her, but they were land to her, and it was a difficult moment. “I wanted to ask her why she did a lot of things before she left me.” He could see easily that her questions were painful, and he began to suspect that there was more to the story than he had ever dreamed of, and he decided to be honest with her. It was too late now to be otherwise. And he felt that Gabriella deserved at least that from him. It was all he had to give her.
“Gabriella, I'm going to level with you. You may not like it, but maybe it will help you. I was married to your mother for the worst nine years of my life. We were talking about getting a divorce when she got sick, but I didn't feel right about it under the circumstances. I thought I should stick by her, and I did. But she was a cold, difficult, angry, vicious, vengeful woman, and I don't think she had a kind bone in her body. I don't know what kind of a mother she was to you, but I'd venture to say that she was no nicer to you than she was to me, and maybe the nicest thing she ever did for you was leave you at St. Matthew's. She was a hateful woman.” He said it dispassionately, and his new wife patted his hand as he said it. “I'm sorry she left you,” he went on, “but I can't imagine you'd ever have been happy with her, even with me around. When I was going out with her in New York, she forbade me to speak to you, and I never understood it. You were the cutest little thing I'd ever seen, and I love kids. I have five of my own in Texas, but they wouldn't even come here to visit when I was married to her. She hated them, and they hated her right up until the day she died, and I'm not sure I blame them. By the time she died, I wasn't too fond of her either. She was a woman without many redeeming features. Her obituary was the shortest one I've ever seen, because no one could think of anything nice to say about her.” And then, looking back into the past, he remembered something else he had forgotten. “You know, back in New York, she tried to tell me that you had destroyed her marriage to your father. I never figured that one out, but I always got the feeling then that she was jealous of you, and that's why she gave up custody to your father. She didn't want you around, sweetheart. But I never figured for a minute she'd desert you. I wouldn't have married her if I knew that. Any woman who can do a thing like that… well, it tells you something about ‘em… But knowing what she was, I believe it of her now. Amazing that for all those years, I never knew anything about it. I just figured it was painful for her talking about giving you up, so we never talked about you.”
It was indeed an amazing story. They had all forgotten her, buried her with the past, both her mother and her father. She truly had been abandoned by them.
And then she began telling the Waterfords what it had been like, what her mother had done to her, and how her father had let it happen, the beatings, the hospitals, the bruises, the hatred, the accusations. Her story went on for a long time and took a long time to tell, but when it was over, all three of them were crying, and Frank Waterford was holding her hand, and his wife, Jane, had an arm around her shoulders. They were the nicest people she'd ever met, and she knew for a fact that her mother had never deserved him. She'd just been lucky, and he'd paid a high price for the pleasure of her company. He still looked grim when he talked about her, but so did Gabbie.
“I wanted to ask her,” Gabbie said tearfully, as she sat with them, “why she never loved me.” It was the key to everything for her. The final answer. And now she would never know it. What was it about her that they couldn't love? Was it her or them? It was as though she had expected her mother to apologize, to beg her forgiveness, to