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We turned to look at each other. Blood had drained from all of our faces.
“Foster mother?”
She went to the window again and turned her back to us, as though facing us was too painful.
“I never knew my real mother,” she said. “At five, I was fostered out to the Lambs. They didn’t have any children. My foster mother couldn’t conceive.”
“Is she still alive?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’m still in contact. She knows to stay away. She’s well supported.”
“Did she know what he did?” Declan’s voice had a steely edge. I knew about Theadora’s past. He even confided, after a few drinks, that he’d thought of arranging a hit on his wife’s stepfather. Hair-raising admission as that was, I still sympathised. Had that happened to Mirabel, I wouldn’t have hesitated to do just that. Sometimes crimes of passion, as the Italians called it, blurred the moral line.
“My foster mother knew.” Looking haunted, she turned to face us again. “She begged me not to press charges. He was a weak man. But when he drank, he turned into a monster. At least he’s dead.” She took a deep breath. “After I discovered I was pregnant, I made the decision to have the child adopted rather than a termination.” Her mouth hung as she tried to form words.
Seeing our normally stoic mother crack with emotion made my heart weep. I wanted to hold her. But instead, I remained a frozen lump, trying to process this devastating and tragic insight into her early life. I had this impatient need to know her full story. The real story that we’d been denied up to now. I wanted to understand minute details, like whether they were poor or middle class and what their home was like. All those kinds of trivial, but yet important, questions.
“My god, so you really don’t know anything about your real mother?” Savanah asked.
She shook her head. “Finding her became an obsession of mine, especially after I married and had the resources and necessary means to search for her.”
“Your foster mother doesn’t know who your real mother was?” Declan asked.
“No. My birth mother stipulated that she remain a secret. A secret that has imprisoned me all my life.” Her voice trembled.
Savanah stood by our mother at the window and placed her arm around her. Welcome silence filled the room. Giving us time to digest and reflect on this heart-wrenching revelation.
I looked at Declan, who looked like I felt: wide-eyed and lost for words. In my case, I knew if I tried to speak, I might sob. My heart ached for my mother so badly, a clenching lump settled in my chest.
My mother returned to the table and sat down. “That’s why I’m so protective of all of you.” Her voice cracked again, and my eyes burned, pricking with emotion.
“How were you able to keep supporting yourself at that age? I mean you ran away after that, didn’t you?” I asked.
She nodded. I could see the struggle of all those years in her eyes. “I worked as a waitress and managed to keep my studies alive. I got a scholarship, and when I met Reynard, he helped.”
“So youwerelovers?” Savanah asked.
She nodded. “For a while. I mean, I was very much besotted.” Her mouth flickered into the makings of a shy smile. This was a new woman I was looking at. My normally tough mother had turned into a lost child. She played with her fingers. “He wasn’t into long-term relationships. But he paid for me to go to Oxford.”
“Considering everything you went through, that was so brilliant of you to finish your studies, Mummy. In flying colours too.” Savanah spoke for me because beneath this heavy blanket of deep pathos, a swelling of respect and pride grew for my mother. Many would have buckled under the weight of such horror, but she still managed to focus and move ahead in her life. For that alone, my mother deserved more than just respect. She deserved a fucking medal.
“Knowledge is power,” my mother said with a flicker of a smile.
There was something to be admired of anyone who gets to realise their ambition while struggling to survive—a battle I’d never fought. It had all been too easy. Perhaps that was why I didn’t respect the knowledge that had been offered at the time.
She continued to fiddle with her fingernails then added, “I met your father when I was nineteen and in my first year at Oxford. When I fell pregnant, he married me.”
“So do you think Dad only married you because of your pregnancy, knowing that he was gay?”
Great question.I appreciated my sister’s straight-to-the-point approach.
“No. Wedidlove each other. He had a girlfriend before me.” She hesitated for a moment.
“That’s Alice. He told us about her,” Savanah said.
My mother’s frown deepened, and she turned pale. Declan sat up as I glanced over at him. Tense silence followed. There were still too many questions.
Chapter 35
