Antiques Foe by Barbara Allan

Author:Barbara Allan [Barbara Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2023-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

Vivian’s Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip

Not all sports collectibles need to be old to be valuable. Consider the lucky fan who waited patiently in the leftfield stand of Globe Life stadium on October 4, 2022, and caught Aaron Judge’s American League record-shattering sixty-second home run ball, estimated at being worth millions. While I’m happy for the ballplayer, it does make my 1962 Topps Roger Marris card less valuable … should I ever find it.

EIGHT

Sudden Death

I came out of a haze and saw my fourteen-year-old son slouched in a chair, sleeping. He had my face and fair hair. Was I dreaming this? Jake was in Chicago with his dad.

‘Jake …?’

His eyes came open. ‘Mom!’

‘Where am I?’ I asked, my mouth dry as cotton. I soon realized, from the tubes running in and out of me, that the answer was a hospital room. But I didn’t know how I’d gotten there, or why.

Jake was standing over me now, tears filling his eyes. ‘Do you remember anything?’

I tried. ‘Just … going into the shop through the alley, and …’

There my recollection ended.

Jake filled in for me: ‘Someone hit you on the back of your head.’

Which explained the head bandage, anyway.

‘Is Sushi all right?’ I asked.

Jake nodded. ‘She got a leg hurt protecting you, but managed to go for help. When Grandma and Chief Cassato found you, the back door at Trash ‘n’ Treasures was open.’

‘How long have I been out?’

‘Six days.’

‘That long?’

‘The doctor kept you in a coma because your brain was swollen. You were moved out of intensive care to this private room yesterday.’ He looked behind him. ‘Aunt Peggy! She’s awake.’

My sister was here? I must have been in trouble for her to come from DC, where she lived with her husband, Senator Edward Clark, while Congress was in session.

Peggy Sue crossed the room to join her nephew. Only … Jake was really her grandson, and she was my natural mother, and Mother was my grandmother, who raised me. It’s a long story. See … a whole bunch of Antiques books.

But here’s a quick recap.

Pretty, pretty Peggy Sue (as Buddy Holly put it) was seventeen, just out of high school, when the summer before college she went to work for then-State Representative Clark’s campaign. They had an affair and she got pregnant with me; but since he was married and the scandal would have ended his career, Peggy didn’t tell him. That fall Mother took Peg on a six-month tour of Europe, and they returned with me, Mother’s ‘surprise’ later-in-life baby. (It was easier to fool people before the Internet and social media became omniscient.)

I’d only discovered my true parentage after I relocated back home a few years ago, after my divorce. By that time, the senator’s wife had died, and he and Peg had reunited well after the fact.

Happy ending? Not for me, who maintained a strained relationship with both my natural parents, having told Peggy Sue that Mother would remain my mother, while she – my sister, while I was growing up, and Senator Clark, a man she finally married – had given up any other rights.

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