“She was still angry,” Marsha whispered. The smile faded. “So angry. She wouldn’t let me say anything, wouldn’t listen to my apology. There was such rage in her voice and her eyes. She told me to go away. That she never wanted to see me again. She said if I tried to see her or you, she would make sure you both disappeared again, and that I would never find you. I was devastated.”
Marsha drew in a breath. “Sorry. It’s been a long time, but it feels so recent. So raw. I explained I had changed, learned from my mistakes. I said I wanted her back in my life. Both of you. She didn’t care. She said she was done with me, with the rules and expectations. She was doing fine on her own and repeated that if she ever saw me again, she would disappear and I would never find either of you.”
Charity’s chest tightened as she saw the other woman’s pain. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. There was a part of her that said Sandra wouldn’t have done that, except she knew it was more than possible. When Sandra made up her mind, she couldn’t be budged. There was no going back. More than one of Sandra’s men had discovered that too late to keep her.
“I came back home,” Marsha said. “I was broken inside. I knew it was all my fault.”
“It wasn’t,” Charity told her firmly. “You made a mistake, but you wanted to make it right. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. It was Sandra’s decision not to listen. Not to give you a second chance.”
“Perhaps. I tried telling myself that. The truth is I tried to control every aspect of Sandra’s life. Most children would have had trouble with that, but for Sandra, it was impossible to stand. Knowing that it was because I’d lost my husband, and was terrified that if I didn’t handle everything, yet another tragedy would invade my life didn’t seem to help.”
She pressed her lips together, then spoke. “I left the two of you. I didn’t know what else to do. I thought about keeping tabs on her, but I was afraid she would find out. Years passed. The memories faded, but not the longing, the wondering. I thought about the two of you all the time. Ten years later, I hired another detective, to see if she could be found. He located her easily. The boy who had been your father…” Marsha’s voice trailed off. “I’m saying too much.”
Charity reached across the space separating them and touched Marsha’s arm. “I know he died. She told me. I’d been asking a lot of questions. While I could believe my mom didn’t have any family, I knew I had to have a father. Once he was gone, I stopped asking questions.”
She’d been twelve, Charity remembered. Sandra had come in her room. They’d been living in a rented mobile home, in a park at the edge of Phoenix. Charity recalled everything about the room, the view out of her small window, the sound of the dripping faucet as Sandra told her that the boy who had gotten her pregnant had gone into the military and he’d been killed. A helicopter crash.
Marsha squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry. I thought it would make a difference, but it didn’t. She never answered my letter and when I sent the detective to check on her, she was gone. Just like she’d promised. I’d lost her all over again.”
She shrugged. “So I gave up. I stopped looking. Stopped hoping. I accepted that I’d chased away my only child and moved on with my life. Then a few months ago, I decided to try again.”
Charity’s chest tightened. “You hired another detective?”
Marsha nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “It didn’t take him long to find out my baby girl had died. Cancer. He said it took her quickly.”
Charity nodded. She’d had time to get used to the loss of her mother, but for Marsha, that news was fresh. Still painful. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, realizing that when it came to Sandra everyone had been sorry except Sandra herself.
“It was a shock,” Marsha admitted. “She was my only child. Shouldn’t I have known? Guessed? Felt it in my heart? But there was nothing. No warning. I mourned her. I mourned what could have been. What I had thrown away.”
“No,” Charity said firmly. “You aren’t completely responsible. Yes, you made mistakes, but so did she. The whole time I was growing up, I begged her to tell me about my family and she wouldn’t. She refused, because what she felt was more important than what I wanted. She died, leaving me alone in the world, and never bothered to tell me the truth. I had you all this time and she never told me.”
Now Charity was the one fighting tears. “I hated moving around. I would beg her to stay, but she wouldn’t. When I was a junior in high school, I told her I was done. I was going to graduate from that high school. She promised to stay as long as she could. It was six months, and then she took off. I stayed. She sent me money when she could and I worked part-time. The rental was cheap enough. She wasn’t even worried about me. She said I would be fine. She didn’t even come back for graduation.”
She turned to face Marsha. “Tell me you would have been there.”
“Yes, but that’s not—”
“The point? It’s exactly the point.”