Page 61 of Fortune's Control
“You’re right.” I sat down and sucked in a breath to try again, this time without the timid voice. There was no point correcting her. “I am unemployed, after all.” My enthusiasm for updating her on the grant proposal faded. She wouldn’t cheer me on, and I didn’t need more reminders. “Mom, I have a question for you.”
She waited a beat. “What’s that?” From the way her question came out, I pictured Sarah Jane crouched in a defensive position.
It’s as if she believed I would ruin her life, or perhaps she already did. Sarah Jane had me when she was nineteen, so I took away the last of her youth. “As you know, I’m staying in Fortune’s Creek.”
“Uh-huh. Please don’t ask me about your grandmother. Leave the past in the past, where it belongs.”
The door opened, and Shane entered. He put his back to the wall, crossed his arms, and stared down at me, unsmiling.
“It’s about my grandmother. I tried to find information about her and you.”
“After I asked you not to?”
Mortification filled me. Shane already shared his opinion about my mother, and here he was, listening in. At least he waited until the first half of our conversationwas over. “Wouldn’t you like to see her? It’s been years, and she might like to know she has a granddaughter.”
“She knows, Delilah.”
My heart skipped a beat as Shane sat beside me, pulling me into his arms to offer support. “What?”
“I went to her for help when pregnant with you, and she turned me away. What kind of mother does that?”
“Not the good kind.” I couldn’t offer a better response.
“That’s right. I’m the one who birthed you and fed you, not her. Do you know how difficult it was in the early years? Leave it be, for my sake.”
“I…I’m sorry.”
Shane snatched the phone from my hands. “The next time you speak to your daughter, it will start with an apology, and you’d better make sureIbelieve it. Today’s call is done, so I suggest you take some much-needed time to reflect on how Lilah deserves a better mother than you’ll ever be.”
“Who is this?” Sarah Jane yelled into the phone.
“Your new son-in-law.” Shane hung up.
Horror filled me. “That was Sarah Jane.”
“I don’t care who it was. She won’t speak to you that way ever again. You didn’t deserve that, Lilah.”
I wanted to believe him. “You didn’t know me as a child. How much did you hear?” The water pipes quieted, and I never noticed.
“I heard voices in the hallway and made an educated guess. Her voice carries, even with the phone pressed against your face. As for the first statement, I know you now, and that’s more than enough. Your mother is an emotional vampire.”
My neck snapped.
He noticed. “What is it?”
“Emma says the same thing. I used to spend weekends at her home growing up because one more kid around didn’t matter, and Sarah Jane appreciated the break from me. She was nineteen when I was born, and on her own.”
“Difficult, and probably frightening. That doesn’t make what she says to you okay. It doesn’t make any of it true.”
“She won’t apologize.”
Shane pulled me against him. I leaned on him every time he did, wanting to absorb his strength into my body. Sophie called him bossy, which wasn’t untrue, but also inaccurate. He took care of everyone in his brusque manner — including me.
Messy me, who leaned on him. I wrapped my arms around his waist and snuggled into his chest. His steady heartbeat strengthened me.
“She’ll apologize. If it matters, I think she loves you in her own miserable way,” he said.
“You sound like it’s foreordained.” Shane’s blunt delivery almost convinced me. “You can’t force her.”
