"My therapist says I can't get closure until I let you release your anger at me."
Putting her hand over her mother's and clasping that slender hand in her own, she smiled. "Tell him or her that I'm not angry at you." Not anymore. "I'm happy that you're happy, Mother. You are, aren't you?"
"Oh yes." Danica pulled her hand away. "What about you, darling? How's your gorgeous husband?"
"I'm wonderful and so is Caleb." She smiled, able to share the news with Danica now without any bitterness. "We're going to have a baby."
Danica gave an excited shriek that made the whole café look at them but her mother had never cared about the world's opinion. "Oh, darling. How exciting! Good God, that means I'll be a grandmother!"
"You'll be the crazily beautiful grandmother who comes in and sweeps my child off her feet." Vicki knew that to be the absolute truth. Free with gifts and laughter, Danica would fill a child's life with infectious joy. Just so long as no commitment beyond periodic visits was required. "You'll be adored."
Danica seemed to like that idea. As she happily burbled away about everything from the designer baby clothes she was going to buy to her adventures in Europe, Vicki felt another understanding dawn in her mind. Danica, she realized, didn't want to be married or tied down in any way. What Ada had held as a threat over Vicki's head was for Danica a perfect life. Her mother was no one's mistress but her own.
Something in Vicki healed completely at that thought and she saw Ada for the pitiful woman she was. Her grandmother had based her life on a thousand lies, big and small. She was no one to be scared of. Vicki knew with absolute certainty that never again would Ada have the power to force her back into her shell.
An hour later, she said goodbye to her mother outside the café and they went their separate ways.Vicki decided to walk over and browse in a nearby lingerie store, her mind at peace. It was a wonderful change from all those times when Danica's appearances had left her feeling as if she were four years old again and watching her mother wave goodbye from a limousine as she headed off to a new life.
Vicki's fingers touched the lacy edge of a moss-green camisole and she paused. It was attractive but definitely an extravagance.
I like seeing you in satin and lace.
The memory of the unexpected words made her decision for her. She picked up the camisole. Pretty and feminine, she knew it would make her feel special.
The way Caleb did.
Standing there with the plastic hanger in one hand, Vicki realized that she loved Caleb more than she'd ever imagined. The feeling was primitive and visceral, demanding everything she had. This was why she'd been able to truly forgive her mother, because she knew Danica had never felt anything like it and never would.
Her mother enjoyed life, lived and laughed, but she'd never given her heart and soul to anyone or anything. Not to her child, not to her safely married lover, not to her work. Vicki had fallen helplessly in love with Caleb and as helplessly in love with their unborn child.
She'd tried to find a passion, a dream, in an attempt to fight the knowledge that Caleb was her dream. It had been her way of coping with the fact that work was his life. No more, she thought. Just because he couldn't return her feelings didn't mean he didn't deserve to know how she felt.
Perhaps that made her a fool. Then again, perhaps it made her the luckiest woman alive. Smiling through eyes gone watery, she picked up the lace-edged panties that matched the camisole and took them to the counter.
That night, Caleb managed to make it home by eight. Vicki was outside chatting to their neighbor, Bill, and he joined her for a few minutes before they headed in out of the chill air."How are things?" she asked.
"There might be a light at the end of the tunnel." Holding the door open for her, he let her take his briefcase and put it next to a nearby table. "Something smells good."
"I made pasta. And I ate a ton of it." She scrunched up her face. "I'm going to be huge by the time she decides it's time to come out."
Chuckling, he followed her into the living room. "I guess I'll have to survive on what's left over."
"Don't worry. I've learned my lesson by now. I make twice as much as I used to."
As they passed the coffee table, he glanced down to see an open photo album. "What were you doing with this?" He remembered it from soon after they'd married, when Ada had presented it to them. It was a professionally collated piece of work that chronicled Vicki's life from birth to marriage.
"Let me put the pasta on to heat first. Wait here-I'll be back in a second."
Taking her at her word, he shed his jacket, loosened his tie and sat with the album in his lap. He knew Vicki didn't care for it, much preferring the ones she'd started after their wedding. Once, he'd asked her why she didn't like the pictures of her childhood and she'd answered, "They make me feel abandoned."
It had taken him a night of leafing through those pages alone to understand. There were very few photos of Vicki with either parent after she turned four. He'd counted perhaps eight in all and three had been studio shots taken to commemorate her father's remarriage. Eight photos for fifteen years of life. She had a right to feel abandoned.
At least Max and Carmen hadn't thrown him aside until he was old enough to deal with it. And they'd never taunted him with false hope. He couldn't imagine what it must have done to a four-year-old to be left behind by parents who'd professed to love her. It almost allowed him to understand her reluctance to love him heart and soul. In his wife's mind, love led only to a broken heart. How he wished he could undo the lessons of her childhood.
At that moment, Vicki walked in with a plate piled high with pasta and a glass of wine in her hands. "You might as well eat while we talk."
He watched her put the food on the coffee table in front of him. "Thanks, honey. Why don't you … oh right."
"What?" She sat and shifted the album from his lap to hers.
"I was going to ask you to join me in a glass of wine." He smiled. "It still gets me in the gut every time I think about you carrying our kid."
"Me, too." Smiling, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "Eat."
"So what were you doing with that thing?" he asked after a few bites.
"I'm letting myself remember."
"Why?"
"Because I need to. I can't just ignore what happened and still be me. I have to accept the fact that I was hurt by the people who were supposed to love me forever." Her clear blue eyes looked into his. "I have to make peace with the past before I can move on to the future."
His heart leapt into his throat at her implied statement but he was so damn proud of her. "You're the bravest woman I know."
She gave him a rueful smile. "You wouldn't have said that if you'd seen me quaking in my boots before I met Mother for coffee today."
Frowning, he put down his fork and tipped up her chin. "Why didn't you tell me? I could've-"
"Hush." She placed a finger on his lips. "We all have things to face up to and Danica was one of mine. I couldn't keep hiding from what she did to me any more than I can hide from these pictures."
The strength he saw on her face was something he'd never expected to see in the girl he'd married. He was awed by her will, by her ability to move beyond the pain her mother had caused her. In this arena, Vicki was proving far more courageous than him. He could identify the need driving his desperation to save the firm, the need to prove himself to Max all over again, but he couldn't overcome it. Not yet. "What did you decide after seeing her?"
She put her head against his side and began to flip the pages again. "I decided that I shouldn't be afraid of feeling, of loving, of giving my everything. It hurts when it's thrown back in your face but eventually, the pain dims and you can breathe again."
He didn't know how to read that statement, didn't dare to hope. Putting an arm around her, he hugged her close. "Nothing you give me will be rejected. Nothing."
To his surprise, she laughed. "What about my divorce application?"
"Except that." He found himself smiling, too.
She turned a page and pointed to a picture of a somber eight-year-old standing by a bicycle. She was dressed perfectly, her almost white blond hair combed to within an inch of its life. "I could've used you back then. I think I'll always need you. Don't ever leave me, Caleb."