father again. She meant it when she said that she was through with me. I had to get by on my own. It wasn’t easy.” She added defiantly, “I know I wasn’t what most people would call a good mother, but I did what I could. Don’t you blame me, Eve.”
“I’m not blaming you,” she said wearily. It was too late to condemn Sandra or hold her accountable. Too many years had passed, too much water under the bridge of life. This new knowledge might hurt, but she couldn’t change human nature. Sandra was what she was, and those traits and frailties had been formed by the life she had led. “I’m just trying to understand. You’ve thrown me a curve, Sandra.”
“I don’t know why. This isn’t really about you. It’s about Beth.”
And Sandra couldn’t see the domino effect learning about Beth Avery had caused in Eve’s life. “I guess that for you, that’s all it’s about.” She took a sip of coffee and tried to gather her thoughts. “Okay, let’s talk about Beth. You said she was a mental patient in Santa Barbara. How do you know? You told me that you’d signed papers giving her up, that they had total control of her.”
“And I did the right thing,” she said quickly. “When she had the accident, I would never have been able to give her the kind of care the Averys did.”
“Accident?”
“She had a skiing accident when she was seventeen and had a severe concussion that caused brain damage. That’s why they had to put her in that mental hospital to try to get her better.”
“Seventeen…” Eve was having trouble not only accepting her relationship to Beth Avery, but bringing into focus their separate pasts. “That would have been about the time I gave birth to Bonnie, wouldn’t it?”
Sandra nodded. “But I didn’t know much about her then. It was after Bonnie was killed that I decided I had to find out if my Beth was doing well.” She added in a whisper, “I missed Bonnie so much, Eve. I did love her. After I gave up Beth, I thought I’d never feel like that again, but Bonnie was special.”
“Yes, she was wonderful.” She looked out at the lake, remembering just how special and wonderful her daughter had been. “And when we lost Bonnie, you felt you had to reach out to Beth?”
Sandra nodded. “Not really reach out. It was too late. She was already in that hospital. But it made me feel kind of nice to find out things about her. Like she was really mine. I hired a detective to tell me all he could about her.”
“And what did he find out? I can’t imagine the Avery family accepting her.”
She shook her head. “They placed her with a couple, Laura and Robert Avery, who were distant cousins of Rick’s father and lived in a small town in Virginia. They were the poor relations of the family and were very grateful to be paid so well to take care of Beth. Nelda didn’t want anyone to connect Rick to her, so Laura Avery told everyone that Beth was the daughter of Nelda’s uncle who lived in Switzerland. That way they had an excuse to send her to different schools in Geneva and Rome. They didn’t want her in this country and have to answer questions about her. It was much easier to keep her in Europe as much as possible.”
“Why not all the time? Why that house in Virginia?”
“Well, after she was five, she was always at boarding school. But Rick wanted to go see her sometimes when she was little. He liked her.”
“What?”
“Why are you surprised? I told you he was a good guy. Why wouldn’t he care about my daughter?”
Eve wasn’t going to argue how that “good guy” had carelessly impregnated a girl who was little more than a child. “How do you know that was the reason?”
“He told me so. After I found out about the accident, I went to see him, and he told me all about her. I thought he’d be mad because I wasn’t supposed to get in touch with any of them after I signed those papers.” She smiled. “But he was real nice, just like I remembered him. He told me I was just as young and pretty as the day he met me.”
“And what did he tell you about Beth?”
“What I told you. He said that his mother wanted to keep her totally out of sight, but he’d