Amazing Grace by Lesley Crewe

Author:Lesley Crewe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nimbus
Published: 2015-08-14T13:28:27+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

NOW

Our food is cold and untouched. The entire restaurant is buzzing while Jonathan and I are in this bubble of long-ago memories. Neither of us speaks; we just look at each other with pain on our faces. The energy it took to tell him and the stamina he required to hear it are overwhelming. I have nothing left and by the slump of his shoulders, I know it’s the same for him.

“I don’t remember the day Dad died. I don’t remember any of it.”

“Consider that a gift.”

“Did you try and see me?”

“Of course I did. Once I made it into your grandfather’s house, but he had me arrested for trespassing.”

“Did you tell them you were my mother?”

“I told everyone who would listen to me, but your grandfather’s reach was vast. It’s very easy to brand a woman as a hysterical menace, someone to be put away and forgotten. When you have no one to vouch for you, people can paint you in any light they choose. After a while I had no mental or physical energy left. There was also you to consider. I didn’t think you needed any more trauma in your life.”

“I needed my mother.”

“I know that now, Jonathan. I should’ve known better; I lived with that horror myself. But I think at the time I was so depleted in mind, body, and spirit, that I wouldn’t have been any help to you. You would have been frightened by me.”

“You should have tried.”

“Yes, you’re right. I should have tried until it killed me. I live with that regret every day of my life. If I’d said no to Aaron’s plan and parted ways with him then, I could have gone back to Marble Mountain and raised you there myself. It was a scary thought at the time, but in the end I could have relied on neighbours and the few friends I had, and our lives would’ve been very different, and maybe even happier. That haunts me.”

“But if that was the case, I wouldn’t have Melissa.”

“You see. Something good did come of it in the end.”

“I thought you left me because I was bad. That you didn’t love me anymore.”

“Is that what your grandfather told you?”

“Pretty much. After a while I believed him.”

I take a sip of water and so does he, our food congealed on the plates in front of us. The waiter asks if we need anything and Jonathan asks him to take the food away and give us two coffees instead. Once the warm liquid goes down my now-hoarse throat, I feel a little better.

“Did you ever get my letter, with my Marble Mountain address and phone number?”

“The one you sent to Tommy’s parents? Yes, they gave it to me. I hid it from Grandfather, but I think now he might have found out about it, or even searched my room, because it was after that when he sent me away to boarding school. Probably so you couldn’t find me.”

“I thought maybe you’d get in touch with me when you were eighteen.

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