Wow. Carte blanche, huh? Not what Cherry was expecting, but she was up for it. She could feel twenty-eight years of pent-up anger, hurt, and resentment starting to bubble up.
“Why?” It was all she said. All she needed to say.
A slow nod, as if that was exactly the question Lila had expected. “Well. None of it is a good excuse now that I look back. And I doubt any of it will make you feel better, but I promise to be as honest as I can.” She cleared her throat. “I was young. Too young to be a mother.” She held up a hand, stopping Cherry’s protest on her lips. “No, it’s not an excuse, and it shouldn’t have mattered. But I was lost. I was selfish. I wasterrified.” She stared at her cup as she added the next part very quietly. “I felt trapped.”
“Excuse me,” Cherry said, as she stood and hurried to the ladies’ room. Once there, inside a stall, sitting on the lid of the toilet, she gritted her teeth so hard her jaw started to ache. “I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry…”
God! Her mother was a selfish bitch. Oh, she had a baby and then felt trapped? Too fucking bad.You don’t just run out on your kid.She snorted a sarcastic laugh. She hadn’t even made it through five minutes of Lila talking before she’d bolted, and that wouldn’t do. She was not a wimp. She was tough. She was strong. She’d made it this far without a mother—she wasn’t about to let one fact clobber her.
She gave herself a shake, exited the stall, fixed her makeup in the mirror, and headed back out into the shop where Lila still sat at the corner table, looking out the window. When she turned her head and met Cherry’s eyes across the room, she smiled sadly and waited until Cherry came back and reclaimed her seat.
“I’m sorry,” Lila said softly.
Cherry nodded. “Where did you go?”
Lila tipped her head. “What do you mean?”
“When you left me with Dad. Where did you go?”
“Oh. I went south. I didn’t really have a plan. I just…ran. Ended up in Durham. In North Carolina.”
Cherry nodded again, slowly. “And what did you do there?”
Lila turned her eyes toward the window and gazed out. “I floundered for a while, bounced from shelter to shelter until I found a job, then another job, then ended up the office manager for a dentist.” Cherry found it easier to look at her when she wasn’t gazing back. She was fifty if Cherry remembered correctly, but she looked a bit younger. Great skin and gentle eyes and young-looking hands all contributed.Her hair was a much lighter red than Cherry’s, but the short cut was stylish, hip even. She turned back and caught Cherry looking. “Once I was making money and had an apartment, I called your father. I wanted to see you.”
Cherry blinked at her several times as she frowned because what? When? When had she called? Her father had never told her that. According to him, she’d run away, and he’d never heard from her again. End of story. “What?”
Lila nodded. “Yeah. I called several times.”
“He never told me that.”
“I suspected that.” Lila cleared her throat. “He said that you were doing great and that I’d disrupted your life enough by leaving, and I had no right to disrupt it again by popping back in.” And that’s when her eyes welled up, unshed tears shimmering in the late morning sun beaming through the window. “And I was only twenty-three at that point. Young and stupid and decided he was probably right. So I wrote the letters instead.”
More blinking. “Letters?”
This time, Lila looked stricken. “He didn’t give you my letters?” Her voice held a tone of quiet horror as realization seemed to sink into her brain. “Oh God. Oh my God.”
Cherry sat there and watched the expressions on Lila’s face. Watched her eyes fill with tears. A tiny prickle of sympathy began to form, niggling at her as she witnessed Lila’s emotions.
“I sent you letters,” Lila said quietly. “So many of them. And birthday cards and Christmas cards.” She stared in Cherry’s eyes. “He never gave youanyof them?” When Cherry slowly shook her head, a small, strangled sound came from Lila’s throat. “Oh, that son of a bitch. God, no wonder you hate me.”
Her initial reaction was to say,I don’t hate you, which was what you said when somebody says,You hate me. But she didn’t. She swallowed the words. Because the truth was, she had hated Lila for a very long time. Years and years. And one misunderstanding wasn’t about to erase all that anger.
But.
Yeah, there was abut, and she had to admit it. Lila looked crushed, clobbered by this new information. And Cherry was tough, she’d had to be to survive living with her dad and his damage, his anger, butseeing Lila taking in this new information put a nice, solid crack in her protective shell.
Lila looked up at her then, her eyes wet, her face flushed. “I’m so sorry, Cherry. I’m so sorry. I should’ve tried harder. I should’ve kept calling. I should’ve driven up here. I…”
Excuses. That’s what they were. But Lila seemed to know that, seemed to understand how they looked. How they sounded. And she didn’t push any farther. She just shook her head, wiped her eyes, and sipped her coffee.
A moment of silence, as if neither she nor Lila knew what to say next. Finally, Lila met her eyes.
“So, this has been a lot.” Cherry’s sarcastic chuckle seemed to give Lila a little energy, and she offered a sad smile. “I would love to see you again, talk some more, maybe share a meal, but I also think we could both use a break right now. I know I could.”
Cherry nodded. “It’s been a lot,” she agreed, grateful that Lila had made the call she had.
“I’m going to leave things in your court, though. I…” Lila sighed heavily. “I did not expect things to go the way they did, and I know I’ve apologized twenty-seven times, but at this point, I feel like I’m just going to keep doing that, and I’m betting you’re getting tired of hearing it.” She held up a hand like a traffic cop. “Don’t answer that.” And she gave a sad little laugh and stood up. Once she’d gathered her purse and shrugged it onto her shoulder, she met Cherry’s eyes. Her hand reached out toward Cherry, as if she was going to grasp her arm but thought better of it. “I hope you contact me. I’d love for you to contact me. But I understand how hard this all must be.” Her dark eyes filled with tears again, and she blinked them back. “I really do hope to see you again.”
