Love Letters From Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [85]
Cici looked at Lindsay. Lindsay looked down at her hands. It was Bridget who said, “Noah, we’ve never really talked about your mother.”
With her words, a shield came over his eyes. Otherwise he did not react at all.
“That’s because,” Cici said, “when she made the decision to let you live with us, she asked us not to. She thought it would be better if, until you were older, anyway, you didn’t feel any pressure to, well, be involved with her if you didn’t want to.”
“I’m not saying we agreed with that decision,” Bridget added. “But it’s what she wanted.”
Lindsay took a breath. “Noah, we had a phone call today—”
He interrupted, “I was going to tell you about it. I should’ve figured you’d find out anyway.”
Cici asked, “Find out what?”
He glanced at Lindsay, then away. “I found her e-mail and phone number online. So after a while, I e-mailed her and said could we meet. And she said that sounded fine, so a couple of weeks ago...” A quick, guilty glance around the table. “That day I told you I was working late, I rode up there to the place she said.”
Bridget’s eyes grew big. “You rode your motorcycle all the way to Richmond?”
He shrugged and shifted his gaze away again. “I knew you’d be mad.”
“But ... why didn’t you tell us you wanted to meet her?” Cici asked. “We would have helped. You didn’t have to keep it such a secret.”
“I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, I guess,” he mumbled uncomfortably. “I mean, you’ve been so nice to me and all, I didn’t want you to think I wasn’t grateful.”
The three women looked at each other helplessly, but no one could find the words.
“Anyway” he said, “it was a stupid thing to do, and it doesn’t matter because she never even showed up. Serves me right, I guess. I should’ve left well enough alone.”
Cici covered Lindsay’s hand with her own. Lindsay drew a breath. “Noah, the reason your mom wanted you to live with us was because she was sick, and she knew she couldn’t take care of you. It wasn’t because she didn’t want you.”
Bridget touched Noah’s shoulder. “I know she would have met you that day if she could have,” she said gently. “She must have been so excited when you contacted her.”
Noah looked at her, confused, and then at Lindsay. “She was in the hospital that day” Lindsay said quietly, “and she has been ever since. Noah, I’m so sorry, but she passed away this morning.”
There was no reaction but a slight tightening of his jaw. He sat there for a moment longer, but when Lindsay reached across the table to touch his hand he lurched to his feet, turned, and bolted from the room.
The memorial service was held in a rambling white clap-board building with a big spreading oak in front and neatly tended evergreen plantings nestling against the foundation. A small brass plaque near the door read “Harbor Home.” Otherwise, it looked much like any other house on the street.
Inside, rows of metal chairs had been set up, and all of them were filled with people of all descriptions—men in shirtsleeves and women in cotton dresses, boys in jeans and T-shirts, teenage girls with restless babies. At the front of the room were a bank of flowers and a picture of a pretty woman with straight brown hair and a shy smile who was far too young to die.
Noah had not spoken on the long drive to Richmond; he rested his head against the back window and watched the landscape roll by with a bleak, unseeing gaze. The women did not try to engage him in conversation. None of them knew what to say.
A woman named Sandra Wilkes identified herself as Mandy Cormier’s supervisor at Harbor Home Halfway House, and spoke about the work Mandy had done there, the lives she had touched. Some of her clients stood up and told stories of what she had meant to them. Some of them wept. Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay kept stealing glances at Noah, but he remained stony faced and stoic, gazing straight ahead.
Afterward they went up to Sandra and introduced themselves. Noah mumbled, “Good to meet you,” and stuffed his hands into his suit pants pockets,