Chapter 5
Ignoring her mother’s calls was never a good idea.
Jessica frowned and opened her front door. Cara Sonoto stood there, her arms crossed over the denim boilersuit covered in different patches. Damn it, her mother could make anything look good.
“Is your phone broken?” Cara said instead of hello.
“No.”
“Was there some sort of emergency preventing you from returning my calls?”
Jessica closed her eyes and tried to re-centre herself. There was no point in starting a fight. That would only drag out Cara’s visit. “No.”
“I had to borrow a car to get here.” At least they’d got the first guilt trip out of the way nice and early. That was something.
Jessica leant against the doorframe and stretched her arm across to the other side.
Partially for stability, but also because she’d worked so hard to make the rented three-bedroom cottage feel like her home.
It was peaceful. A cosy little den for her and Sam after years of not having a place of their own.
If Cara saw how nice it was, she might want to move in. “What can I do for you?”
“Are you going to invite me in?” The challenge wasn’t just evident in her mother’s words. Cara’s shoulders were straight, her head tilted defiantly, chin forward.
Jessica sighed, and her arm flopped to her side. Everything always had to be on her mother’s terms.
Wordlessly, Jessica gestured for Cara to enter. “I don’t have long. I only came home because I forgot my lunch.”
“Still waitressing?” It was impressive how Cara said that like it was a dirty word when she hadn’t ever managed to hold down a job for more than a couple of months.
“Yep.”
“They couldn’t spare a meal for you?”
Wyatt would feed her every shift if she let him. But Jessica had encroached on his, and the rest of Wattle Junction’s, generosity too much already. One day, once she’d bought a house, she was going to pay it all back. Or at the very least, pay it forward.
But first, she needed to get rid of her mother.
“I prefer to take my own. What are you doing here, Mum?” If Jessica wanted to annoy Cara, she would call her by her first name. But Jessica didn’t have time to fight with her mother today.
“Where’s my grandson?” Playing ‘answer a question with a question’ was another of Cara’s favourite games.
“He’s at kinder and then he’s going to Rob’s.”
“I won’t get to see him at all?” The sharpness in Cara’s tone had Jessica biting her tongue, swallowing a retort that would only prolong this interaction.
“I didn’t know you were coming.”
Cara sniffed, trailing her hands down the hallway. “You would’ve if you’d answered your phone.”
Don’t take the bait.
“I need to get back.”
Wyatt had left early, something he rarely did, citing a headache he couldn’t shake.
The headache Jessica had never been able to shake was standing right in front of her, inspecting Sam’s bedroom through his open door like a wannabe real estate agent. “Such high ceilings. Remind me, did you buy this?”
Ha. With what money?
“It’s a rental.” When Joan Mandrill—one of Wattle Junction’s stalwarts—had permanently moved in with her daughter and son-in-law, she’d offered her cottage to Jessica.
“Why don’t you have a seat”—Jessica gestured to the faded olive-coloured couch in the lounge room—“and I’ll get us some water.”
She scuttled down the hall to the kitchen and took several deep breaths from behind the safety of the refrigerator door. She half filled two small glasses. Shook out her curls. If she didn’t argue, Cara would leave more quickly.
Jessica returned to the sunny lounge room, passed her mother a glass and sat down on the overstuffed armchair she’d rescued from a kerbside collection last year. She’d sprayed it for bugs three times and then borrowed the steam cleaner from Kathleen’s Place before she brought it inside.
“Your father died recently,” Cara said, no preamble, no gentle opener. Not that Jessica should’ve been surprised. Her mother didn’t have a gentle bone in her body.
But … wait. What? Her father couldn’t have died.
Because she didn’t have a father. Logically, Jessica knew she’d had one at some stage.
But the man who had provided half of her DNA had supposedly died before she was born.
Cara had never said anything else about him other than confirming that the name Richard Johnson on Jessica’s birth certificate was correct.
“I thought … But you said …”
Cara curled her fingers towards her palm, inspecting the chipped polish on her nails, seemingly unbothered by the truth bomb she’d just dropped. “You were better off without him. I did this to protect you.”
“I don’t understand,” Jessica said because she had to say something to fill the awkward silence that had descended on the small room. “You always said he passed away while you were pregnant.” The words hurt her throat, and she had to force them out.
“It was a complicated situation.”
“How?”
“His wife would never have let you be a part of his life.”
This wasn’t new information. Cara had told Jessica on her eighth birthday that she was the product of an affair. It was officially the worst gift she’d ever been given.
“His estate contacted me because they haven’t been able to reach you,” Cara continued.
Oh. The phone calls from the strange lawyer. She’d thought Cara was in some sort of trouble. Not this. Jessica could have never imagined this.
“This whole time he was alive?” She hated how quiet her voice was. How soft her words sounded to her own ears.
She could’ve had a dad.
Or at the very least, the chance at one.
Instead, all she’d ever had was a name on a piece of paper.
Cara waved her hand dismissively. “You didn’t know him like I did. Rich wasn’t a good person.”
When Jessica opened her mouth to point out that she didn’t know him at all, Cara raised her voice and kept talking. “You must be named in the will.” She cleared her throat.
Jessica had spent enough hours in counselling after everything had gone to hell with Rob’s gambling addiction to know she wasn’t responsible for other people’s choices. But this? She sank back against the couch, unsure of what she was supposed to say.
Luckily, Cara didn’t seem to notice. Or care. “I looked him up, you know.” Cara’s lips curved into a suggestive smile. “I think his wife’s family had money, and she died earlier in the year.”
“So?” Jessica’s hand shook as she picked up her water.
“You must be his only living relative. And if there was any money …”
Jessica tensed. There it was. Cara hadn’t come to see her.
Or to confess that she’d been lying to Jessica her whole damn life.
There was always an ulterior motive. A power play in a game where only Cara knew the rules.
Jessica stood and tucked her sage green Wattle Junction Hotel T-shirt into her jean shorts. “I need to get back to work.”
“But …”
There’d never been a shred of maternal instinct in the woman who had set the perfect example for the kind of mother Jessica never wanted to be.
Cara sighed dramatically and made a big show of taking one last, long sip of her drink. Jessica responded by checking the time on her phone and plucking the glass from her mother’s hand.
“Time to go, Mum.”
“I don’t understand why you behave the way you do, Jessica. We have things to discuss, and I raised you better than this even though I had to do everything on my own.”
Jessica rolled her lips between her teeth to stop herself from pointing out the obvious.
The only person who had raised Jessica was herself.