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“Mourning a mother I never had?”
“Mourning the mother you wish she was.” She squeezed his hand. “We all have an image of who we wish our parents were. The parents we needed and wanted, the parents we envision when we think about the people we want to be close to that way. Realizing those people never existed and will never exist is difficult. It’s a kind of death.”
“I hadn’t thought about it that way.” He glanced over at her and quirked a small smile. “You’re pretty wise, Hanna Sparrow.”
Her face heated with a blush. “I’m not, but you’re nice to say so. I’ve just been there before and learned this lesson the hard way.”
“Didn’t have the parents you wanted either, hm?”
“Not so much. Mine weren’t, um…” She gestured towards the door with her free hand. “They weren’tthat, but they weren’t what I might have wished for. My mom and dad got divorced when I was a kid. Mom got custody by default, and I saw Dad summers and holidays. He started dating, remarried, and sort of faded off except for child support payments.”
“That’s sad.”
“It was almost mutual. He had a new life, his new wife and I didn’t fight but we also didn’t click, and I just didn’t fit there. My mom and I got along all right, but the divorce hadn’t been her idea. I think I was a reminder of something that still hurt.” Hanna shrugged, a little more casual than she felt. “She remarried, too, eventually. My stepfather is nice enough. I’m not sure he knew what to do with someone else’s child, but he made an effort. Then my mother got pregnant again and they had a new focus.”
One of his eyebrows arched. “Did they treat you poorly?”
“Not really. They just didn’t treat me at all. My half-sister is their golden child. The child the two of them made. Their favoritism was obvious. For holidays, I got necessities, and she got everything she wanted. I got a cake for my birthday, she got a huge party. They’re paying her way through a good college. They told me to get scholarships and take out student loans. Which half the time, I didn’t qualify for, because they make too much money and I lived in their house.”
He winced. “Wow.”
“I had a pretty expensive mistake. Signed up for a semester of classes with my financial aid still processing, finished out, then discovered it didn’t come through because of them, and I had to pay. Which I couldn’t do. It interrupted my school career. By then, though, I’d taken up nannying, and had no time to go back. Someday.”
“I hope so,” he said. “You deserve it. Maybe I can help.”
“That’s part of what I mean to do with what I earn working here. Better myself, get my life in order.”Working for you. While I’m sitting here, holding your hand. Dang it, Hanna.She removed her hand from his. “Your grandmother seems to have taken good care of you.”
“She did. You heard about the child she lost.”
Heard, and know you have the wrong idea.The tag sat in the pocket of her skirt, where she didn’t realize she’d stuffed it in her kerfuffle with Darlene. “I did.”
“After that, she couldn’t have more children. When my mother left me, Gran was glad to raise me just like her own son. My grandfather hadn’t had any children from his first marriage, so I got all the attention.”
“Wait, wait.” A story, and probably a scandal, lurked here, and she didn’t know where. “If your grandfather didn’t have any children from your grandmother, and none from his first marriage…”
Gregory coughed and grimaced. “My grandfather cheated on his first wife. When I was old enough to understand, he told me it was a horrible mistake. His marriage had cooled and hit a low point. He met a woman who reminded him what it was to feel young. I think he meant to leave his wife for her, even, but then trouble popped up. Namely, his mistress got pregnant.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh indeed. That wouldn’t have been a problem in itself, except that she also found out he hadn’t been entirely straight with her. He hadn’t told her who he was, or what he was worth. I’m not sure he meant to keep it from her so much as wanted to build a relationship based on emotion, not dollar signs. Money changes people.”
“Money changes a lot of things. Especially when you don’t have it.”
He inclined his head. “I didn’t know my family was well off when I was a kid. Gran saw to that. She wanted me to understand the value of a dollar. But I also never went hungry or watched the strain in my parents’ faces as they figured out how to stretch their budget. My mother’s mother didn’t have a lot. So she found out her lover was loaded and hadn’t told her, and I think she flipped.”
Hanna could see it already. A woman struggling to pay her bills, working hard for very little. Discovering herself pregnant, panicking at what that would cost in expenses and lost wages, wondering how she would tell her lover about it. Then finding out he had a multinational company with billions in profits. “Oh. Oh, dear.”
“Whatever she wanted to do, he wanted to support it. Pay for an abortion if she wanted one, see to it the child was adopted by good people and had a nice life if that was what she wanted. Raise the baby with her if she wanted to keep them. All he asked was that she keep it quiet for a while. That way, he could settle matters at home. Tell his wife the right way, and I don’t know if they had a prenup, but if they did, odds are good it included a clause for unfaithfulness.”
She thought of Julia Dawson and wondered what kind of prenuptial agreement she had with her husband. If it had a clause for kissing the nanny, and what he would do to prevent her from activating it. “She didn’t want to.”
“No. She told him she was keeping the child and not keeping anything quiet unless he agreed to marry her. After he’d not been forthcoming before, I suspect she didn’t want to take anything on faith.”
“I don’t know that I would. That’s how more than one woman has ended up strung along as a mistress or abandoned entirely.”
“Yep. Unfortunately, my grandfather didn’t react well to what he perceived as a threat. His wife left him and got a healthy divorce settlement. His mistress got very generous child support. But she never got a ring.”
“Ouch.” Hanna gusted a breath. “I don’t want to offend you, but your grandfather was kind of an asshole.”
