Chapter Ten
Naomi had worked Vader through two solid runs, had coffee with Serena after, and was heading back to her apartment to clean up before lunch when she saw the car.
It was parked near the barn, a rental by the look of it, a silver sedan with out of state plates. She didn’t think much of it at first. Carl had sent someone to pick up Copper last week and there were always people coming and going on the property.
Then the woman got out and Naomi stopped walking.
She hadn’t seen her in over thirty-three years.
She was older, softer around the edges, her blonde hair threaded through with silver now.
But the face was the same. The face that had looked back at her from the mirror her whole life, the one her grandmother used to touch sadly sometimes when she thought Naomi wasn’t paying attention.
The woman spotted her and went still.
Neither of them moved for a long moment.
Then the woman took a step toward her. “Naomi.”
Her voice was the same too. That was the thing that hit her hardest. After all this time, after everything, the voice was exactly the same.
“What are you doing here?” Naomi said. Her own voice came out flat and steady, which surprised her.
“I needed to see you.” The woman took another step. “Please. Just give me a few minutes.”
Naomi stood very still and felt something cold move through her that had nothing to do with the morning air.
“How did you find me?”
Her mother looked down briefly. “Your grandmother’s lawyer. It took me a while, but I tracked down the forwarding address.” She looked back up. “I’ve been trying to find you for two years.”
“Two years.” Naomi looked at her. “It took you years to even start looking.”
Her mother flinched. “I know.”
“Do you?” Naomi’s voice stayed even. “Do you actually know?”
Her mother’s eyes filled. “I deserve that.”
“You deserve a lot more than that.” Naomi crossed her arms. “Say what you came to say.”
“Can we go somewhere? Sit down maybe?”
“No.” Naomi didn’t move. “Say it here.”
Her mother looked around at the barn, the property, the apartment stairs, taking it all in. Something moved across her face that Naomi couldn’t read and didn’t particularly want to.
“You’ve done well for yourself,” her mother said.
“No thanks to you.”
Another flinch. “No. No thanks to me.” She looked back at Naomi. “I was seventeen when I had you. I was scared and stupid. I made the worst decision of my life when I left you with your grandmother.”
“My grandmother was a wonderful woman.”
“I know she was. She was a better mother to you than I ever could have been at that age.”
“She was a better mother to me than you ever were at any age.” Naomi felt her jaw tighten.
“You didn’t leave me and then come back when you grew up.
You left me and had another child you decided to keep.
So don’t stand here and tell me you were seventeen and scared.
You figured out how to be a mother. You just didn’t figure it out for me. ”
Her mother was crying now, quietly, and Naomi felt nothing except a bone-deep exhaustion she hadn’t expected.
“I’m sorry,” her mother whispered. “I am so sorry, Naomi.”
“Why are you here?” Naomi said again. “The real reason.”
Her mother wiped her eyes. “I just wanted to see you. To tell you I’m sorry. To try to—” She stopped.
“To try to what?”
“To try to make it right. If you’d let me.”
Naomi looked at her for a long moment.
“I don’t know if I can do that,” she said quietly. “I don’t know if I even want to.”
“I’m not asking you to forgive me today. I’m just asking you not to send me away without hearing me out.”
The barn door opened behind Naomi, and she heard his boots on the gravel.
Ethan.
He came to stand beside her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him and looked at the woman in front of them with that quiet measuring expression she knew well.
“Everything alright?” he asked. Not to her mother. To her.
“This is my… mother,” Naomi said. The word felt strange in her mouth. “She just arrived.”
Ethan looked at the woman for a moment, then back at Naomi. She could see him taking it in, putting it together.
“I’m Ethan Harrison.” He extended his hand. “This is my ranch.”
Her mother shook it. “Linda Greer. I’m sorry to show up unannounced. I wasn’t sure Naomi would agree to see me if I called ahead.”
She nailed that one on the head.
“Is there somewhere we could talk?” Linda looked at Naomi. “Privately?”
Naomi felt Ethan glance at her sideways.
“Take her to your apartment,” he said.
Naomi looked at him. She hadn’t agreed to anything yet and he’d just offered her mother a place to sit down, and something tightened in her chest that she set aside for later.
“Fine,” she said.
She turned and walked toward the stairs without looking back to see if her mother was following. She could hear her footsteps on the gravel behind her.
At the top of the stairs, she unlocked the door, pushed it open and stood back.
Her mother stepped inside and looked around.
“It’s lovely,” she said.
Naomi closed the door and turned to face her.
“Sit down,” she said. “And say what you came to say.”
Linda sat on the edge of the sofa; her hands folded in her lap and looked around the apartment as most people did when they were buying time.
Naomi didn’t sit. She leaned against the kitchen counter with her arms crossed and waited.
“You look like me,” Linda said finally.
“I know.”
“Your grandmother used to send me photos. When you were little.” She looked down at her hands. “I kept every one of them.”
“She never told me that.”
“I asked her not to.” Linda looked up. “I wasn’t ready. I kept telling myself I’d come back when I was ready and then the years just—” She stopped. “There’s no excuse. I know that.”
“Then stop looking for one.”
Linda nodded. She was quiet for a moment.
“I have a daughter,” she said. “Bethany. She’s twenty-eight.”
Naomi said nothing.
“She knows about you. She’s known for years. She’s the one who pushed me to find you.” Linda’s voice softened when she talked about her. “She’s a good girl.”
“I’m sure she is.” Naomi kept her voice even. “You kept her.”
“Yes.” Linda didn’t look away. “I did.”
“Why?” It came out before she could stop it. The question she’d been carrying her whole life, the one she’d told herself she didn’t need answered anymore. “Why her and not me? What was different?”
Linda’s eyes filled again. “I was older. I was in a stable relationship. I was ready. None of those things were true when I had you.”
“So, I was just bad timing.”
“No.” Linda shook her head. “You were—” Her voice broke. “You were something I was in no way ready for.”
“Then you should have kept your legs closed at seventeen,” Naomi said, and heard her mother gasp. She didn’t care.
Naomi uncrossed her arms and looked out the window at the pastures below. Jewel was moving along the fence line in the morning sun, unhurried and easy.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” Naomi said.
“I don’t want anything from you.” Linda’s voice was steady now. “I just want you to know that I’m sorry. That not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about you.” She hesitated. “And that if you ever wanted to know me, I’d like that. But I’ll understand if you don’t.”
Naomi looked at her.
She looked like her mother. She’d always known it but seeing it up close, at this age, was something different entirely. Same blonde hair, same jawline, same eyes that gave too much away when she wasn’t careful.
She thought about what Ethan had said in the kitchen that night.
She missed out on knowing you.
“I’m not ready to forgive you,” Naomi said. “I don’t know if I ever will be.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“But I’ll hear you out.” She pushed off the counter. “I’ll make coffee.”
Something moved across her mother’s face that Naomi turned away from before she could feel too much about it.
She put a K-cup in the coffee machine and kept her back to the room.
****
Ethan stood at Vulcan’s stall and tried to focus on what he was doing. He couldn’t.
He’d seen Naomi’s face when she’d said the words. This is my mother. Two months of watching her carefully, learning her expressions, and he’d never seen that particular look before. Not anger exactly. Something older and harder than anger.
He leaned against the stall door, and Vulcan pushed his nose into his chest.
He should have let her handle it. It wasn’t his place to suggest she take her to the apartment; he could see that now. She hadn’t asked for his help, and he’d stepped in anyway because he didn’t know what else to do when he saw her standing there like that, holding herself together by sheer will.
He ran a hand down Vulcan’s nose and stared at the far wall.
He thought about what she’d told him in the kitchen that night.
About dreaming as a little girl that her mother would come back with a reason that made sense.
About how she’d finally stopped waiting for that to happen.
And now the woman was here, sitting in Naomi’s apartment, and Ethan didn’t know if that was a gift or a grenade.
He heard boots on the gravel and turned to see Rowdy.
“Everything alright, boss? Saw a stranger’s car out front.”
“It’s fine, Rowdy. Family.” He pushed off the stall.
Rowdy nodded and moved off. Ethan looked up at the apartment window.
He wanted to go up there, but he stayed where he was.
This wasn’t his to fix.
He kept himself busy. He checked on the other horses, reviewed the schedule with Rowdy, walked the fence line on the east side of the barn that had been bothering him for a week. He did everything he could think of to keep his hands occupied and his mind from drifting up those stairs.
An hour passed. Maybe a little more.
Then he heard the apartment door open and footsteps on the stairs. Two sets.
He came around the corner of the barn and stopped.
Naomi and her mother were standing at the bottom of the stairs. Linda had her hands clasped in front of her, and Naomi had her arms crossed, but loosely, not the way she’d been holding herself earlier.
Linda said something low that he couldn’t hear. Naomi nodded once.