Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 22390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
West doesn’t flinch or shrink down. He eyes his mom with calm reassurance. “I’m not ashamed of this.”
She sets her quilts down on a stack of boxes. “Let me talk to Cassie alone.”
I gulp in air, my heart slowing down. Is it still beating? Is this what it feels like when your heart breaks? Maybe it’s not a shattering. Maybe it just slowly stutters to a stop, and you can’t feel it anymore.
To my surprise, West looks to me. I’ve never known him to defy his mom. He respects her too much to challenge her, even when he believes she’s wrong. But he’s waiting for my approval. Just like that, I realize I’m the woman he’ll look to now, the one he listens to first. I wonder if she’ll hate me for that.
I give him the slightest nod.
He leans forward to brush a kiss across my forehead. “I’ll finish up those changes we talked about.”
He moves to leave the room but pauses before he does. He whispers something to his mom and her face lights up. He’s always known how to make her smile.
Then he leaves the room, closing the door behind himself. The doorknob clicks into place and we’re alone.
My mom focuses her attention on me. She studies me, her curls bouncing when she tips her head. Her hair is red now, no streaks of gray. She must have made it to the salon today.
I wait for her to say something first but we just end up staring at each other. She’s looking at me as if she’s never seen me until this moment and it guts me. I live in her house. I call her mom. I make pecan pies with her every Saturday night. “Do I have to leave now?”
She frowns, the lines on her face becoming more prominent. They weren’t always there. But after Dad, everything changed. Now they’ve both aged a century in just a few weeks. “You mean, move out of the house?”
My throat is clogged and it’s hard to get out the words. “Do I have to leave the ranch?”
“Why would you do that?”
She’s going to make me say it. Make me face the truth. “Because I like West. I know you don’t want me to be with him. You warned him away from me years ago when I first came to live with all of you. And I understand. I’m not your real daughter. I’m not anybody’s daughter.”
I don’t belong to anyone. I was starting to think maybe I belonged to West, that we would be together. But I can’t ask him to leave his parents. They need him.
“You stop that right now.” Mom straightens her spine, raising herself to her full five feet of height. She has the same fierce expression she wore when the Sunday school teacher tried to shame me for wearing a dress that would “lead boys to sin”. She put Mr. Chambers in his place right then and there. Never again was I shamed for what I wore to church. Or anywhere.
Her voice shakes with emotion when she says, “You are my daughter. You were my daughter long before the ink was dry on that adoption paperwork. It took us time to find each other, but you have always been mine.”
Her words touch some aching, broken place in my heart and it begins to stitch itself back together again. My eyes fill with tears, and I press a hand against my mouth.
“As for West, I warned him away. That’s true. It never had to do with being ashamed of you. Honey, how old were you when you came to live with us?”
“Fifteen,” I answer, sniffing.
“You were seen as a child in the eyes of the law,” she says. “And he was eighteen, a legal adult. Even if you’d been of age, you were just coming out of the foster system. You were still having nightmares and crying yourself to sleep. You weren’t in a place where it would have been healthy. Not for either of you.”
Her words make me see the situation differently. She wasn’t trying to protect West from some girl who was beneath him. She was trying to protect both of our hearts. I accept the tissue she passes me and dab at my eyes. “And what do you think now?”
“Now, I think my son has chosen well.” She gives me a soft smile, her own eyes filled with tears. “When he walked out of here, he warned me to be gentle. He called you his heartbeat. I always hoped you two would find your way to each other.”
I rush forward and wrap my arms around this woman who has been my mentor and my friend and my mom. She’s never hesitated to defend me from others or step into my messes or listen as I had a good cry. “Thank you.”