The Other Side - J. D. Robb [150]
“Didn’t I just call you an outstanding woman?” She waited two beats, denoting the lack of an if or a but, then grinned playfully. “Some mistakes I do regret, darling.”
If that was an apology after all this time . . . well, M.J. was happy to receive it. Happier than she should be probably, considering the source was a ghost of its former being.
“I know what you’re thinking.” Adeline stepped close and spoke softly. “You’re wondering why we couldn’t have talked like this when I was alive. It was one of those commonalities I talked about before, I believe. We’re both too stubborn and unforgiving. Once the crack in the bond between us started, it just got bigger and wider until neither one of us knew how to bridge the gap and fix it. I think we both wanted to, but we didn’t know how.”
M.J. sat on the bed. “Do you know what happened? How it started? I mean, underneath it all, we always loved each other, right?”
“Of course.” Her mother sat down next to her. She smelled of lilies. “I’ve thought about it . . . I’ve gone over every second of the past and . . . I believe it started sometime after your father died, because before that we were so happy together, the three of us.”
She thought about it. “You weren’t, you know . . . like you said a few minutes ago . . . about being beautiful. You weren’t like that with him, were you?”
“Gracious, no.” Her tone became dreamy. “Alex was my childhood sweetheart. I loved him before I even knew what beautiful was. And he adored me, always. No matter how I looked. No matter what I said or did—even when he was annoyed with me, I always knew he loved me.” She played with the wedding rings on her ring finger, silent for a moment, then she looked at her daughter. “He adored you, too. The three of us were perfect. We waited so long to have you, wanted you so badly. When we were finally blessed, we believed you were the symbol of our love that would live on after we’d grown old together and passed on.” She hesitated. “Is it bad, do you think, to be grateful that I wasn’t able to have any more children? After your father . . . I never wanted any more. I was afraid I wouldn’t love them like I loved you.”
M.J. shook her head. “I don’t think it’s bad.” She stared at the pink and gray floral pattern in the rug and wondered what it would have been like to have siblings. Naturally, she’d wondered before . . . wishing for a sister to take some of the social pressure off her or a brother or two to become Mama’s boys so she could fade into the sidelines altogether. But looking back, it was easy to see she might have smothered with a pillow any other children vying for what little attention her mother had to offer.
“What are you thinking?” Adeline asked. “Did you want brothers and sisters? Sisters especially can be quite comforting at times.”
“No, I’m glad you didn’t have more children. As you may have noticed over the years, I don’t play well with others. There are people at the office who I think are actually a little afraid of me.”
Adeline chuckled. “Only because you’ve become so adept at isolating yourself.”
“I’m not iso—”
“If you’d just open yourself up and reach out to other people, you’d see how eager they are to be your friends.” She leaned as if to bump shoulders, everything about her lighthearted and mischievous—not at all the way M.J. remembered her. “Like Ryan. He seems very eager to know you.”
“Mother.”
She stood. It was starting to get dark, and if she wanted to go through more of her mother’s things, looking for whatever it was that she’d lost, she needed to keep at it. She had no time for silly ghost games.
“Oh.” Adeline sighed wistfully, falling back on the bed like a love-dazed teenager. “I loved falling in love with your father. I even loved thinking I was falling in love with the others.”
Strange . . . it wasn’t what her mother was saying but the way she’d fallen back on the bed that caught M.J.’s attention. She recalled the