Enright Family Collection (87 page)

The cup Laura had just filled rattled slightly as she set it on the counter. “Cream, Zoey?”

“Yes, please.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister, Mrs. Bishop,” the young cook said.

“Until recently, neither did I.” Laura forced a smile at the cook, then handed Zoey her coffee with a sort of sideways motion that permitted her to grab her own cup from the counter at the same time. “Shall we take our coffee down to the beach, Zoey?”

“That would be lovely. Yes. Thank you.” The stiff formality of her response caused the cook to turn and look at her curiously, though Laura seemed not to notice. “But if you’re busy here, I don’t want to be in your way.”

“I think breakfast is under control.” Laura gestured for Zoey to follow her through a door that opened onto a brick patio over which a pergola of wisteria draped viney arms and long purple fingers of clustered flowers.

“Oh, they’re so fragrant.” Zoey reached up to touch the delicate blooms.

“And oh so attractive to the bees.” Laura grimaced. “There are so many of them that the patio is pretty much off limits during the day while the wisteria is in bloom. But it does scent the back rooms on the second and third floors, and the guests seem to like it. I have an elderly couple who come every year around this time to stay in that room”—she stepped back into the yard and pointed to the corner bedroom on the left side of the house—“because the wisteria reminds them of their honeymoon cottage in the English countryside.”

“The inn is yours, then?” Zoey fell into step with Laura as she walked down the driveway.

“Yes. Lock, stock, and the bats in the chimneys.” She paused for a moment, then added, “My parents owned
this inn, and their parents before them, and their parents. I’m hoping that someday Ally will want to run it.”

Zoey stood on the curb and sipped at her coffee and waited for a lone car to pass before following Laura’s long stride across the street.

“The beach is this way.” Laura pointed to the right.

“I know,” Zoey said. “I found it the other night, on my way home.”

“I should have given you directions.”

“I don’t think I gave you the opportunity,” Zoey said, slowing her pace just a bit. If she was going to get to know this woman, it would have to be on honest ground. And there was no time like the present to start. “I ran like a scared child.”

“I don’t know that I would have done any differently,” Laura conceded. “As a matter of fact, given the circumstances, I thought you handled yourself admirably. I’m the one who ran, Zoey.”

“You?”

“Right out the back door.” Laura laughed wryly and kicked her sandals off at the edge of the beach.

“You’re kidding.” Zoey leaned over to untie her sneakers and pulled them off. “I thought you were so together, so cool. . . .”

“Me? Cool? I was so rattled about meeting you that I actually went looking for a cigarette. And I quit smoking almost five years ago.”

“Did you find one?”

“No, thank heavens.”

Zoey followed Laura down the wooden incline, a boardwalk of sorts, that led onto the beach. They walked in silence across the coarse sand toward the water. The waves slid onto the shore, gentle waves that left traces of foamy wash on the beach, and sea birds dipped and dug for sand crabs and other tender morning treats. The morning was still unfolding, but it promised to be a beautiful day.

“Do you mind sitting on the sand?” Laura asked. “I could go back and grab a few sand chairs.”

“No, this is fine. I like it.” Zoey plunked unceremoniously onto the sand and drew her legs up to her chest.

“Me, too. I love it here, particularly in the morning,” Laura told her. “I can’t imagine not living by the ocean.”

“Did you grow up here in Bishop’s Cove?” Zoey asked.

Laura nodded. “Lived here all my life except for the four years I went to college.”

“Let me guess.” Zoey grinned. “University of Maryland.”

“How’d you know?”

“A woman called into one of my shows once and said I looked like her daughter’s friend from college. She said they went to the University of Maryland.”

“Gee, I wonder who that was.”

“I don’t remember her name.” Zoey leaned back upon her elbows.

“I watch you now on TV all the time,” Laura confided. “Whenever I can, anyway.”

The two women stared at each other for a long moment, so much unspoken. Where to begin?

Finally, Zoey said, “You know, it was a caller that made me realize that something was . . .” Somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to say
wrong,
so she said, “. . . that something was going on with Mom.”

“The woman who said she saw you and Delia in Boston.” Laura said.

“You saw the show?”

Laura nodded, “And I told Delia that she could not put off. . . talking to you and your sister—she had already told Nick. I knew you would put it together after that, and I was so afraid. . . .”

“Afraid for who?”

“For Delia,” Laura’s voice dropped slightly. “And for you and Georgia, too.”

“Why?”

“Because it was no way to learn of such a thing.” Laura stared straight out at the horizon. “I mean, Delia and I knew about each other, we both knew the other
was out there, somewhere. And I think that we both knew that someday we’d find each other. But the three of you . . . you just didn’t have a clue. I thought that for you to find out about me would be such a shock. For you to find out from someone other than Delia . . . I just couldn’t imagine being blindsided like that.” She shuddered. “I urged Delia to tell you that night.”

“Why didn’t she?”

“You’ll have to ask Delia that.”

“You don’t call her Mother,” Zoey observed.

“I have a mother,” Laura told her. “I have the best mother a girl could ever have had.” She dug her bare heels into the sand. “From the time I found out that I was adopted, I always wondered what she looked like, that woman who gave me away. I had this image in my head, when I was a child, of some very tall person in a long flowing robe tossing this baby bundled in pink blankets over the side of a cliff, and my parents jumping up to catch me, shouting, ‘It’s a girl! We’ll take her!’ I never for a minute regretted being adopted. My parents were wonderful, Zoey. I could not imagine anyone having better parents than I did.”

Laura picked up a half-buried piece of clam shell and began to dig little valleys in the sand. “I never thought a whole lot about my birth parents when I was growing up. I had a mother and father who loved me and gave me all the love and security and sense of
family
that any child could need. My brother and I grew up here, on the beach and on the bay.” She pointed back over her shoulder toward the bay side of the island. “I had a wonderful family. Yes, of course, it was always there, in the back of my mind, that there was
someone out there,
but please don’t think of me as Delia’s orphan child who prayed all her life that her real mother would come back and rescue her from a life of loneliness. I don’t remember ever pining for her. I never felt that I had to.”

Zoey protested, “Laura, I never thought for a minute that—”

“I just wanted to get that out of the way, Zoey. Some
people still have this misconception that all adopted children are desperate to find their ‘real’ parents. I have never felt that burning desire to confront my birth mother. I
had
real parents, all my life. My dad was a great man, and I’ve missed him every day since we lost him five years ago. I have a mother I adore. I’m not out to steal yours.”

“Laura, if I gave you the impression that I thought that you—”

“It’s just that I know that Delia is a well-known, wealthy woman, and I don’t want you to think that I set off to find her hoping to cash in on the fact that she gave birth to me. I had no idea of who she was until that day she showed up as speaker at the historic society luncheon. I mean, I knew that my birth mother’s name was Cordelia Hampton—it was on my birth certificate—but I had no way of knowing that
Cordelia Hampton
and
Delia Enright,
the famous novelist, were the same person. I cannot begin to tell you how shocked I felt, sitting in that room, all of my friends sitting around me, and hearing our illustrious speaker mention her maiden name. I thought I was going to have a heart attack and die on the spot. I just couldn’t believe it. That she would show up like that . . . I later learned that she had managed to arrange to be there, that she had known how to find me.” Laura looked at Zoey from the corner of her eye and said, “I’m just telling you this because I don’t want you to think that I found out who my birth mother was and chased her to make her acknowledge me.”

Zoey sat up and straightened her back. “Whoa, Laura. Where is this coming from?”

“I just don’t want any of you to think that I’m motivated by the thought of material gain.”

“First of all, I know that you hadn’t set out to find her, that she came looking for you—Delia told me that. And I’m happy for both of your sakes that she found you. I am equally delighted to hear that you had wonderful parents and that you had a happy life.” Zoey felt she had to add, “On the other hand, I am just beginning to
understand how much pain my mother has suffered all these years. I can’t imagine how terrible that must have been for her. You have to understand, Laura, she was
the best
mother, she has the most loving heart of anyone I ever knew. For her to have let you go must have been agonizing for her. I can hardly believe that she had the patience to wait this long to find you. Finding you is going to mean changes in all our lives. We’re all going to have to take some time to get to know each other.”

“I was so afraid that none of you would want to do that. Get to know me, I mean.” Laura said softly.

Zoey touched Laura’s arm. “You’re as much Delia’s child as the rest of us are, Laura. Right now, she needs you maybe more than she needs us. She’s been without you for too long. Let her some spend time with you and with Ally.”

“I’ve told Delia that she’s welcome to stay as long as she wants to, but I was just afraid that you’d think I was trying to take her from you”—Laura swallowed hard—“that I was trying to use her. . . .”

“Laura, what are you talking about?”

“Well, I guess you’ll hear about it soon enough, you might as well hear it from me.” Laura turned to her and blurted, “Three years ago, right after my husband and I separated, we had to place my mother in a total care facility. I had to take a small mortgage out on the inn.”

“So?”

“So, two weeks ago, before I knew what was happening, Delia paid it off.”

“And you think we’re going to hold that against you?” Zoey asked wide-eyed, and when Laura nodded slowly, Zoey almost doubled over with laughter. “And you think that
well
think that you’re just after Delia’s money?”

“Zoey, I swear, I didn’t
want
anything from her. I didn’t
ask
for anything from her. I never asked for a loan, I still don’t understand why she did it. . . .” Laura, clearly confused by Zoey’s laughter, was close to tears.

“She did it because she’s Delia.” Zoey proceeded to
explain about Delia’s overly generous nature when it came to her children, about Nick’s cabin and Georgia’s condo. “I’m the only one who was able to outfox her where the house was concerned, but I had other reasons of my own, and besides, I’ve had more than my share of her generosity over the years. Her paying off your loan was just her way of—of being motherly, so to speak. It’s just Delia’s way, Laura. I think she can’t help herself sometimes, she’s a compulsive giver.”

“And here I was thinking you would all think that I was somehow trying to make her
buy
me. . . .” Laura struggled to explain.

“Not at all. As a matter of fact, I think I’m just beginning to understand why she is the way she is. Mother always seems to feel that she has to take care of everyone, to do for everyone. I’m wondering if perhaps that might have stemmed somehow from her having lost you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mom always says that she does what she does for us so that we’ll always know that she was there for us.”

“Because she wasn’t there for me?” Laura ventured.

“Possibly.”

“But I didn’t suffer, Zoey. My parents were there for me. Always. My mother, in particular.”

“What does she think about Delia popping back into your life?”

“If she could understand, I would hope that she would be pleased about it. And knowing my mother, I think she would want to thank her.” Tears beaded in the corners of Laura’s eyes. “We have always been very close, my mother and I.”

“You said, ’if she could understand’ . . . ?”

“My mother has Alzheimer’s. She really is no longer herself. I think she would have liked Delia. And I think if Delia had met my mother years ago, she would have liked her, too.”

“Where is she, Laura?”

“She’s in a home about eight miles from here. I see her
every week, but I know it’s not really her. It’s a terrible disease, Zoey. It takes everything that makes you what you are, and turns you into someone that you yourself would not recognize. If you could remember who you had been . . .”

“Laura, I am so sorry.”

“So I guess you see the irony, Zoey. I lose one mother, I find another. I take out a mortgage on the inn to pay for my mother’s care, Delia pays off the mortgage. . . .” Laura broke into sobs.

“Oh, Laura . . .” Zoey scootched closer and put her arm around Laura’s shoulders. “Laura, I am so sorry.”

“I feel so mixed up about the whole thing.”

“That’s perfectly understandable. Look, there’s a lot going on in your life right now. Laura, if you need a friend to talk to . . . well, I can be your friend while I’m learning to be your sister.”

“Thank you. You really are everything Delia said you were.” Laura searched through her pockets until she found a wadded-up tissue in the back of her jeans. “She’s so proud of you, all of you.”

“I’ll bet she’s proud of you too, Laura.” Zoey swayed her upper body, rocking Laura just slightly in the process. “And she must be totally beside herself to have a granddaughter.”