Page 31 of Huck Frasier (Seals on Fraiser Mountain #5)

Marley

Santa Fe – Evergreen Psychiatric Care Facility

I hadn’t seen her in over a decade.

Not since the day I walked across that high school graduation stage and turned to find the front row empty. Lark and I had waited until sunset. She never showed.

Now here she was.

Older. Thinner. Her once-black hair shot through with gray. She sat in a wheelchair by the window, face turned toward the sunlight. Blank stare. Fragile hands twisting at the hem of her sweater.

My heart didn’t race. It just… hurt. Quietly. Steadily.

Frasier stood beside me in the doorway, letting me take the lead, letting me decide if I even wanted to step in.

I did.

I walked in slowly, my boots soft against the tile. She didn’t turn. Didn’t blink.

“Hi,” I said, my voice trembling more than I wanted it to.

She didn’t move.

“My name’s Marley,” I tried again. “You’re… you’re my mom.”

Something shifted behind her eyes. A flicker. A twitch.

I knelt beside her chair.

“I just needed to see you. To know you were alive.”

Still nothing. Just that hollow quiet.

“She’s not going to remember,” the nurse had told me gently. “Not the way you hope.”

But I hadn’t come for memory.

I came for closure.

I reached out and placed my hand over hers.

And for one fleeting moment, her fingers curled around mine.

Tears filled my eyes. Not because I thought she knew me. But because maybe, deep down, some part of her still wanted to.

“I forgive you,” I whispered.

The weight didn’t lift. Not all at once. But it shifted.

Frasier was there when I stood. His hand found the small of my back. I leaned into him as we walked out, the door clicking shut behind us.

We didn’t speak until we were in the truck, pulling away from the facility, mountains rising in the distance.

“You okay?” he asked.

I looked at him. Really looked.

And for the first time, I didn’t feel like a daughter without a mother.

I felt like a woman building a life of her own.

“I will be,” I said. “Now I can start over. With you.”