“Of course it is,” Margaret said, as though only an idiot would think otherwise. “I might have stayed back home. I could have managed—oh, not as well, but I’d have eventually gotten going. Then you arrived and, in spite of my having been the worst possible mother to you at the worst time in your life, you invited me back here. That tells me something.”
I paused, waited, asked, “What?”
“That there was a method to His madness.” The light in her eye was a throwback.
I got it. Religion and Margaret had always been entwined, which was why what I had seen at her house—or not seen—had been so jarring. “God?” I asked.
She nodded. “I thought He’d forgotten about me. But there you were, walking into my living room and whisking me up here. I didn’t want to come at first. I don’t deserve your help. I don’t deserve Edward’s, either. I was fixated on that until it struck me that there was a sign in your coming. He was giving me a second chance. This time it’s just me, just me, and I’m not blowing it.”
Her fluency, her belief—all I could do was stare at her in amazement.
“And if you dare,” she scolded with indignation, indeed, “say you don’t deserve this, I’ll scream. If I can move past that, can’t you?” She didn’t give me time to answer. “Do you forgive me for what I did to you?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I love you.”
“Then why isn’t it true the other way around? If I love you, why wouldn’t I forgive you?” She hurried on again before I could respond. “You’ve worked hard for this new life.” For a second, she considered. “Maybe I have, too, all those years of keeping the family going. I like it here, Maggie. I want to stay for a while—well, maybe not in this suite, because I still think it’s far too generous of Edward, and I have a business to run in Connecticut. I love that, too. I can go back and forth. But I want to be with you,” she said, and those spring-green eyes didn’t blink.
Gradually, they blurred, because I was crying again. She put an arm around my shoulder and drew me close enough to smell the one visceral scent that had been with me from birth.
I didn’t hear a knock at the door, but several beats later, she held me back. The end of her cast touched my cheek as her thumbs brushed at my tears. Then her full right hand cupped my cheek and, in a whisper she said, “It’s Edward. He’s a good man, Margaret Mackenzie. He loves you, too.”
* * *
Her words did something to me, though it was only when we were in the car that I felt the change, and then it was so subtle that I couldn’t put a name to it. I’m not sure I wanted to just then. Between the events of the last few hours and all that crying, I was wiped. The best I could do when Edward suggested taking a ride, was to put my arms in the parka he held and, without argument, walk with him out to the Jeep.
26
The night was quiet. Filling my lungs with moist, full-bodied April air, I felt soothed. If the press had been in the parking lot of the Inn earlier, they had either gone to bed or regrouped at the police station. We headed in the opposite direction. And yes, in sporadic moments, I thought of what lay behind. Grace had to be terrified. I had no idea what, if anything, they were telling her about Chris, and though I told myself that with the eyes of the world on the boy, he was physically safe, I couldn’t begin to imagine his emotional state. Jay had already talked with the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, but that was all we knew. I hadn’t heard from Michael Shanahan again. He would file a probation-violation report the next morning, at which point my fate would be in the hands of the same judge who had sentenced me five years before.
I should have been panicked. The worst was happening. I should have been terrified. As we drove north, though, the reasons why drifted off in the night. It wasn’t that I felt numb, certainly not mellow, though that word did come and go. Likewise, relief. With my greatest fear coming to pass, the wait was over.