Читать книгу A Walk Down the Aisle - Holly Jacobs - Страница 11

CHAPTER TWO

IT TOOK A LITTLE MORE than two hours for the Allens to drive from their home outside Cleveland, Ohio, to Valley Ridge, New York. The little slip of Pennsylvania that stood between the two states didn’t usually take a long time to navigate.

After she’d made the call, Sophie had slipped off her wedding dress and hung it carefully in her closet. She’d stroked the material for a minute and tried to imagine what she would be doing now at the reception. She shut the door on that fantasy. She knew that life wasn’t a fantasy. She’d met Colton and, temporarily, she’d forgotten that fact.

She slipped on a pair of jeans and a blouse. She thought about taking her hair down, but there were so many bobby pins, and so much hairspray in it, she didn’t think she could until she showered.

She didn’t want to lose a minute of her time with Tori to showering, so she’d gone back into the living room. She’d stood in the doorway, drinking in the sight of her daughter on her couch. Anger. Pain. Blue hair. Still gripping the throw on the couch between her finger and thumb. Every inch of Tori was...perfect.

She wished she could make her daughter see that.

During those one hundred and twenty minutes they waited for Tori’s parents to arrive, Tori peppered Sophie with questions ranging from her family’s medical history to Sophie’s educational background. She asked about Sophie’s job here in Valley Ridge.

She didn’t ask again why Sophie had given her up.

She didn’t ask about her father.

The questions she didn’t ask bothered Sophie more than the ones she did.

Tori startled when the doorbell rang. “It’s them, isn’t it?”

Sophie nodded. “I imagine so. Do you want to get the door, or shall I?”

“You. They’re going to kill me.”

Sophie got up and, before going to the door, walked by her daughter and patted her shoulder to comfort her and to allow herself one more touch. She went to the small foyer and opened the door. The woman, Tori’s mother, wore a pair of black pants, low heels and a no-nonsense fitted white blouse. She was wearing a very classic set of pearls and had pearl studs in her earlobes. Her light blond hair was pulled back into a chignon.

Tori’s father had on jeans with a hole in one knee, wear marks on the other and a couple of paint splotches. He wore brown loafers and a T-shirt with pictures of doors on it that read The Doors. His dark brown hair was shaggy, as if he’d forgotten to get it cut for several months.

“Sophie?” the woman asked.

Suddenly, it occurred to Sophie that she didn’t know Tori’s last name. She’d only mentioned her parents’ first names. “Gloria and Dom?”

They both nodded.

“Thank you for calling us,” Gloria said stiffly.

“Tori’s in the living room.” Sophie knew that Tori’s parents needed to see her—to touch her, to know for themselves she was all right.

Sophie had been right. As her parents entered the room, Tori got up from the couch and was enveloped in her parents’ hugs. For as completely composed and business-looking as Gloria appeared, she was unabashedly crying as she embraced her daughter. “Don’t you ever do anything like that to us again.”

Dom sounded heartbroken as he added, “You could have talked to us. We’d have brought you—”

Tori pulled back, the happy reunion forgotten. “No, Dad, don’t say you would have supported me and brought me to meet Sophie. You didn’t even tell me I was adopted. I still wouldn’t know if I hadn’t seen that envelope. You both lied to me my whole life.”

“Victoria, it’s time to go,” her mother said, tears forgotten. “We’ll discuss this later. Right now, you’ve barged in on Sophie and—”

Tori pulled back from her parents’ embrace. “No, Mom. I’m not going. I got a few answers, but I need more. I need to know Sophie. If I can know her, maybe I can figure me out.”

Sophie felt awkward in the midst of the volatile family confrontation. “Tori, I—”

Tori whirled on her. “Oh, I know, I’ll interrupt your perfect life. I already ruined your wedding. I’m an inconvenience, but I’m not going home to Cleveland yet.”

“Victoria—” her mother started, but her father interrupted.

“Tori, give us a minute.”

“Where should I go? Sophie’s house is small. I’ll hear you wherever I am. And honestly, I think I’ve proved I’m an adult.”

Dom had struck Sophie as a free spirit. Seeing him with Tori’s mom, a decidedly unfree spirit if ever she’d met one, seemed incongruous, but in this instant, he transformed into a father—a firm but loving father who expected to be obeyed. “Tori, if anything, you’ve proven how immature you still are. I’m not denying that we should have told you sooner that you were adopted, but that doesn’t excuse your conduct. You are fourteen, and you stole our car. Not only that, you drove it out of state.”

“I read the driver’s manual. I know all the rules. I think I was the only one who drove the speed limit the whole way here. And I’ve driven all kinds of vehicles at Nana and Papa’s farm. I was confident I could manage. And I did.”

“It’s illegal. If you’d been stopped...if you’d hit another car...if...” All the things that could have gone wrong had obviously been playing in his mind.

“You drove here?” Sophie asked. It occurred to her that a good parent would have asked how a fourteen-year-old arrived in Valley Ridge. The town was too small for a public transportation system. That left either driving or hitchhiking.

She felt sick at the realization Tori had driven across three states. She couldn’t stop the images of what could have happened. Scenes from nightly newscasts played in horrible detail, all of them with Tori as the focus.

“Go outside, Tori,” her father said firmly “Find a seat on Sophie’s porch and don’t move from there. We’ll come get you in a little bit.”

“Fine.” Tori whirled and headed toward the front door.

“And if you go anywhere other than that front porch, I’ll track you down and I’ll—”

“What? Spank me?” Tori laughed.

“I might be a pacifist, but believe me when I say, if that’s what it took to get you to understand how incredibly stupid you’ve been, well, I’d do it. Don’t tempt me.”

Tori looked taken aback by his response. She hid it by turning on her heels and slamming the door behind her for good measure.

Sophie didn’t know what to do, what to say. “I’m sorry.”

Dom quirked one eyebrow and Sophie thought of Star Trek’s Spock, which struck her as an absurd thought to have in the midst of the day’s events.

“For what?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know, but I can’t help feeling this is all my fault, and I’m sorry.”

“Let’s sit down.” He assumed the role of host and got them situated in the living room, he and his wife on the couch, Sophie opposite them on the chair.

“If anyone should be sorry, it’s me,” Gloria said. “Dom wanted me to tell Tori she was adopted from the day she arrived home, but I...” She shook her head. “I couldn’t bear it. I sent you those letters every year through the adoption ageny, and part of me relished sharing her development with someone I knew cared. I was so grateful to you for choosing us. I spent days writing them. Picking out pictures. But I never told you her name or ours because I was afraid. She’s mine. Every time I mailed out a letter, I’d be sick with worry that you’d realized how much you gave up and come to get her, but that didn’t stop me from writing down all the details I thought you wanted to hear. I needed to prove to you that you were right to choose us. But it scared me to death.”

“So that’s why no names?” Sophie asked. All she’d ever known her daughter as was Baby Girl. Every year, after she read Gloria’s letter, she’d write her Baby Girl a letter in response. She could have sent them to Tori through the agency, but frankly, pouring her heart out to her child didn’t seem fair. At some point, she’d give her daughter the box of letters. Maybe it would help answer her questions.

“I know. Not even her first name. That was cruel.” Gloria leaned into Dom with a real need to touch him evident in her expression.

“No. You were so generous sharing her moments. When I received that first letter chronicling all those milestones in her first year...” Sophie fought to hold back the tears. “For weeks, I read it every day. I can recite the letter to you word for word. But at some point, I knew I couldn’t go on that like that. So, I put it away. And each year, when you sent the new letter, along with the pictures, I’d read it through, then I’d reread all the old ones. I’d write my response and put it away, as well. I gave myself one full day to appreciate them, to look at Tori and marvel at her. Then I’d put the box away and would go back to living my life. You provided that one letter to me and then went back to being her mother. I get that. You wanted to keep her safe.”

“But I failed. I hurt her by not listening to Dom.”

Maybe Sophie could see Gloria’s guilt because it mirrored her own. She saw it and recognized that they didn’t simply share a love for Tori, but also the guilt that came from wondering if they’d done the right thing.

Dom squeezed his wife tighter into the protection of his arm. “You can’t know if things would have been better or worse if we’d told her. The fact is we didn’t. The two of us. And now we have to deal with the repercussions. The three of us. We have to forget about blame and guilt. We need to figure out what to do for Tori. She’s in pain, and we need to decide how best to help her.”

Sophie looked at these two people who’d been parents to her daughter, and a sense of peace swept through her pain and guilt. No matter what she’d done, she’d found her daughter wonderful parents. “I’ll do whatever you both think is best. She’s your daughter. I don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten that.”

“Thank you.” Gloria studied her a moment, then repeated, “Thank you. So what do we do now?”

“No,” Tori shouted from the doorway into the living room. “I’ve decided that I’m not going to sit outside and let the three of you decide my fate. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m staying with Sophie for a while. Think of it as summer camp.”

“Victoria Peace Allen—” Gloria stuttered to an abrupt halt, as if she couldn’t think of what to say next.

Sophie realized that she now knew her daughter’s full name. And on the heels of that thought came a single word...Peace?

Dom must have seen the look because he nodded and said, “Peace.” He started to laugh. Gloria, then Tori, started laughing, as well.

“Dad’s a hippie. A commune-living, vegan-eating hippie,” Tori supplied. “So are Nana and Papa.”

Dom shook his head and clarified, “My parents were the hippies. I’m merely the son of hippies.” He turned to Sophie and explained, “Gloria picked Tori’s first name. I got to the pick the second. My name’s actually Freedom Jay Allen.”

“Which is why I call him Dom,” Gloria said with a sniff.

Despite everything that had happened that day, the shock layered onto pain, layered onto utter confusion, Sophie found herself smiling.

“And you grew up in a commune?” she asked.

“Well, like any child, I lived where my parents decreed.”

“Nana and Papa never decreed a thing in their whole lives.” Tori turned to Sophie. “They don’t live on a commune anymore. They run a CSA in Pennsylvania.”

“CSA?” Sophie asked.

“Community-supported agriculture. Basically, people buy shares of their farm’s crops. They’re still hippies,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper.

For a moment, all four of them were quiet. And slowly, the leftover smiles faded, and Tori stared at the three adults. “I get it, you know. I get what you meant, Sophie. They’re my parents. They’ve raised me. Nana and Papa are my grandparents. They all know me. They were there when I took my first step and started school.” She turned to her parents. “I get that. And I love you both. Nothing will ever change that. You are my parents. But you need to understand, I can’t leave until I know...”

“Know what?” Sophie asked. “I swear, I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.”

“I don’t know, but I need to figure it out. I need to work it out in my head. If you try to make me leave before I do, I’ll run away again.”

“No threats,” Sophie repeated. “Remember?”

“I can’t go home without knowing.”

There was desperation in Tori’s voice. Sophie couldn’t decide if Tori was desperate for answers or desperate to be understood.

Maybe both.

She wanted to go hug her daughter. But she knew she’d been right when she’d told Tori that Gloria and Dom were her parents. She watched them both pull Tori onto the couch between them and wrap their arms around her.

And that moment solidified the knowledge that she’d done the right thing. All those years ago, as she had read letters from people asking for a baby, she’d seen Gloria and Dom, and a feeling of rightness had settled over her. She’d known these were her daughter’s parents. And they were.

“Here’s what I suggest,” Dom finally said. “The three of us are going to go—”

“I meant it, Dad,” Tori interrupted, her anger back in place.

Dom shot her a look that shut her up and he continued, “We’ll go find a hotel for the night. The three of us can discuss things, then tomorrow morning, the four of us will meet for breakfast someplace neutral and decide how we’re going to handle this.”

“By this, he means me,” Tori informed Sophie.

Sophie found herself agreeing to Dom’s plan with gratitude. She called JoAnn, who had two rooms available at her B and B. “It’s only a few blocks away,” she assured the worried-looking Tori. “And why don’t we meet at the diner for breakfast? You name the time.”

They agreed on ten.

As the family walked to the door, Tori turned and said, “I’m sorry about the wedding.”

Remembering an old saying, Sophie told her daughter, “It will all come out in the wash.”

“Wedding?” Gloria asked.

“Today was her wedding, Mom,” Tori admitted, shamefaced. “I objected.”

Tori’s parents started talking, but Sophie interrupted. “Tori, of all the things you need to worry about right now, that’s not it. If anything, you should sympathize with Colton. He didn’t know about you, kind of like you didn’t know about me. Sometimes people keep secrets out of malice, but sometimes, they keep them because that secret’s simply too hard to talk about. Losing you...well, if I had to talk about it every day, I don’t know that I’d have made it. And I’m sure your mom didn’t think of you as anything but her daughter. Trying to explain there was another facet to that...” She turned to Gloria. “I get it.”

“But—” Tori objected.

Sophie stopped her. “Listen, we’ll meet tomorrow and try to figure out what’s best for you. That’s always been my number-one concern, and even though I’ve just met them, I know it’s your parents’, too. So, you three go talk tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow at ten at the diner for breakfast.”

Tori nodded, and Gloria wrapped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and led her toward the car.

Dom hung back for a second. “You didn’t want to give her up, did you?”

“I loved her then, and now. Everything I did I did for her. I chose you and your wife because you seemed to be such a balanced couple. Your letter about longing for a child... I gave Tori the best life I could. And despite everything, I’d do it again.”

He studied her, then nodded and followed his family.

The three of them were a unit. A family.

And Sophie knew that even though she’d given birth to Tori, she’d never be more than that—the woman who gave birth to her.

Tori might not realize that fact yet, but she would.

Sophie would see to it.