Page 28 of The Unseen
“I bottle-fed the boys and they turned out just fine,” Sylvia commented as she shrugged off her coat and hung up her scarf.She refrained from mentioning that Quinn had been bottle-fed as well, since her adoptive mother hadn’t had the option to nurse her, although Susan Allenby would have liked nothing more.
Sylvia came into the living room and held out a prettily wrapped package decorated with a sparkly blue bow. “This is for my grandson. The toy is store-bought, but the blanket I knitted myself. It’s machine washable and won’t shrink,” she added.
“Thank you. That’s very kind. Eh, why are you here, Sylvia?” Quinn asked. She had no wish to be rude, but she didn’t have the type of relationship with Sylvia where they just dropped in on each other. She doubted they ever would.
“I wanted to talk to you, Quinn, if that’s all right.”
“Give me a moment to finish nursing and then I’ll make us a cup of tea.”
“I can make the tea; you concentrate on the baby. Looks like he’s full,” she added. Alex had stopped sucking and was watching Sylvia with interest.
Quinn hoisted the baby onto her shoulder and held him upright as she patted his back lightly. Alex let out a belch worthy of a sailor and smiled happily. “What do you say to a little time on your play mat?” Quinn asked. “You like playing there, don’t you?”
She lowered Alex to the floor and laid him down on his back, so he could look up at the colorful plastic shapes suspended from the overhead arches and reach for the lower-hanging toys. He was in heaven. “Let’s have tea in here, so I can keep an eye on him.”
“I’ll get it. Milk, no sugar. Right?”
“Right.”
Sylvia brought out two mugs of tea and set them on the coffee table before getting settled in an armchair across from the sofa. She looked tired and not as elegantly turned out as sheusually was. She wore an oversized navy jumper over a pair of leggings and short boots, not her normal chic style at all. Sylvia’s face looked puffy, and her mouth was downturned at the corners.
“Are you all right, Sylvia?”
“I’ve been better, if you must know. I miss Rhys.”
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you two.”
“It might have, but let’s not rehash that again.” Sylvia reached for her mug and took a long swallow of tea, as if bracing herself for a difficult conversation. “Look, Quinn, I need you to stop punishing me for something I did when I was seventeen. It’s not fair. I could have handled things better, I know that now, but I will not keep apologizing for the choices I made.”
“I’m not punishing you for something you did when you were seventeen. I’m punishing you for something you did last year. You should have told me about Quentin.”
“Yes, in retrospect, I should have probably told you, but I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of this. Of your unyielding moral superiority. You don’t know what you might have done in my place. It’s easy to judge when you have a loving husband and a well-paying career. I only just found you, and I didn’t want to destroy our relationship before it had a chance to begin. I wanted to get to know you, and I hoped that once you got to know me, maybe you’d be more understanding when I finally told you the truth.”
“Let’s face it, Sylvia, I don’t think you were ever going to tell me the truth. You wrote Quentin off the moment you left her at the hospital, just as you wrote me off. Had you not stumbled on that article about me, you’d never have tried to find me. You were content enough living without me for thirty years.”
“Quinn, I know you’re angry, but can you not find it in your heart to give me the benefit of the doubt?”
“I was so happy to have met you, and so excited to learn something of where I came from, especially once I got to know Seth, but now that I have my own baby, I find it even more difficult to comprehend how you could have just left a child that was gasping for breath and walked away without a backward glance.”
“I’m not proud of what I did, but I was young and foolish. I wanted my life back. I wanted a future. You two were better off without me.”
“And better off without our father? Seth is a good man, Sylvia. I like him. He’s kind, caring, and most of all, he’s direct.”
“Well, he is American, isn’t he?” Sylvia retorted.
“He loves me, Sylvia. I can feel it every time I speak to him, and every time I see him. I’ve never felt that from you.”
“I do love you,” Sylvia snapped.
“Do you?”
“Quinn, I’m not an overly demonstrative person, but the thought of losing you again devastates me. Please, give me another chance.”
Quinn tilted her head and looked at Sylvia. This was her chance to find out the answer to a question that had been bothering her since the day she’d met her birth mother. It wasn’t fair to use Sylvia’s desire to have a relationship with her as leverage, but she needed to know, especially if she hoped to maintain her relationship with Seth.
