Chapters (38)
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- thirteen
- fourteen
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- epilogue
Deanna shook her head yes and then, exasperated, no. “I can’t describe what all this feels like. I mean, at first I was angry. Just really angry. I loved my mom and dad, and would never have suspected they were keeping so huge a secret from me. Anne says Mom could never decide when the time was right to tell me. Can you imagine? I’m practically an old lady, and I woke up one day to find I’m not who I thought I was.” She twirled her wine glass. “And that my mother didn’t want me. I look at my granddaughter, that precious rosebud mouth and those eyes shining with trust and love—the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen—and ask myself how any mother could walk away from that. You have no idea how hard it is to accept and understand.”
“Actually, I do.”
She turned to stare. “You were given up for adoption?”
“I was given up for Jack Daniels, amphetamines, and whatever other pharmaceuticals tapped my mother on the shoulder. Spent a lot of years in the foster care system.” Deanna, fresh from her lesser tale of woe, now considered me pitiful—I could see it in her eyes, and wished I’d kept my secrets to myself.
“I’m sorry, Ronni,” she said. “Your mother is a sick woman. So is my daughter. That’s why I pretty much raised my grandchildren, Kevin and Charlotte. Their mother, Sarah, was in and out of rehab from the age of sixteen, but she’s been sober for three years now.” Deanna swept the room with her eyes. “My marriage ended in 2008, mostly because my husband couldn’t handle it. He coped by marrying his hairstylist. She’s thirty-two years younger than Jack, and they have a six-year-old.” She laughed softly. “The thing is, Sarah always fought to get her children back, even when she clearly couldn’t take care of them. And I believe the biggest reason she’s stayed sober is her baby, Lacey. She’s the most adorable six-month-old on the planet.”
“Every situation is different, Deanna. Violet was only a teenager, at a time when unwed mothers were shunned. Her fiance—your father—had moved far away to marry another woman. She couldn’t even contact him.”
“She carried around a lot of secrets, didn’t she?” Deanna sipped her wine and set it down carefully. “There’s so much I need to know.”
“I’ll try to help. Your parents,” I saw Deanna’s frown and rephrased, “Your biological parents loved each other. They just couldn’t be together.”
“Why? If they loved each other like you keep saying, I can’t understand.”