A Mother's Secret Read Online Free PDF Page B

one when he was younger, an ally closer in age to him. Now, the idea of acknowledging another man as his brother felt too much like replacing Adam, who’d screwed up his own life later but had done his best when Daniel was young to make up for his father’s neglect. Sam Carson was no substitute.
    Daniel shrugged before realizing Joe wouldn’t be able to see him. “Do you remember Rebecca Ballard?” he asked abruptly.
    There was a moment’s silence as his nephew changed gears. “The one who looked like a dancer and worked for the Chamber? Sure. Why?”
    “I ran into her the other day. I was down in El Granada, had lunch at this place in Moss Beach. She happened to be there.”
    “Yeah?” Joe sounded cautious. “And?”
    Daniel realized he was on his feet for no reason. “No ‘and.’ She just caught me by surprise.”
    “There was something about her,” Joe said thoughtfully.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” He walked over to stare unseeing out the window.
    “Nothing. Just strikes me that I don’t remember a singlewoman you dated that long ago except her.” He paused. “You wouldn’t have mentioned seeing her if you weren’t bothered.”
    “No,” he said brusquely. “Just a blast from the past.”
    “Ah.”
    Joe let him change the subject, and they hung up shortly thereafter. Daniel carried his glass of wine into the kitchen and took some ravioli out of the freezer. He’d toss it with pesto sauce.
    As he sliced French bread and waited for the water to boil, he cursed himself for mentioning her at all to Joe. Why had he?
    Maybe the idea of getting back together with her appealed to him because she was familiar. All this family crap had him on edge. He kept thinking back to his childhood and seeing scenes as if they were double exposed. Who was the mother he’d taken for granted, as kids did? Clearly, she’d had an inner life he had never imagined. He’d always known she battled depression. Given Adam’s problems later in life, Daniel had suspected it might run in their family. Now he knew, or guessed, that grief rather than clinical depression had cast the shadow he’d felt like an aura. Grief for the child she gave up, grief for the man she must have loved for much of her life.
    He drained the ravioli and dished it up along with some asparagus and the French bread, then went to the table to eat. He distracted himself with the front page of the newspaper, but was still moody even after he’d cleaned up the kitchen.
    Daniel had to think to remember where he’d put the photo album his mother had kept for him. There had been one for Adam, too, and later for Joe, who must also have his father’s now. For each of them, the annual school pictures were included, as well as occasional snapshots from family vacations or momentous occasions.
    He found it in a bookcase in his bedroom after having a flash of memory: Rebecca sitting cross-legged on his bed, the album open in front of her. She’d asked him about pictures, the people in them, why that trophy had meant something and whether he and his mother had just quarreled before a picture was snapped. Daniel suspected his answers hadn’t been particularly revealing.
    Now he carried the album downstairs, poured himself some coffee, and went back to the living room. He flipped it open on his lap, to the first picture, in the hospital within a day of his birth. Vern had probably taken it, or else, presumably, he’d have been in it. Mom wore a hospital gown, but had brushed her hair as though in preparation for having the moment recorded. The tenderness as she looked down at him, a standard-issue newborn cradled against her breast, surprised him. Tender wasn’t a word he associated with her.
    He got a little better-looking in the pages that followed. There he was, grinning at the camera, chubby still and sitting in a playpen. A couple of pages later, he was just learning to walk—maybe Vern or his mother had captured his first step, or close enough.