself.
Maybe she was too embarrassed to let Andie comfort her at the moment.
“We bought those ankle bracelets that last year she was here,” Ginny whispered.
Andie jerked her head around. “What?”
“The anklet you wear all the time.” Ginny motioned toward Andie’s ankle. “We bought them the summer I graduated high school. Hers was the moon, mine was a star. Together forever. That’s what they stood for. We were so close back then.”
And then Ginny had stolen her mother’s man, and her mother had never worn the jewelry again.
A knot formed in Andie’s throat. She felt like she should be mad on her mother’s behalf, but seeing Ginny’s overwhelming sadness kept her in check. Plus, it wasn’t as if Cassie had been a great mother to her. Ginny had played that role more than anyone.
Andie turned to Ginny and took her hand in hers. “Why did my mother not like me, then? She implied the issue between her and me had something to do with whatever had happened between you two.” Andie shook her head, unable to make sense of it. “I don’t get it. That was all years before I came along. Mom had a husband, you had James. What could all that possibly have to do with me?”
Sad, weary eyes lifted to Andie’s face and a cold tremor of dread started at the base of Andie’s spine. She couldn’t quite put her finger on the problem, but she knew the next words out of Ginny’s mouth were going to be bad.
“James traveled on business. The year he died, he spent a couple days in Louisville.”
Her mother had lived in Louisville.
“He called her. Invited her to his hotel for dinner.”
Andie closed her eyes. She could see exactly where this was headed. “James is my father, isn’t he?” she whispered.
Ginny’s hand now squeezed hers, but she didn’t speak. Instead, she waited for Andie to open her eyes again.
When she did, Ginny explained, “He knew he was dying. I didn’t know it yet, but he did. So he went to see your mother. He wanted to know why she’d changed her mind all those years ago.”
Andie ached for her aunt. “He found out she hadn’t?”
Ginny nodded. “And they made you. Sixteen years we made love, and I couldn’t get pregnant once. One night with your mother, and you were conceived. He came home and told me he’d found out the truth. And he told me he’d been with your mother. He felt guilty, I think. So he confessed. I was furious, yet I couldn’t help but take part of the blame myself. He’d loved her first. I knew that when I married him.”
“But he loved you, too, right?” Andie could see her aunt’s pain, and she wanted desperately to put a stop to it. “He wouldn’t have married you if he hadn’t loved you, right?”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Ginny chuckled. “Don’t worry about me. Yes, he loved me. Very much. We were very happy together. But I don’t think he ever quite got over your mother.”
“He didn’t plan to leave you for her, did he?” Andie gasped. “Oh my God, he didn’t leave you?”
“No. He didn’t leave me. Though Lord knows I was mad enough, I wanted to leave him. But instead, he told me that he had a rare cancer and had been given less than a year to live. He was dying. He would honor our vows and be my husband until the day he died, because, yes, he did love me. But he’d wanted to see your mother one last time before he passed. He said he hadn’t intended to make love to her, but at the same time, he didn’t regret it.
“It hurt me,” Ginny continued. “Broke my heart and crushed my spirit. We’d had something that had been so special. But I couldn’t leave him, either. I’d promised to stand by him, and I would. I did. Until his dying breath.” She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them. “I even called Cassie to come see him before he died, but she refused. I think she was as mad at him for believing what I’d told him as she was at me for doing it.”
“But she came for his funeral?”
“And I saw she was seven months pregnant.”
Andie’s chest felt hollow. Seeing Cassie carry the baby Ginny had wanted all her life must have been catastrophic. “You knew the baby — that I — was his?”
“There was no doubt in my mind.”
“That must have been hard.”
A sardonic smile lifted Ginny’s lips. “I’d thought finding out James still cared for her after all those years had been hard. But this …” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, child, but I hated you for the first few years of your life. I couldn’t stand knowing you existed.”
“That’s understandable, Aunt Ginny.” And then it made sense why as a young child she hadn’t known Ginny. “But after Mom got married, again, I started coming to see you. What changed?”
“After about four years, I finally pulled myself out of my grief and anger over everything that had happened. I started believing in fate. I believed you’d been born for a reason, and that reason included me.” She gave Andie a sad smile. “I called your mother. I wanted to see James’s child. I deserved to see my husband’s child.”
“She refused,” Andie guessed.
Ginny nodded. “She refused. I can’t say I blamed her. I’d hurt her bad.”
“But it wasn’t like she was the mother of the year or anything.” Andie suddenly found she was mad at her mother. “She wasn’t doing a good job — she didn’t even want to be a mother — and at the same time she was keeping me from
you
. Someone who did want kids. Someone who cared about me.”
“Don’t be mad at your mother. And never think she didn’t care for you. She had gone her whole life being someone other than a mother. She’d lost James, and she felt all she had was her career. She worked hard for what she had. Then you came along, and she didn’t know how to revert to being anything else. Plus, if she had, I suspect it would have brought out the hurt of everything all over again.”
“She was not a good mother,” Andie insisted. “She should have let me see you earlier.”
“She needed to punish me, Andie. I’d hurt your mother a lot. She needed to feel like she had some control in the matter.”
“Then why did she finally let me see you?” And then her mother’s words came back to her:
John wanted to go places. It was one of the things I promised him when we got married.
“She only let me come when she found someone else,” she accused.
“But at least she let you come here, baby. That’s what counts.”
Anger for the games her mother had played made her clench her hands into fists, but at the same time, she could see her mother’s reasoning. She glanced at Ginny. “She knew you’d be a good mother, didn’t she? She told me last night that she should have let me stay with you year-round. I thought it was because she didn’t want me at all. But it was because she could tell I was happier with you.”
The guilt of that had been with Andie most of her life. She liked her aunt better than her own mother.
Aunt Ginny reached out and wrapped both arms around her. “She loved you, sweetheart. She just had no idea how to be a mother with the years of anger she’d built up. And now she wants a second chance.” Ginny leaned back and stroked Andie’s cheek. “I hope you’ll give it to her.”
Andie didn’t even have to think about it, and that amazed her. Of course she would give it to her. She wanted a relationship with her mother, too. She always had. She wouldn’t be petty and play games as her mother had.
She stood, ready to go in so she could digest everything she’d just been told. When she looked toward the house, she could make out Mark sitting on the balcony, watching them. He was waiting for her. Just as she’d asked him to.
And she found that for the first time in her life, she wanted to go to him and bare her soul. She wanted to let him share her burdens, and help her figure out what to do next. And then she wanted to share his bed and let him hold her through the night.