Star grabbed a mug from the cupboard and turned to face her daughter. “Because I wanted a chance for us to get to know each other again without my diagnosis standing between us,” she said frankly. “When people hear the word ‘dementia,’ it changes how they see you. When they know you have a disease, it stops people from being able to see who you still are. I watched it happen with Justine and the cancer. They stop seeing you as a whole person and just see you as your sickness. I hadn’t been with you in twenty-eight years and I was desperate for a little window of time where you saw me as I am now, just Star, not a woman with a terrible disease slowly consuming her brain. I just wanted... a little time together before I told you the truth.” She met Georgia’s eyes, her own pleading for understanding.
Wordlessly, Georgia stirred the pudding. She didn’t know what to say to Star. Was she asking for absolution or simply understanding? Georgia understood, but it did not lessen the pain she felt over Star’s duplicity or the reality of her disease.
“You should have told me,” she said finally.
Star nodded. “You’re right,” she admitted. “But would you have come if I did? Would we have been able to get to know each other like we have these past few weeks?”
Georgia hesitated. What would have changed if she’d known earlier? She would still have come to see Star, surely, but would she have treated Star differently? Would she have protected her heart and kept her mother at arm’s length? Would she have missed out on the gift of these precious weeks together where it had just been the two of them each morning, talking and reconnecting?
“I thought we had more time,” she said quietly, grieved.
“I was trying to give us more time,” Star said, spooning some tea leaves into her mug and adding hot water from the electric kettle. “Cole kept telling me that I had to come clean with you, but I kept delaying telling you. I wanted just one more day with you. Every day I wanted just one more day. I knew it was wrong to not tell you, but I was so afraid that if I did, you’d disappear, or choose to keep me at a distance.” She looked up at Georgia. “You have every right to be angry with me, but honestly, I wouldn’t trade these few weeks with you for anything on earth. They’ve been the happiest of my life.”
Georgia nodded. “They have for me too,” she admitted. She blinked and looked away, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. She kept stirring the pudding, more for something to do than because it needed it. She was going to make it mushy if she kept it up.
A moment of silence stretched between them. Pollen lifted her head and gave a low “woof” just as they heard the heavy tread of a man’s footsteps in the hall. A moment later, Buck came into the kitchen. He looked like he’d slept in his Levi’s and his battered ranch hand leather jacket. His hair was growing sparse, Georgia noticed when he removed his hat. Her father was getting older. The realization hit her with a sharp little twist in her gut. He was still vigorous, but there were new lines in his weathered face, and his shoulders were a little stooped. He still filleda room when he entered it, though, with a firm authority and a strong presence.
“Ladies,” he greeted them, then stood awkwardly in the doorway, turning his Stetson in his hands. “I should be getting on the road.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the door with a touch of longing as though he couldn’t wait to get out of that kitchen. “I’ve got a flight back to Texas this afternoon. I need to be getting back to the ranch. It’s the busy season.”
“No one is going anywhere yet,” Georgia said firmly. “Not until you both tell me the truth. So I suggest you get comfortable. I made you breakfast.”
Buck opened his mouth in what looked like surprise or protest, but Georgia pinned him with a fierce glance. “I have been waiting for almost thirty years to understand what happened to my mother,” she said, her tone steely with determination. “I know you two kept it a secret from me, but that ends today. No more secrets. I deserve to know.”
Buck scratched his head and glanced at Star, who spread her hands wide. “I would have told her years ago,” she said.
Buck sat down heavily in a chair. “Okay then.” He sighed. “Is there any coffee? Sounds like I’m going to need it.”
Five minutes later, Buck was sipping a cup of coffee, strong and black as tar, just the way he liked it. Across the table from him, Star nervously clutched her mug of tea. Pollen whined and put her head on her paws, lying on the floor, eyes shifting back and forth between Star and Buck. Georgia slid bowls of rice pudding in front of her parents.
“Eat this before we talk,” she ordered.
Star took the bowl slowly and cocked her head at Georgia, eyeing her thoughtfully. Georgia ignored her. She took the chair at the end of the table where she could see both of them easily. She couldn’t believe they were all here, sitting at the sametable. It felt surreal. For so many years, she’d had questions that went unanswered. Now before her were the two people who she suspected held the keys to every question. And she intended to make sure they finally told her the truth. She was not going to budge until she got answers.
After a few minutes of clinking spoons and quiet slurps, when their bowls were almost empty, Georgia looked from Star to Buck and asked, “I want you to tell me what happened to our family.” She folded her arms and fixed her parents with a determined gaze.
Star shot Buck a look and raised her eyebrows. “You swore me to secrecy,” she said. “And I’ve kept my end of the bargain all these years. It’s up to you to end it.”
Buck frowned, considering for a moment. Then he slapped his hand down on the table and sighed in resignation. “I guess we’re past the point of secrets now,” he said. He looked at Star. “Do you want to tell her or should I?”
“I will,” Star said quietly. She looked steadily at Georgia. “I was nineteen and headed west, running from a mean stepdaddy in Georgia, the one I told you about, when my car broke down in the middle of nowhere in West Texas. I was in trouble, though it took me a while to realize it. It was so hot, no water anywhere, and foolishly, I had nothing with me but an empty takeout cup of gas station coffee.” She looked down at her mug and toyed with the handle, her voice soft with remembering. “There were no cars coming by, nothing in sight except the scorched earth and the sweltering sun. I lasted for a couple of hours before I started feeling like I was going to pass out.”
“It was heatstroke,” Buck interjected. “When I found her, she was suffering from heatstroke.”
Star nodded. “I was sitting in the shade of my broken-downcar, trying to keep cool in the broiling heat, when here came your daddy in his big Ford truck. He saved me, towed my car to the ranch, made me lie down on the sofa in front of a fan and take little tiny sips of water.” She smiled at the memory. “I fell in love with him right away. He was so big and strong and capable, so upstanding and honorable. I’d never met a man like him in my life.”
Buck looked surprised. “Well I’d never met a woman like her either,” he admitted, clearing his throat self-consciously.
“I was wild then,” Star explained to Georgia. “Beautiful and reckless. And your daddy looked at me like I was some rare creature. We were from two different worlds, but each hurt bad in our own ways. Our wounds fit together, just like we did somehow. We fell into bed before the weekend was out.”
At that, Buck made a noise of discomfort. Georgia glanced at him to find him staring fixedly at the ceiling, looking embarrassed. “She doesn’t need to know the particulars,” he said gruffly.
“A week later, I moved in,” Star said, ignoring him. “We had so little in common, but somehow we couldn’t seem to keep away from each other.”
Buck grunted in assent but said nothing more.
Star smiled sadly, a brief twist of her lips. There was a faraway look in her eyes. “The Jackson clan pitched a fit when your daddy introduced me to them,” she admitted. “I wasn’t what they wanted for their eldest son. I knew I wasn’t good enough for him. I had spent years lying and stealing just to survive. I was using drugs when I met Buck, trying to drown out a lot of things that had happened to me as a young girl. I’d been used and abused by a lot of men by the time I stumbled onto the ranch. But when I met Buck, I knew he was one of thegood ones. And I tried so hard to be good enough for him, for all of them.” Star looked regretful. “Then I got pregnant with you. His family hated me even more when they found out about the baby, thinking I was trying to trap him, but it wasn’t like that. We both thought of you as a gift, Georgia, right from the very start.”
“That’s God’s honest truth,” Buck interjected.
