A Mother's Wish / Mother To Be: A Mother's Wish

“I think I can handle it,” she said, thinking maybe she was talking about more than salsa. She forked in a large bite of eggs—the stuff definitely had a kick, but she’d had hotter. “And you know, if this really is about gettin’ to know me, you’ll have to take at least some of it on face value, since it’s not like I’ve got a half-dozen character witnesses in my back pocket. But I swear, I didn’t come here to mess with anybody’s head.” The salsa hit the pit of her stomach with a small explosion. “Least of all Robbie’s. And I also swear…”

“What?”

Winnie chewed for a moment, thinking that while she could probably B.S. her way through this little interview, in the long run what would be the point?

“Okay,” she said, noting that Aidan seemed suitably impressed that she hadn’t sucked down half a glass of water to douse the flames, “this probably isn’t gonna earn me any points, seeing as you already think I’m a couple bricks shy of a load as it is. But since you brought up the whole human will thing? I didn’t exactly decide to come out here.”

“What you said about not having any family left notwithstanding. ”

“Oh, that was—is—true enough. Only that alone wouldn’t’ve been enough to make me do something like this. But a couple days after my grandmother died…” She blew out a breath. “It was almost like I heard…a voice. Although not a voice, voice, more like…a real strong feeling. That I had to come here.” At his what-kind-of-fool-do-you-take-me-for? expression, she shrugged. “I know. Elektra thought I was nuts, too. So there’s another tick mark in your column.”

“Elektra?”

“She runs my grandmother’s diner. My diner now, I guess.”

“You don’t sound exactly thrilled.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I just inherited a chain of five-star hotels or anything. And I know I should be grateful. It’ll never make me rich, but that’s okay, I wouldn’t know what to do with rich if it bit me in the butt. It’s just not…me.”

“And what is…you?” he asked, unsmiling.

“I think maybe I want to work with kids—I’ve got my teaching degree, I just have to get certified—but I haven’t had five minutes to myself to think about it.” Then she let out a sound that was equal parts laugh and sigh. “And here I’m supposed to be at least trying to make a decent impression. But you know what? I am who I am, either you deal with that or you don’t. I may be a bit on the flaky side, but I’m not a bad person. Not anymore.”

“Anymore?”

“Oh, come on—when we met, I’m sure I must’ve looked like I had the devil’s mark on me. I sure felt that way at times. Although,” she said, waving her fork, “I was not a rebel without a cause. Or at least a reason.”

“You got pregnant on purpose?”

At least he looked more intrigued than judgmental, for what that was worth. “If I say I’m not sure,” Winnie said, “it’s not because I’m trying to evade the question, okay? It’s because after all this time I still don’t know.” Frowning, she finally took that sip of water, then met his gaze. “Mostly I wanted to make my own decisions, about my own life. Even if they were stupid. But I’m not that person anymore, Aidan, you’ve got to believe that.” She sucked in a long, shuddering breath. “I swear.”

The tremor of sympathy happened before Aidan could squelch it. Oh, he definitely remembered the Winnie from back then, those big blue eyes bleeding a mixture of anger and fear and resentment. But most of all, an unfathomable sadness that, even then, had burned something inside Aidan. He remembered how wrong it had felt, that his and June’s happiness should be predicated on someone else’s misery.

“And how, exactly, d’you think you’ve changed?”

“Well…for one thing,” she said after a moment, “I’ve stopped making myself the victim of my own anger. Took a while, though, before it finally dawned on me that trying to hurt somebody else is a surefire way of hurting yourself more. But until I got to that point…” She stared at her plate, her breathing hard, and Aidan waited out the next wave of sympathy. “Who knew it would be so much harder to love myself than my grandmother?”

“She didn’t exactly strike me as the warm fuzzy type,” Aidan said quietly, and Winnie snorted.

“That’s what fear’ll do to a person, I suppose. She was so afraid I’d go off half-cocked like she was convinced my mother did. Ida couldn’t help being strict, that’s just how she was raised herself. But every time she said…” Her face tilted toward the window; Aidan saw her swallow. “Every time she said, ‘You’re just like your mother,’ the more I figured, what the hell, she already thinks the worst of me, might as well live up to her expectations.”

Aidan’s stomach clenched. “And what did she mean by that? Your being just like your mother?”

Winnie’s mouth curved into a wry smile. “I gathered Mama was stubborn as all get-out, too. She apparently bucked my grandmother every chance she got, the crowning touch being to elope with my father the second she turned eighteen.” Her eyes veered to Aidan’s. “I remember Daddy being a good man. Kind. He just wasn’t real successful, if you get my drift. I’m sure Ida saw Mama’s ‘bad choice’ as her own failure, but growing up, all I knew was that my grandmother constantly bad-mouthed the people I’d loved most in the world. It didn’t sit well.”

Their breakfasts and their surroundings all but forgotten, Aidan caught himself a split second before he stumbled head-on into the now dry-eyed gaze in front of him. While he knew Winnie wasn’t playing him for a con, anger still swamped him with an intensity bordering on painful.

He didn’t want to feel sympathy for Winnie Porter or anybody else, dammit, didn’t want to get sucked into anybody else’s sad tale. Not now, not ever again. June had been the compassionate one in the marriage, the one with the bottomless heart. But while Aidan had loved his wife beyond measure, and would do anything for his son…

Refusing to even finish the thought, he jabbed a fork into his now cold eggs. “Your antipathy sounds completely justified to me.”

“Maybe. But even I realized it wasn’t healthy. By the time Ida got sick, I’d come to terms with a thing or two. At least, I learned to channel the anger in more positive ways.”

“You forgave her?”

Winnie sighed. “The resentment gets to be a real bitch to lug around, you know? Her wanting more for my mother wasn’t a bad thing in itself. And I know it nearly killed her when Mama died. God knows it was no fun living with a woman who tended her disappointment and heartache like some prize orchid, but it wasn’t her fault she got sick. And if nothing else, I sure learned a lot from her example.”

“And what’s that?”

“Not to take out your own pain on anybody else. Least of all an innocent child.”

After a long moment, Aidan said, indicating her now empty plate, “Are you done?” When Winnie nodded, he signaled for Thea, pulling his credit card out of his wallet when she gave him the bill. “I suppose you think I’m being a hardnose by not wanting Robbie to know who you are.”

Winnie wiped her mouth on her napkin, demolishing what was left of her light-colored lipstick. “You’re his father, Aidan,” she said at last. “Like you said, I gave up any right to a say in the matter a long time ago, and I have to trust that you know what’s best for your own son.”

“And has it occurred to you,” Aidan bit out, “that since he’s already seen you, already knows you’re staying on our property, what might happen if and when he does ask about you down the road? You’ve put me in an untenable position, Winnie. You do realize that, don’t you?”

Her cheeks flushed scarlet. “I’m so sorry,” she muttered, getting up and grabbing her purse from the floor. “Here I’m telling you how far I’ve come, about learning that’s it not all about me, and then I go and do exactly the same thing I’ve always done.” She straightened, swiping a stray piece of hair out of her eyes as a markedly less bubbly Thea set the charge slip in front of Aidan. “All I wanted…” Shaking her head, she backed away, stumbling into an empty chair before turning and striding toward the door.

A sane man would have let her go, with her earnestness and regret and those damnably soulful eyes. Eyes that had shaken him nine years ago, even when he’d been happy and in love and she’d been little more than the means to his becoming a father. Ashamed, angry, Aidan scribbled his signature on the slip and took off after her. Already to her truck, she turned at his approach, her gaze wary. Embarrassed. He stopped a few feet away, breathing hard. Annoyed as all hell.

“Okay, look,” he said, determined to keep the blame for this whole mess firmly at her feet, “I still think the timing sucks, that tellin’ Robbie the truth right now…” The very thought made him ache, even if he couldn’t completely define the “why” behind it. “But maybe…”

Turning slightly to dodge the hope in her eyes, Aidan felt the ends of his too-long hair whip at his face. “Maybe if he got to know you a little first, we could somehow ease him into it.”

After too many beats passed, he looked at Winnie again. She was frowning, holding her own wind-blown hair out of her face.

“You sure about this?”

“Not a’tall.”

Her expression didn’t change. “What you really want is for me to say I’ve changed my mind, isn’t it?”

“You have no idea.”

She looked away then, frowning, then back at him. “I promise, I won’t tell him. Not until you give the go-ahead.”

“Come to supper tonight, then,” he said, feeling the none-too-solid ground he’d been navigating for the past year give way a bit more. “Around seven. Just follow the road up from the Old House. And keep an eye out for the chickens.”

An amused expression crossed her features before settling back into concern. “What are you going to tell him? About why I’m there?”

“I’ve no idea. I suppose I’ll figure something out.”

She nodded, then opened her door. Hugging the shimmying dog, she angled her head enough to say, “Thank you.”

But Aidan didn’t want her thanks. He didn’t want any of this, not the responsibility or the sympathy those damn blue eyes provoked or…any of it. Most of all, he didn’t want to be nice or kind or even civil unless absolutely necessary. So he spun around and strode to his own truck, parked on the other side of the small lot, thinking that she’d been dead wrong, about needing makeup in the daylight.

“So that’s the update,” Winnie said to Elektra later, leaning against her truck’s bumper, watching her creditcard bill soar as the little numbers flicked by on the gas pump faster’n she could read ‘em. Her nerves much too frayed to go back to the little house and sit there staring into space, Winnie had instead decided to do some sightseeing, immediately nixing Santa Fe—very pretty, way too crowded with looky-loos for her and Annabelle’s taste—for a nice, long meander along the back roads connecting any number of little towns like Tierra Rosa. The weather was almost embarrassingly gorgeous, the views of endless blue sky and color-splotched mountains definitely spirit-lifting. Not to mention head-clearing.