“Come in out of the rain,” Star sighed. “I’ll make tea and then you can tell me all about it.”
Pollen pranced happily around Georgia, barking with joy as they made their way back toward the cottages. Georgia winced. The blister made every step agonizing. Her white Esplar leather sneakers were now coated in mud and made strange squishing sounds with every step. Most likely ruined. She sighed in discouragement.
In the kitchen of one of the tidy yellow cottages, Georgia sat barefoot while Star steeped two mugs of tea, feeling like a bedraggled stray kitten. Everything was wet. There were droplets of water dripping off the ends of her curls. She was steaming in the warmth of the kitchen. Star handed her a towel.
“Why don’t you get out of those wet clothes,” she suggested. “You’ll catch a chill. I’ll find some dry clothes you can borrow.”
Georgia gratefully accepted the stretchy broom skirt and warm sweatshirt Star had found for her. It was not at all her style, and didn’t match all that well, but it was warm and dry. She hastily changed and toweled off her hair in the tiny bathroom. The cottage was no more than four hundred square feet, she guessed. She’d glimpsed a small bedroom nestled next to the bathroom and passed through a snug sitting room on her way from the kitchen. It almost looked like a holiday cottage, cute but cramped. The perfect size for one person. She didn’t recognize any of the furnishings. It looked like it had come fully furnished. There were a few small items she recognized from the cottage, photos and mementos of Star’s.
When Georgia came back into the kitchen, Star set a steaming mug of tea down in front of her and sat down across the table. For a moment, she just looked at Georgia, then heaved a deep sigh. “So you gave up the chef position you were hoping for?”
“I did,” Georgia confirmed.
Star frowned. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go,” she said, almost as though she were talking to herself.
“How was it supposed to go?” Georgia asked a touch testily. She was bone-tired from the past few days of travel and the regrettable walk through the mud. And now her mother seemed less than enthusiastic about her unexpected reappearance. She took a sip of tea. Mint for wisdom, fennel for strength, and a touch of chamomile for patience. She needed all of it and more.
“You were supposed to be safely in Paris, living your own life. I wanted to see you happy and secure before...” Star stopped, staring down at her tea.
“Before what?” Georgia asked.
Star gave her an inscrutable look. “Before my mind fails,” she said bluntly. “But surely, you can go back to Paris. It’s not too late to do what you want to do.”
“I am doing what I want to do,” Georgia said firmly. “I left Paris for good. I’m here with you now. This is what I want.”
This entire reunion was taking a very uncomfortable turn.
Star shook her head. “You were only supposed to be here for a little while,” she insisted. “I wanted to see you again and then I wanted to know you were safely living the life you’d always dreamed of. That’s what I wanted for you. Not this.” She looked exasperated. “There’s nothing here for you, Georgia.”
Georgia was hurt and more than a little annoyed. “You don’t get to make that decision for me,” she snapped. “You blame Daddy for keeping us apart when I was little, but you’re trying to do the same thing now. I’m not a child anymore. And I don’t want to be safely ensconced in a Paris kitchen while you’re here fighting this disease.” She took a deep breath to calm herself and said the words that were in her heart. “I want to be here... with you. No matter what. For all of it. You’re my mother, and we’ve lost too much time already. Let’s enjoy the time we have left. Please.”
Star’s face fell. “Georgia, no,” she protested. “I’m doing okay now, but this is a fast-acting neurological disease. Pretty soon I’m going to start forgetting a lot of important things. Eventually, I won’t even know my own name. I won’t know you. I don’t want you to see me like that. I’ll be nothing but a burden to you.”
She looked so vulnerable it broke Georgia’s heart. Her mother had been trying to protect her for her entire life. She’dleft when Georgia was little and kept away all these years in the mistaken belief that her absence was the gift she could give to her daughter, that she had nothing good to offer. Now she was trying to do it again.
“But what if I want to take care of you?” Georgia challenged. “What if I choose to stay?”
“Georgia.” Star looked helpless. “Please, I want you to live your life, not waste it here with me while my mind fades away.”
“It’s not a waste,” Georgia said. “For years I’ve felt like my heart had an empty place in it, ever since you left, a hole right in the center. And for years, I thought Paris would fill it, that achieving my dream would fill it, but it turns out Paris and winning the chef position at La Lumière Dorée didn’t fit the shape of that hole after all. Do you know what did?”
Mutely Star shook her head.
“Knowing who I really am, seeing that you love me, being here with you.”
Star’s eyes filled with tears. She hesitated. “I’m afraid you’ll regret it,” she said softly. “You think it will be fine now, but I know what it is like to care for someone. At the end, with Justine, it was grueling. It was so hard. I don’t want you to see me like that. I can’t ask that of you.”
“You’re not asking,” Georgia said gently. “I’m offering.” She reached out and grabbed Star’s hand, holding on tight. “I’m sorry I left so abruptly last time. I was hurt and angry. I felt like you were leaving me all over again and I had no say in it. It felt too painful to stay. I left you before you could leave me again.”
“I’m not leaving by choice,” Star interjected softly, her fingers gripping Georgia’s. “I’d give anything to change the past, to not make those mistakes all those years ago that hurt you. And I’d give anything to stop what’s happening to me now.”
“I know,” Georgia sighed. She released her mother’s handand wrapped her fingers around the warmth of her mug. “But you can’t. We can’t change the past or the future, I know that. But here’s the thing I’ve been thinking about. When we love, we always face loss, don’t we? Love and loss go hand in hand. Someday, each of us will have to say goodbye to the ones we love, or they will say goodbye to us. It’s inevitable.” She toyed with the handle of her mug. “I grew up in Baptist Sunday school. I know that death is not the end of the story. It’s just a doorway we all pass through at some point. When we die, our souls live on, and even when death separates us, we’ll someday get to be together again. Death is just a ‘see you later.’ But even ‘see you later’ is hard. It hurts. I already lost you once. I don’t want to lose you just when I found you again.” Georgia glanced up at Star earnestly. “I wish I could heal you of this disease. I wish we could have so many more years together here. But if that wish can’t come true, then I want to spend as many days as I can with you. And when you close your eyes for the final time, when we have to say that last ‘see you later,’ I want to be there holding your hand.”
Star sniffed and blinked hard. “I don’t deserve that,” she said bluntly. “I failed you so badly as a mother. I don’t deserve your love and your care now.” She looked down at her hands twisted in her lap.
Georgia considered her words. “You did fail me,” she admitted. “If I’m honest, I’m still really angry with you and Daddy. I’m trying to come to grips with what you did and how much it cost me. I’ve been wrestling with it since I left. The confusing thing is that I don’t know how I can be so angry at you and still love you and want to be with you at the same time. It’s a paradox. But I’ve realized something over the past few weeks.”
She thought of her father standing almost larger than life inthe bedroom of Star’s cottage, his Stetson in his hand, explaining his decision to forgive Star.As the years pass, you either soften or you calcify, he’d told her.It’s time to lighten the load.Words of wisdom about forgiveness from a man she was still struggling to forgive.
