Luck Be a Lady - Cathie Linz [20]
Megan’s fingers trembled slightly as she took the yearbook Fiona offered her.
“She looks like you,” Fiona added.
Megan had never seen her mother this young. The first photo she had was of her parents’ wedding at city hall almost ten years later. She stared down at the school photo. Her mother’s long dark hair was parted in the middle and she wasn’t smiling. She looked very serious.
Fiona pulled out a box of photographs from a desk drawer. “I didn’t post this photo on the blog about Woodstock because I thought I looked fat in it, but here’s your mom.” She pointed to the person in the center of a group all waving their hands in the air. There was Astrid, flashing the peace sign with two fingers and grinning as she stood in the mud.
Megan felt so strange. It was almost as if she’d stepped back in time. This photo showed an entirely different side of her mother. She looked so carefree and alive, despite the recent tragic deaths of her own parents. Had Woodstock given Astrid a chance to let go? Had the experience freed her to express her emotions, if only for that brief weekend, instead of being so serious? Had that been the only time her mother felt the joy and fun displayed in this photo?
“You know, despite moving all over the country, I’ve still got the pair of bell bottoms I wore, with the mud still on the hems. I’ve never had another experience quite like Woodstock,” Fiona said. “And trust me, I’ve had a lot of experiences. I’ve done everything from working as a nanny to a stint as a grief counselor at a funeral parlor. Your mom swore she’d keep her Woodstock jeans too. I don’t suppose you know if she did?”
Megan shook her head.
“Would you like that photo? This is a nice one too.” She held up another shot, this one in color. Astrid stood in the foreground while the background had a dreamy, gauzy look. Even more than the previous Woodstock photo, in this one she was the center of the composition. Everything and everyone around her faded as the camera focused on her; she seemed to take pleasure in the attention. Her smile was heartfelt and her eyes sparkled with a mischievous expression that Megan had never seen displayed in other photos.
“Did my mom have a sense of humor?” Megan asked. “What was she like back then? Did she ever talk about having a family?”
“She did have a sense of humor even though not everyone understood it. I don’t remember her talking about kids or a family. It was the sixties. We weren’t thinking that far ahead. We were totally in the here and now.”
“She looks like she’s having a good time.”
“She did,” Fiona said. “I’d never seen her that way before.”
Tears welled in Megan’s eyes as Logan’s earlier words came back to her. When he’d mentioned the divorce, he’d talked about custody. What had made her mother agree to give Megan’s dad full custody? Why hadn’t she asked for shared custody or visitation rights? Had Megan been such a bad child that her mother wanted nothing more to do with her? Or had Astrid been driven away?
Megan had so many questions. Each one made her heart painfully crumble a little more. She’d shoved those thoughts away when she’d first heard about the custody issue back at Aunt Sally’s. But staring at the photos of her mother now, the doubts and fears all came back with a vengeance. People didn’t just walk away for no reason. Especially mothers.
Megan couldn’t imagine walking away from any child of her own she might have in the future. She’d always wanted kids. Now she just wanted answers.
“If you’d like, I can scan copies of those photos for you to take with you,” Fiona said.
Megan got all choked up, barely able to say, “Thanks.”
To Megan’s surprise, Logan reached over and squeezed her shoulder.