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BARBARA

E dith’s hands trembled as she read Mother’s letter.

Silence filled the room like a dense fog—the suffocating, blinding fog over the water that swallows up the pier. She didn’t speak, didn’t move. A long breath hitched in her throat. Then with a sudden exhale, she tossed the letter on the coffee table and stalked toward the bar.

She pulled out two lowball glasses and set them on the jade bar top with an echoing clatter. Bourbon glugged generously into the glasses, filling them nearly to the brim.

Edith pressed her lips together as she brought the glasses back to the sofa and wordlessly offered me one. I shook my head, but she set it in front of me anyway.

She picked up her glass and swirled the bourbon, letting its aroma rise to her nose. She took a deep, unsteady breath and sipped—careful at first, then a long swallow. Color drained from her face, leaving her pale as porcelain.

I tapped my fingers against the letter on the coffee table. “It’s not what I expected,” I said. “More honest than I ever thought she’d be.”

Edith stared at the letter as if it were a ghost come to haunt her. “Don’t be na?ve, Barbara. You know how Mother was.” Her voice was distant and hollow. “Only honest when it suited her.”

I stared at the sharply creased paper. “She said you have answers. Is it true?”

Edith drained her bourbon in one long, unladylike gulp. “It’s true that I know things you don’t,” she said. “Whether you want to hear them is another matter.”

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “I need to understand, Edith. I’ve gone my whole life not knowing why she treated me like an unwanted guest in my own family.

I have no idea what I did or didn’t do. I followed every rule, crossed every T, dotted every I, wore the right clothes, attended the right events, got into the right school, smiled for the camera, smiled when I was dying inside.

And for what?” My voice cracked, then climbed to an angry crescendo.

“The love of a mother that never came, no matter how perfect I was?”

Edith studied me with her piercing hazel eyes that always saw more than they let on. “Barbara, some secrets are buried for a reason. Are you sure you want to open this Pandora’s box?”

I sat back and crossed my arms. “What choice do I have? Edith, if you don’t tell me, I’ll never understand why she was so cold. I’ll never understand why she treated me like…like a bad smell that wouldn’t go away.”

Edith’s gaze softened, and for a moment, I thought she might take me in her arms as she had so many times before when I was inconsolable. Instead, she reached for the untouched glass in front of me and downed its contents in a single, desperate pull.

“Fine,” she said, her voice rough from the bourbon. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

My heart pounded.

“Mother treated you like an unwanted guest because to her…that’s exactly what you were.” Edith spoke without apology. “She took you in out of obligation, not out of love.”

A chill ran through me. “Took me in? What the hell does that mean?”

Edith’s eyes shot wide open. I rarely swore, and the rogue expletive must have caught her off guard. But I didn’t care. Not now.

When she didn’t answer, my mind raced through possibilities. “What, like a foundling?” My thoughts settled on my father—more absent than present, but always warm when he was around. “Was I Daddy’s lovechild that Mother had to raise?”

A tight, humorless chuckle bounced off her lips.

“Jesus, Edith. Just tell me!”

She inhaled sharply. “You are my daughter, Barbara. Not Agatha’s.” The words struck like a hammer. “I am your real mother.”

The room tilted as Edith’s confession hit me, and for a moment, I thought I might slide off the sofa and onto the floor. I gripped the armrest to steady myself.

“You’re my… what ?”

“Mother and Daddy thought it best to cover the whole thing up,” she continued.

“I was only sixteen and, of course, unmarried. Forget doing what’s right—they couldn’t have the scandal.

They said they were doing it for my benefit—to give me a chance in life.

But I didn’t buy that for a minute. The scandal would have ruined the family, or worse—Daddy’s political career.

I had no say in the matter. They sent me away, and when you were born, they took you from me and raised you as their own.

They told everyone you were Agatha’s change-of-life baby. ”

I stared at her, speechless. This was absurd. This was fiction.

“Do you understand now?” Edith pressed. “The coldness you felt from Agatha—it wasn’t because she didn’t love you. It was because she couldn’t love you the way a real mother would. She played her part as best she could, but in the end, that’s all it ever was—a part.”

Every memory I had twisted and warped in my mind.

I could taste the bourbon in the air, hot and acrid. Edith rose unsteadily and walked back to the bar. She fumbled with the bottle, her hands less sure than before. I remembered them as steady as a surgeon’s when she taught me to sew, to bake, to drive. All the things a mother teaches a daughter.

She poured herself another glass, not bothering to ask if I wanted one this time. She knew I wouldn’t take it. She knew everything, it seemed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, my voice smaller now, like a child’s.

Edith turned slowly, glass in hand, but didn’t move from the bar. “How could I? That was the arrangement. If I told you the truth, it would have destroyed everything.” She took a long sip of her third bourbon. “They hoped you’d never question it. That you’d never have to.”

I couldn’t breathe. The air in the room was stifled with half-truths and unshed tears. My skin prickled with the heat of anger and the cold of realization.

“So now what?” I asked, the words bitter on my tongue. “Do I start calling you Mom?”

Edith rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re still the same people with the same lives. Yes, you know the truth now. But it doesn’t change a damn thing.”

I stood, the room swaying around me like a ship in a storm. “I need to go.”

“Barbara, sit. We’re not finished.”

I paused, one hand on the back of the sofa, the other clutching my purse like a life preserver.

“Please,” Edith said. The word was soft, almost pleading.

I let go of my purse and sat back down, though my body remained rigid, ready to spring.

Edith set her glass on the bar—unfinished—and walked slowly back to me. She didn’t sit, rather stood over me like a looming question mark.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” she said. “But you need to understand that we did what we thought was best for you.”

“We?” I asked. “So you agreed with all of this?”

She hesitated. “Not at first, no. But in time, I came to accept it.” She sat down beside me and placed a hand on my knee.

“Think back, Barbara. I was there for every important moment. All those scraped knees? I was the one who patched you up. When your cat died, who held you until you stopped crying? When Johnny O’Dell broke your heart in the tenth grade, who sat up with you all night?

I watched you cross that graduation stage, cheered you on at every movie premiere, and when you walked down the aisle, I was right there.

” She stared at me, long and hard, tears tracing slow paths down her cheeks. “I never abandoned you.”