Chapter 30
“It was kind to invite us back to your place,” Tim remarked, maybe his attempt to break the ice.
Adam had just let us into his modest Victorian. When it became clear that questions that needed answers shouldn’t be discussed in the dark hallway of a country music bar, Adam had given us his address. Loretta had dropped me off and said she’d find us a hotel. I hadn’t let her drive away until I’d apologized for snapping at her at the club.
“It’s no trouble,” Adam murmured, mesmerized by my mother, who seemed equally mesmerized by him. The burning feeling of the whiskey I’d drunk climbed higher in my chest. I was still grasping the enormity of it all. I had not one, but two brothers. I wasn’t the oldest. I was the middle of three.
I had barely taken note of Adam as he’d performed on stage. I’d been too preoccupied with suspicions about Tim, too busy analyzing his every look and touch. The shadowy figure had seemed to me like every country singer I’d ever seen—jeans and boots, rolled-up sleeves on a collared shirt, and a cowboy hat. But now, I was keenly interested, scrutinizing his features for evidence that we were alike.
Looking at Adam wasn’t like staring into a mirror. I didn’t share features with him the way I did with my dad. But the experience held its own surrealism. He looked so much like my mom that gazing upon him was like looking at someone I knew.
“Maybe we could pray together, Momma.”
The part of me that didn’t feel betrayed suggested the one thing I knew might help her. My mother excelled at leading people in prayer. I’d always envied her the strength of her faith. I now suspected that Adam might have been the reason why a woman who hadn’t grown up in the church had found it. No doubt, the son she’d given up had factored heavily into her prayers.
“Are you a church-going man, Adam?” she asked tentatively.
“Not strictly, no. But I like to be on the right side of God.”
My mother smiled and looked over at me. “Bucky’s the same way.”
I stretched my hands out on both sides, an invitation for us all to hold hands.
“Thank you, Lord, for granting me this precious moment that I’ve dreamt of for twenty-eight years. Thank you for giving Adam a life when I couldn’t care for him or keep him safe. Thank you for helping Adam find his way to us, and us to him. Thank you for working in your own mysterious ways to unburden me of the secret I’ve kept from Bucky. May I be worthy of their forgiveness. Amen.”
Murmurs of “amen” came from all around the table.
My mother kept her eyes on Adam. “I have so many things to say, but...I don’t know if I have the right. If there’s some place you want to start—some question you have—you go ahead.”
Adam nodded. “Tim’s told me some of it, but...there are things he said weren’t his business to tell. I guess I just want you to fill in the missing pieces.”
My mother nodded in understanding and whispered, “That’s fair.”
I still felt turbulent and battered on the inside, though outside, I kept my calm.
“We didn’t have anybody.” When my mom finally began, her voice was quiet. “Even before we got pregnant. Both of us having it bad at home was what brought us close. I would sit at The Golden Biscuit drinking coffee for hours when my father was in a mood. It was the only thing I could afford.
“Tim worked the graveyard shift as a dishwasher. It was slow, so the two of us would talk. He’d sneak me slices of pie. Sometimes, he’d cut out of his shift early and walk me home.”
I listened with rapt attention, never having heard anything this specific about how she grew up. She’d always made Hinckley seem like a Podunk town and a terrible place. As she told the story now, I saw flickers of a complicated happiness she’d found there while experiencing her first love.
“What were your father’s moods like?” Adam looked afraid to ask. All I’d ever known about my grandfather was that he died and that my mother was on her own from a young age.
“He had a lot of anger,” she revealed. “My own mother left both of us when I was six. Skipped town with an older man—a wealthy man. My father had given up his own prospects for us. He was a good man before that. After she left, he started drinking.”
“My family had its own problems,” Tim cut in. “There were six of us. My father got hurt on the job. He was on disability from the time I was twelve. When Annelise got pregnant with you, I was already working just to keep food on the table. I was supporting my family at sixteen.”
“When my daddy found out I was pregnant,” my mom started again. “He nearly put me out. Told me the only way I could stay was if I got rid of you. He gave me the money to do it, and I let him think I did. But I hid the pregnancy, all the way until the end.”
Adam’s eyebrows shot up. “How?”
“I locked myself in my room every minute I was home, let him think it was because I hated him for forcing my hand. I started wearing baggy black clothes and listening to dark music. Convinced him I was just depressed.”
Adam nodded, seeming to take it all in. “Can you tell me about the adoption?”
“I had heard about a convent. It was an hour away, so we skipped school and Tim drove me up. The sisters sympathized with my situation. Them being Catholic nuns put them on my side. I visited every few weeks to be seen by their midwife. When I got close enough to having you, I didn’t leave Hinckley just to go into labor. I left my daddy’s house, for good.”
I didn’t realize I was crying until I took a gasping breath. It injured me to think of my mother so young, having to make that choice. Adam was calm compared to me.
“What about the name on my birth certificate? Dixie Rose?”
My mother smiled sadly. “Dixie Rose was supposed to be my stage name. When I had you, I wanted to leave everything about Annelise Owens behind. And I wanted you to be able to find me, sugar. So I wrote down the name I planned to go by for the rest of my life. After I recuperated at the convent, I headed west to Nashville to become a singer.” She gave a little laugh. “A famous one, of course.”
“You sing?” Adam asked, awe taking over his voice.
“She sings beautifully,” I said at the same time Tim smiled and said, “You sure don’t get it from me.”
Adam and my mother beamed at one another. It filled me with an emotion I couldn’t name. It was beautiful. And baffling. And worrisome. Because, holy shit, what was Trevor going to think of all of this?
“I’ve always wondered about that...,” Adam confessed with a small smile of his own. “Neither of my parents can carry a tune.”
Mention of Adam’s family struck a sobering chord that resounded among us, reminding me that genetic relatives might be all we would ever be to him.
“If there had been any way to keep you, we would’ve.” Tim’s voice cracked and he looked aggrieved. “Giving you up is the biggest regret of my life.”
Tim’s pain was palpable and I choked up again. I lowered my eyes to wipe away a tear. Something more inside me broke when my mother removed her hand from Adam’s, to reach across and squeeze Tim’s.
My mother spoke again when she shifted her attention back to Adam. “We gave you up because we knew what keeping you would mean. We knew what it was to be born to parents who had us too young. We knew what it was to be poor. We loved you, so much, and we tried to find a way. But whenever we got honest about it, we knew it couldn’t work.”
Her words settled heavily upon all of us. I looked at the others, one by one, some part of me feeling that I didn’t have a right to my pain. Out of everybody, I had suffered the least.
“Was it?” Adam wanted to know. “I mean, would it have worked?” His emotion was inscrutable and his question was directed at my mother. “I guess what I’m asking is, how did your life turn out? From the looks of you, you’re doing okay now.”
Adam’s gaze swept over her at the same time it dawned on me that she wore at least $30,000 worth of jewelry. From the two-carat studs in her ears, to the gargantuan rock my father had given her on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, my mother was dripping with gems.
“Oh, honey.” My mother sighed. “Our lives turned out as well as they could. We built lives that were more stable than what our parents had. Tim provided for his brothers. I started over, away from my abusive father.”
My mother turned to me. “Almost three years after I had you, I had Bucky. Trevor came the year after that. I made it my life’s purpose to be the best mother I could be. To give them twice as much love, and I prayed to God that some of that love came through to you.
“My life is different now. I have a lot of love around me, and I don’t want for material things. But of course it wasn’t okay, not with us having to give you up. My heart has never healed.”
I had questions—so many questions. I would imagine that Adam had more. Tim looked miserable, anguish etched across his face, tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. My mother searched Adam’s face, her sad eyes full of compassion and worry for him.
A long silence fell upon the room. I wondered again how Trevor would take all of this. Thinking about him had me thinking about my father and the overheard conversation that sent me on this quest. My father knew everything. Their fight had been his attempt to strong-arm her into making her wait. A family scandal—like the mother of the candidate and former First Lady of Tennessee having a child out of wedlock as a teen—would create the sort of bad press that distracted from my father’s get-Trevor-elected plan.
You did what you had to do to protect your son. Now I’m doing what I have to do, to protect mine.
Seeing it in this light filled me with a new sort of contempt for my father. He wasn’t wrong about Trevor’s campaign. But meeting the son she’d never wanted to give up was bigger—much bigger—than that. As I stewed on it in the tense quiet of the room, my anger grew. How many times had my mother stood by him? Done what she had to do, to get him to his next lofty goal? My mom and I were going to have a very frank conversation about my dad.
“So you didn’t know until today?” Adam’s question was directed toward me.
I shook my head. “I thought Momma and Tim were having an affair. That’s how I wound up in Nashville. I hired a PI. I was looking to get to the bottom of something I overheard.”
My mom frowned, clearly curious about what that something might be. Like me, she didn’t ask.
Adam looked back and forth between Tim and my mom. “But if the two of you were meeting all this time, in communication about me, why are you the only one I’ve met before tonight?”His gaze pinned on Tim as he asked the first question, then swung over to my mom. “Did you not want to meet me?”
I could see the hurt in his eyes. I knew it to be so blatantly untrue, it made me want to defend her. Before I could, the formidable scaffolding she’d constructed to hold herself together crumbled. Tears flooded her eyes and fell.
“I wanted to meet you more than anything,” she sobbed. “Meeting you has been my most precious dream. But I had to keep you safe, keep all of us safe.”
“From who?” Adam asked.
My mother looked balefully at Tim, then at me, then at Adam. “From Bucky’s father.”