A Mother's Homecoming Read Online Free PDF

lunch, find out if they’re back yet.” She wondered nervously what kind of reception she’d get from her only remaining family.
Not your
only
family.
    Yes, they were, she argued with herself. Pam had given up any right to claim Faith years ago—probably the most responsible thing she’d ever done. Even at eighteen she’d realized what a train wreck of a mother she would be.
    â€œIf you’re not going to track them down until after lunch, you still have a couple of hours to catch somez’s.” Annabel was half drill sergeant, half big sister. She was constantly admonishing Pam to eat, sleep and generally take better care of herself.
    Rest, however, didn’t seem to be in the cards. No sooner had Pam disconnected the call than there was a knock at her bedroom door. Surely it wasn’t time to check out already?
    â€œComing, Trudy.” As she shuffled to the door, Pam spared a second’s thought for her attire. She wasn’t exactly dressed for the day. Braless and bottomless except for a pair of bikini briefs, she wore a thin cotton T-shirt that was so oversized the hem fell halfway to her knees. Oh, well. The basics were covered. Cantankerous though she may be, Trudy didn’t seem like the type of person who shocked easily.
    Pam swung the door open, her greeting to the landlady dying unspoken on her lips. A fuse overloaded in her brain. She thought she could actually smell something burning as her mental processes short-circuited. Her mouth fell open, and an unintelligible squeak escaped. She glanced up—was it possible he’d gotten even taller?—into Nick Shepard’s piercing blue eyes; they used to look to her like a tropical lagoon, all the faraway paradises she longed to visit. Now they looked like Judgment Day.
    She couldn’t have been any more startled and horrified if her mother’s ghost had appeared at her door. “Y-you can’t be here.”
    His lips twisted into a cruel line she couldn’t reconcile with the boy who’d loved her. “You seem confused about which one of us doesn’t belong here, Pamela Jo.”
    â€œI meant, no, um, gentleman callers. Trudy’s rule. And it’s Pam.” Hearing him say the name she used togo by brought back a flood of memories—the kind that required an ark if you were to have any chance at survival.
    â€œWhat the hell are you doing in Mimosa,
Pam?
” The sneering tone made her think that even after all her years of resenting Mae, she was still just bush league when it came to anger. Here was a pro.
    She swallowed, fighting the urge to huddle into herself for protection. Right now, his glinting, accusatory gaze was locked on hers. She was afraid that if she crossed her arms over her chest, she might draw his attention to the fact that she was clad only in a T-shirt. She doubted he cared what she was—or wasn’t—wearing, but she felt painfully exposed already. “I came to town to talk to my mother.”
    Surprise momentarily softened his expression. Blinking, he rocked back on his heels, hands hooked in the pockets of his jeans. “You came to visit Mae? Voluntarily?” A rhetorical question since he didn’t give her time to answer or explain. Cloaked once again in cold hostility, he asked, “You do know you’re too late?”
    â€œI know.” She registered the taste of blood and realized she’d bitten her bottom lip. Hard. “I know I’m too late. I know I can’t … fix anything.” A fragment of the usual prayer tolled in her head like mournful bells.
The serenity to accept what I cannot change.
Today, there was no comfort in the phrase, only bleak finality.
    She gripped the edge of the door, steeling herself. A stronger person—one whose inner core hadn’t been mindlessly shrieking
ohGodohGod
ever since she’d seen Nick’s face—would pull herself together and try to turn this disaster