She paused, and I sat stock-still, like if I didn’t move, I could pretend she’d never said anything. My breath felt short, and my heart like it would burst inside my chest.
She got a second wind, saying, “Aunt Tilley was pregnant when Robert died—I never could understand why the hell she couldn’t just marry him and be done with it—and she just lost her mind, Amelia. Completely lost her mind. Mama and Daddy just hid her away. I hid away with her, and once he was born it was really clear that she couldn’t take care of him, and it all just sort of…”
My little worries suddenly seemed extremely trite. “Mom, my God,” I said, sounding as furious as I felt. “How could you do that?”
“Don’t come at me,” she said, getting defensive. “You have no idea what I have been through,” she practically hissed. “At first, I was just helping her out, keeping him until she could get back on her feet. But as the weeks turned to months and the months to years, he became a part of me.”
I shook my head. “For God’s sake, Mother. He is her child.”
She gave me the stoniest look I’d ever seen and said, “He is not. Robby is my child. And that’s what you might never get the chance to understand. I didn’t carry him or give birth to him. I didn’t know what to do with a baby. But once I was the one taking care of him, rocking him to sleep at night, staying up when he had a fever, when I was the one he called ‘mama’…” She trailed off, wiping her eyes. “I wasn’t trying to take him away from my sister, but that boy deserved a stable home; he deserved a mother who didn’t think she was Queen Elizabeth ninety percent of the time. I could give him that, and so I did.”
The way she said it, it seemed so simple. So logical. But it was anything but. I had thought it was Tilley all this time, but maybe my mother was the crazy one.
“God, Amelia. You can’t imagine it. All the doctors, all the treatments, all the medications, all the false hope, all these years and years that I’ve tried to bring her back…”
Tears gathered in my eyes. For me, Aunt Tilley had just always been. I’d never really considered the toll that all of this had taken on my poor mother, as embarrassed as I am to admit it.
She cleared her throat and composed herself. “That’s why Tilley has always lived with us. She couldn’t take care of Robby, but I didn’t want her to have to be without him. She gave me the most important gift I have ever received—besides you.”
“Wait. Robby knows, right?”
She bit her lip but didn’t say a word.
“Oh my God, Mom.” I got up, pacing up and down the dock. “Are you kidding me? My brother doesn’t know that you and Dad aren’t his parents? I mean, am I your real kid?” In that moment, I almost wished that she would say no.
“You’re being so dramatic, Amelia. Sit down.”
I laughed. “Dramatic? I’m being dramatic? I just found out my brother isn’t even my brother!” I shout-whispered.
“Don’t you ever say that again,” she said, low and mean. She meant it.
I sighed and sat back down. “Don’t you worry about it coming out?”
“Oh, I worry about it every day.”
“And?”
“And I just hope I’m dead when they figure it out.”
I was so exasperated now. “So that’s your grand plan? Hope you’re dead? Good Lord, Mother.” I was up and pacing again. “Why would you even tell me this? I wish I didn’t know. I’m never going to be able to be normal around Robby again.”
She took my hand, and I wanted to yank it away, but I knew she hadn’t meant to be so horrible. She’d meant to protect her sister, to protect her nephew-turned-son. And, well, she had. No one could argue that Tilley could have raised a child on her own. She certainly could not have. And Robby had turned out smart and handsome and kind and happy. He had made a great life for himself. What shocked me most of all was my dad going along with it.
“Wait. Does Olivia know?” She gave me a skeptical look. Of course Olivia knew.
“Honey, look. I was scared to death when all this happened, and at that point, I never imagined that I would raise Robby as my own. I just figured we’d have him for a few months until Tilley got over whatever was going on with her and then we would move forward. All of us. But what I didn’t understand was that, from those first days, I was madly in love with that child.”
“Mom…”
“No, Amelia. He was my son. Mine. I didn’t understand how a person could feel that way about a child that wasn’t technically theirs. But it was as natural as breathing, the way he became mine. Until all this 23andMe mess, I never even really thought about it.”
My mouth was hanging open. “So you mean to tell me that people in Cape Carolina just believed that you had hidden away casually and suddenly appeared with a baby no one knew you’d been pregnant with?”
“Oh Lord, no. But then he turned one, and he looked so much like me that the speculation sort of died down. There were new scandals. People forgot. I’m sure every now and then someone talks about it over a game of bridge at the country club. But, by and large, when no new information ever emerged, people just let it go.”
“What about Gran and C-Pop?”
“Well, they knew. They had to. But they were all for it. An unwed daughter with a baby was more than they could take. I swear it bothered them almost as much as her illness.” She laughed lightly. “I know it doesn’t seem like it to you, Amelia, because it isn’t the facts, and the facts are what your life is all about. But my truth is that that little baby boy was my son. And there is nothing that anyone can do to take that away from me. It was the best decision I ever made. Well, that and having you, of course.”
“So that’s why he’s named Robby,” I whispered. “Not after C-Pop. After his father, Robert.”
I knew what she was doing here, and I said so. I gave her credit because it was a super-ballsy move. She had risked the biggest secret she had—at least, I hoped it was her biggest secret—to make me see the truth I hadn’t grasped yet. The gesture meant something to me.
“Look, Amelia, I made my peace a long time ago with the fact that you were going to have a life different from mine. You live the life that you want to live. If that doesn’t include marriage or babies, so be it. I’ll be fine. But don’t walk away from something you really want because you’re afraid. That isn’t the brave girl I raised.”
I looked down at my hands. “It’s just weird, you know? I spent so many years certain that I didn’t want children, that I didn’t want that life. So why now?”
Mom looked at me, eyes bright. “Honey, I know that you’re a different generation, that you come from a time where women are supposed to know their own minds before they know someone else’s, love themselves before they can love a partner. And I respect that. But when you are so close to a person that you are contemplating spending your life together, things change.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I mean, when you were with Thad, you didn’t want children and neither did he. That was fine. Harris didn’t want to get married and, when you were with him, you didn’t either. But being with someone new means necessarily shifting parts of your life to fit in with parts of theirs. Parker wants children. Changing your mind about wanting them too isn’t a crime, honey. It’s a part of being in a relationship.”