Page 54 of Sorry Season

“But it’s been so long…” she trailed off, her throat clogged with emotion at the depth of love in her mother’s eyes.

“We knew you’d come back eventually.” Her mom patted her shoulder before picking up the teapot and filling china cups to the brim, adding a dash of lemon to hers, just like she used to.

“I had no intention of returning, you know.”

Her mom’s hand stilled and the teapot wobbled before she carefully placed it on a coaster. “Then what changed your mind?”

“Blane. He’s back in my life. And he said some things about the past that got me thinking.”

Picking up her tea she took a sip, savoring the strong tannin mingling with the tart lemon. She hadn’t had tea since she left here, deliberately turning her back on her roots, desperate to shrug off a past that had dragged her down. Or so she’d thought.

“Go on.” Her mom offered her a plate of cookies and Camryn shook her head.

“I need to say this, to get it off my chest. I’ve spent a lot of years resenting you and Dad for not supporting my dreams of moving to Melbourne, for manipulating me.”

Chipping away at the fine gold swirls on the cup, she forced herself to raise her gaze and meet her mother’s unwavering one.

“I blamed you for holding me back, thinking you were control freaks for doing what you did. But it took Blane’s objectivity to make me realize perhaps you did it out of love? That I was your only child, and maybe you wanted to hold on too tight?”

Taking a deep breath, she continued. “I guess you didn’t understand that I loved you both so much, that even after I’d left town I would’ve always visited. I wouldn’t have turned my back on you.”

Reaching over, she grabbed her mom’s hand and squeezed tight. “Leaving Rainbow Creek was never about escaping you. You and dad were great parents. I just wished I’d told you that the night we had our big row rather than saying half the things I said. I’m sorry.”

Tears shimmered in her mother’s eyes, and in that moment, she realized she’d never seen her mom cry. Not once. In all the years growing up, her mother had been incredibly strong:working manic hours at the coffee shop, always putting a decent meal on the table, helping out at school, never complaining about her workload.

How had Camryn repaid her? By blaming her for something that wasn’t entirely her fault.

“We’re the ones who owe you an apology.”

Her mom took a tissue out of the gigantic pocket on the front of her apron and blew her nose before continuing. “You’re right. I was a control freak. I didn’t want you to leave so I manipulated the money situation. What you don’t know is why…”

Her mother trailed off, looking older, frailer, than she’d ever seen. “I was like you once. Pie in the sky dreams of the big city, I couldn’t wait to escape my mother’s clutches. But unlike you, I was stupid enough to run away to Melbourne with barely a cent to my name. I fell for the first guy who looked my way and ended up pregnant and alone when I told him.”

Camryn’s sharp intake of breath hissed through the kitchen as she stared at the woman she thought she’d known all these years.

“I told my mother about the pregnancy and she didn’t want a bar of me. Said she wanted to teach me a lesson. Then I miscarried, also alone, and it was the worst experience of my life.”

As if the pea-soup fog that occasionally blanketed Rainbow Creek in the winter had lifted the blurred edges from her eyes, for the first time, Camryn saw everything in crystal clear clarity.

“That’s why Nan left all her money to me? And why you didn’t want me to go to Melbourne on my own? That’s it, isn’t it? Your reasoning for what you did?”

She didn’t need her mother’s mute nod to confirm what she already knew. Her parents’ actions had never been about trying to hold her back. It had been about two parents beingoverprotective, willing to do whatever it took to coddle their only child.

“Your father wanted you to have the money when you turned eighteen, but I didn’t. He doesn’t know about my past. He doesn’t know the reason it took us so long to conceive you was because of the miscarriage and the hash I made of my life back then. I wanted to shield you from all that, to hold onto you for as long as I could. I was stupid and selfish and I’m sorry. For everything.”

Camryn enveloped her mother in a hug. “We made a right mess of things.”

“That we did, love.”

Feeling like a hugeweight had lifted off her shoulders, Camryn released her mom. “You know I’m not moving back? But I plan on not being a stranger.”

Raising her cup of tea in her direction, her mom chuckled. “You’re always welcome. You always have been. This is your home.”

Home.

Why did that word conjure up visions of a huge house perched on a cliff, a house filled with precious, all too brief memories of a man she could never forget?

“You were right about Blane too. If he’s back in your life, he obviously was true to his word when he told us back then that he’d always love you, that he was only leaving for your own good.”

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