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Chapter Seven
Brigit smiled. “I thought I better come and see you in person. Apparently, you’re not much of a phone person,” her mother said, arching her eyebrows.
Deidre stepped back and waved her mother inside. She studied her unobtrusively as she took her coat and hung it. Brigit looked healthy and vibrant dressed in a dark blue sweater and a scarf with gray dress pants. Her mother had always been chic and effortlessly lovely, but her health had recently been a source of concern for her sons and daughters. When Marc had told her about Brigit’s mild heart attack last year, Deidre had had a wild urge to jump on a plane and return to Michigan. To this day, Deidre didn’t know if she hadn’t because she was still angry or because she was afraid she wouldn’t know what to say to her mother after all these years.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” Deidre asked awkwardly.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Please, sit down,” Deidre said, nodding toward the breakfast nook.
“Odd that it should come to this,” Brigit said with a small smile. “Mother and daughter, talking to one another like acquaintances.”
Deidre paused in the action of filling the teakettle. “Odd? Maybe. Understandable though.”
“You were a girl when you left Harbor Town,” Brigit said, twisting in her chair to face Deidre. “You’re a woman, now. Surely time has given some perspective to your hurt about what you discovered on the night of Derry’s death. Or maybe I can’t help but be hopeful that it has.”
Deidre set the teapot on the lit stove and approached Brigit slowly. “Are you suggesting that my anger at learning that I wasn’t Derry’s daughter was the melodramatics of a teenager, Mom? Dad died later that night because he’d discovered the same thing. Dad was a grown man, tough as nails. He was destroyed by that news.”
“No...no, of course I’m not suggesting that,” Brigit hurried to say. Her elegant throat convulsed as she swallowed. She waved toward a chair. “Sit down, Deidre. We haven’t spoken to one another in private for a long, long time.”
“Not since the night before I left Harbor Town, the night you refused to tell me my biological father’s name,” Deidre agreed, a hint of a challenge in her tone. Nevertheless, she sat down at the table next to her mother, her backbone rigid. Brigit met her stare and gave her a trembling smile.
“You have no idea now happy I was to see you at Liam and Natalie’s dress rehearsal,” she said feelingly.
“You shouldn’t assume anything by it beyond the obvious. I came for Liam’s wedding.”
Brigit shook her head slowly. “No, Deidre.”
“What do you mean, no?”
Brigit placed her hand on top of hers. It felt soft and warm next to her skin...a kind touch, a mother’s touch. “We may be acting like strangers, but that’s a lie. You’re my daughter. I know you as well as I know my own name. Don’t you think I remember how fierce you can be, and yet how generous?”
A band seemed to tighten around Deidre’s throat. She didn’t know if she was generous or forgiving. She didn’t know what she was.
“Remember Leslie Warden?” Brigit asked.
Deidre blinked, surprised by the question and the name from the far past.
“She and her friends bullied you nonstop one summer between your third and fourth grade year. You stood up for yourself, though. You never backed down. And when Leslie pushed too hard one day, you gave her a bloody nose,” Brigit recalled, caressing her hand.
“You and Dad grounded me for three weeks when you found out,” Deidre remembered in a tight voice.
“We found out because you confessed it to us. You were beyond regretful. You were distraught. Between your sobs, Derry and I finally figured out that you were horrified you’d caused all that blood...all that pain. After that, you made it your mission to make things right with Leslie Warden. Your father and I never said a word to you about it. We didn’t have to. You were fixed and determined about making up with that girl. And you did. The two of you were friends after that for years, even though she was a Harbor Town year-rounder and you only came during the summers. You may be fierce in your anger, Deidre, but you also possess one of the most forgiving spirits I’ve ever known. You wouldn’t have returned to Harbor Town if you wanted this rift between us to continue.”
“A lot can change about a person in half a lifetime,” Deidre said, holding her mother’s stare. “Circumstances can stretch a person’s ability for forgiveness beyond tolerance.”
“Like Lincoln’s death, for instance?”
“Like Lincoln’s death after I’d only had the chance to know him for three months,” Deidre corrected. The teakettle began to whine. Her mother leaned toward her, her blue eyes moist.
“I can’t change it, Deidre. I’ve wished I’d done things differently a thousand times over since you left Harbor Town. I’ve made myself sick with regrets. I know you probably don’t want to hear it, but I thought I was doing what was best for you and Derry. Think of the heartache I’d have caused by confessing about the affair.”
“That may have been true until I was a teenager, Mom, but what about after Dad died? I can’t believe you were never planning to tell me the identity of my biological father. You knew Lincoln would have wanted to know me,” she burst out heatedly.
“I considered telling you, but you’ve refused to speak to me all these years. You wouldn’t come home. When I understood from your brothers and sister that you’d never revealed to them what you’d overheard on the night Derry and I argued, I assumed I was doing what you would have wanted by not speaking of it. I thought that my secret had become yours.”
Deidre just stared, taken aback by her mother’s pressured admission.
