AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nick ignored the shock on his sister’s face. First Pauline, now Alison. He hadn’t become that much of a workaholic, had he?
Her mother was already back from the hospital, relaxing in her room at Apple Orchards Rest Home when Candace and Jennie arrived. She looked pale and tired.
“How are you feeling, Mom?”
“I’ve had better days.” Catherine Morrison’s mouth twitched into a smile and Candace wanted to applaud her mother’s bravery.
“I’ve brought someone to meet you,” she said instead. She bent over the stroller and unclipped the straps. “This is Jennie.”
Catherine turned her head on the lace-edged pillow that matched the handmade quilt Candace had bought as a housewarming gift after her mother had moved into Apple Orchards five months ago. The room was cozily furnished. Candace had bought a compact love seat covered in pretty fabric where Catherine could sit in the sun by the window on days when she felt a little stronger. The dressing table where her mother’s favorite perfumes and toiletries were stored and the bed’s headboard were her mother’s own. So were the collection of knickknacks and photos on the bookshelf in the corner. The homey touches had transformed the institutionalized space.
“Hello, Jennie,” her mother said to the granddaughter she didn’t know existed.
A lump thickened at the back of Candace’s throat. “I’m looking after her.”
“But what about your work at the hospital, darling? I thought you were going back to a full-time post once you had me settled.”
“I’ll go back to that when I’m ready. I needed a break.”
For the last four months of her pregnancy, Candace hadn’t seen her mother. She’d established a fiction that she’d decided to travel overseas—Jilly had even generously offered her the funds to make the story a reality. It hadn’t taken the needy expression in Jilly’s eyes to affirm what a sacrifice she was making with the offer. Candace had known Jilly would miss visiting her, seeing Jennie grow as Candace’s pregnancy progressed.
Candace had declined. She hadn’t felt comfortable accepting the gift. Instead, she’d dropped out of sight, renting a cottage on the rugged West Coast, an hour’s drive from Auckland, where she’d lived quietly while her family and friends assumed she was on the other side of the world.
There was a certain irony in the fact that during the time Candace had been living that deception, Jilly had been practicing her own deception with a surreal fake pregnancy.
Perhaps that was why Jilly had visited the cottage so often—sometimes even spending the night in the cramped second bedroom that was little more than a closet. It would have been the only time Jilly could break out of her lie because it was only with Candace that she wasn’t pregnant. The charade must’ve been exhausting, waiting for someone to catch any slip…
Yet now Candace knew that those visits to the cottage, the nights away, would only have added fuel to Nick’s belief that his wife was having an illicit affair.
By the time Jennie had been born, Candace had been drained. The strain of the imminent parting from her baby had taken its toll. After nine months spent caring for her unborn baby, suddenly there was a dark, black hole of loss that threatened to swallow her.
Her mother had known instantly that something was wrong. She’d assumed—wrongly—that her daughter must’ve fallen in love with someone across the ocean.
Of course, Candace hadn’t been able to confess the enormity of what she’d done. The only way to survive was not to think about Jennie. To get back to work. It hadn’t taken her long to realize her days as a pediatric nurse were over.
She couldn’t bear to work with babies and children. Every time she looked into a little girl’s face, Candace wondered about her baby girl. What she was doing. And, most important, if she was loved.
The decision to switch to working in the emergency room—as far away from young babies as she could get—had been inevitable.
Then her mother had almost died.
Catherine had fallen off a ladder while packing winter blankets into storage and cracked her skull. It had been touch and go—and had taken a week for her to regain consciousness. The doctors had feared she would be permanently brain-damaged.
Looking at her mother now, Candace marveled over the amazing changes time had wrought.
Her mother wasn’t out of the woods yet and she still suffered memory lapses, but with every month that passed, Catherine grew stronger. The chances of the stroke that the doctors had initially feared were lessening.
“I’d like to go sit in the garden,” her mother said suddenly. “And I’m sure Jennie would like that far better than being cooped up in an old woman’s room.”
