Not My Mother by Miranda Smith (lightweight ebook reader .txt) 📕

Amelia can’t hide her satisfaction. She smiles and her eyes fill with tears. “It means so much to hear you say that.”

“You’ve lost much more than I have, Amelia. I don’t want to sound ungracious.”

“I don’t think you are for a second. In fact, I’d like to help you any way I can.”

“You’re helping me just by being here. By listening. I need that more than you know.”

“But the business. You and Ava don’t deserve to lose the roof over your heads because of Eileen’s mistakes.” She looks at Ava, then me. “Let me help you pay for the damage the police caused.”

“Amelia, that’s generous, but it’s not your place. Or your responsibility.”

“I have no one else to spend it on. When I die, this money goes with me. The least I can do is help you out. You’re my daughter, Marion.”

It’s the first time she’s said those words directly. Hearing them steals the breath from within my lungs. I’m her daughter. It’s a realization I’ve been struggling to accept, but for the first time, it feels right.

Beside us, Ava lets out a squeal. We both laugh, wiping away tears.

“May I hold her?”

I nod, standing to take away the tray holding Ava in.

“Hello, beautiful girl,” Amelia says, holding out her arms.

Ava stares at her, remaining still, then she leans forward. Amelia scoops her up, holding Ava close against her chest. I’m afraid Ava will squirm or reach for me, denying Amelia this moment she so desperately wants. But she doesn’t. She leans her little head on Amelia’s shoulder, raising her fist to her mouth.

“It looks like she’s warming up to you,” I say, offering my encouragement.

Amelia sways her weight from side to side, syncing into that tempo so many mothers master over the years.

“She’s a very sweet baby.”

Amelia closes her eyes and smiles, as though she’s trying to memorize this moment, hold onto it tight, so that the next time she’s confronted with a bad memory, a flashback to her own daughter being taken, she can switch it out for this.

29 MarionNow

After a few hours, Amelia leaves. She has a late afternoon meeting with her lawyers, and another conversation with investigators in the morning. Our brief reunions are interspersed with the harsh reality of our circumstances.

Throughout all this, I’ve felt like no one understands what I’m going through, but Amelia does. She too must balance the fine line between the justice system and her own emotional needs. What is protocol and procedure to investigators is so much more to her. So much more to me. Although she has dealt with these annoying elements of the case much longer than I have—the interviews and the press and the community badgering—at least now she is getting something of a happy ending. Getting to know us doesn’t erase the pain of these past three decades, but I’d like to think it eases the blows. It’s a far happier outcome than most parents of missing children ever receive.

Similarly, my life has been torn to pieces, all in a matter of days. I’ve been forced to re-examine every element of my past, everything that made me who I am today. It’s not something I would wish on anyone else, having to accept that the person you love most in the world is capable of a monstrous act. What Mom did is exactly that. Monstrous. Selfish. Unforgivable.

Two moms.

And yet, getting to know Amelia has eased my pain. We are both being forced into these nightmarish situations, yet we can cling to each other. It’s a small escape from the outside world that could never understand what we’ve been through, both together and separate. In this new, bleak reality, I somehow feel full. I feel, for possibly the first time in my life, entirely seen. Amelia has managed to make sense of things in a way my mother never could.

And yet, there’s a part of me that feels like I’m pretending, dabbling in a life to which I can’t yet commit. I’m beginning to feel like I can connect with Amelia, include her in our lives moving forward. But I need certainty before I can start living that truth, something that still seems beyond my grasp.

Ava’s covered up with a blanket in her pack-and-play, watching a cartoon. Her lazy eyes and shallow breathing suggest she’ll be asleep within the hour. I return to the kitchen, cleaning up after my lunch with Amelia. I keep thinking of our time together, how good it feels to simply be around her. I stare at Amelia’s plate. Her utensils and drinking glass are on the table, right where she left them.

An idea comes to me.

Maybe I could be sure of the truth, without getting others involved.

An hour later, there’s a knock on the front door.

I open it, welcoming Rick inside. I called him, requested he stop by the condo. He doesn’t falter when I tell him to keep our meeting a secret from Carmen.

Rick’s brute stature doesn’t fit with the relaxed décor in my living room. He looks over the furniture, trying to find the best place to sit. He peers over the top of the pack-and-play and sees Ava sleeping.

“Cute,” he says, then settles on the loveseat, his back to the window. “Press giving you a hard time?”

“No,” I say, sitting in the seat across from him, my hands on my knees. “They’ve not been around the complex since Carmen intervened.”

“I thought maybe that’s why you’d called me over.” He gives the room another inspection. “Doesn’t look like you’re in any kind of trouble.”

“What would I need in order to submit a DNA test?”

He crosses his legs, cradling one knee with both hands. Rick doesn’t seem fazed by the question. I don’t imagine many requests bother him.

“About anyone can get one these days. You just go to one of those walk-in clinics.”

“The last thing I need is a photo of me outside a testing