“He raised you?” She directs the question to Phil, her expression enigmatic, as she takes him in.
“Yes. He did.”
She nods, and her eyes narrow. “Do you think he’s a good man?”
“No. He’s not. And I’m nothing like him.”
She purses her lips, but her eyes give nothing of what she’s thinking away.
“Because of his wife?” she asks.
“Yeah, she’s a good woman.”
“A stupid woman because she married him.”
“She didn’t know what he really was until after,” I chime in to defend Sophie. We only spent that evening with her, but I know she’s a victim, too.
She turns her shrewd gaze on me. “And you? You were adopted as a baby? Right after they found you?”
“Yes,” I answer solemnly.
“Nice family?”
“Very nice. They love me.” I smile when I remember our little party last night.
She smiles, too. It’s just a slight tilt of the corner of lips, but it softens her face and her eyes lose the guarded veil.
“You’re both so big and handsome. And you’re famous,” she says, sounding proud.
“We have to take pictures so I can show them,” she says, her eyes hopeful.
“Of course. Whatever you want,” I assure her and her grins.
“The ladies didn’t believe me when I told them you’re my son. They’ll be so jealous.”
My heart constricts at the way she calls me son, because in all of this, I’ve never thought of her as my mother. But, I guess it makes sense. The last thing she did of her own free will, before she came here, was give birth to me.
“Thank you for letting us come visit you.”
Her smile mellows, and her eyes mist and she shakes her head.
“Thank you for wantin’ to come. I’ve prayed every day since I’ve been here that one day you would. I know it doesn’t matter now and you may not believe me. But, I loved you… both of you so very much when you were born. Livin’ without knowing what became of you has been the hardest part of all of this.”
Her words are a punch to my gut, and I take a minute to absorb them. We didn’t talk about what she might say outside of the role she played in the Joel Kendicott’s death. I didn’t consider her sitting in jail missing the babies she’d never had the chance to love. It just adds another layer to my determination to see her get justice.
“But, I want to know why you’re here. Why’d you write after all these years?” she asks, her voice growing harder, her guard back up.
“I didn’t know I was adopted until I was 18. And my parents didn’t know who you were. I only found out you were my mother two years ago. Phil before that, but..all we knew was that you’d killed your husband, and we thought he was our father.”
“Your letter said you know Wolfe is your daddy. How’d you find that out?”
Everything inside me recoils at the use of Wolfe and daddy together.
“DNA tests after a friend’s research connected the dots.”
“We came because we want to know what happened the night Joel Kendicott died, and you’re the only person who was there. ” Phil says, cutting her off when her mouth opens to ask another question.
Her expression doesn’t change, but her eyes tighten as if she just felt a twinge of pain.
“Didn’t you read the papers?” she asks instead of answering our question.
“There’s very little and in Winsome, no one wants to talk about it,” Phil says, the exaggerated patience in his voice tells me he’s as impatient as I am.
She gives us long assessing looks and then lets out a deep sigh as if she’s putting her better judgment aside.
“I’ve only told this story to one of other person. She believed me. But, I don’t expect you to. I don’t know what he’s told you already and how much you’re gonna tell him…” her eyes shift, and look around the room nervously.
“Neither one of us have a relationship with him. And we want to hear your side. It’s why we came,” I say hoping that by the time we leave today she’ll trust that.
“I have nothing to gain from lying, this is the absolute truth as I know it.” She picks at a hangnail on her finger and bites her lip as she watches us through her lashes, waiting for our agreement before she proceeds.
“Were listening,” I say and wish I could reach over and touch her hand, to comfort her. They made it clear that physical contact was against the rules. And I don’t want to be thrown out before we get the answers we came for.
“Drew Wolfe started raping me when I as seventeen,” she says this with the same casual indifference most of us talk about our day at work. My stomach clenches and Phils’ palms close into fists on the table. But, neither of us speaks or reacts, because even though her voice is indifferent, her body is rigid with tension and her eyes are haunted.
“The first time was the night of my high school homecoming game Junior year. He was in college and home for the game. I was so flattered when he picked me out of all those girls to take a ride with him. Until he refused to take no for an answer. He did it with three of his friends watching. All of them sons of the men who owned everything in Winsome. He didn’t let them touch me, but he let them watch.”
He joined the military and was gone living in Europe when I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t tell anyone who the father was and I prayed he would never find out.”
“But, he did?”
She nods bitterly.
“That monster, Tremaine, told him I was pregnant. He came home right after I’d given birth and he took you. And my parents let him, because he paid them more money than my father would see in a year. I didn’t even know where he’d taken you until I heard he was coming back from France with his new wife and that other baby. I kept quiet about it, I saw you with her…his wife and their other kids. I was heartbroken, but you were alive and so was I. I wasn’t ever going to tell anyone. I was married, working and minding my own business. Her lips twist in a grimace.
“Joel was nice. But, he wasn’t a strong man. Not at all. At first, I liked that because I knew it meant he could never hurt me. And then, Drew took over at Wolfe where Joel worked. And one day, he saw me coming to bring him lunch. And that was it. He wanted me again. And my husband let him have me in exchange for his job and an extra thousand bucks a month. When I got pregnant again - I begged Joel to leave with us. He wouldn’t. He said that Wolfe would pay good money for another baby and he beat me, tied me up and then left me in the house while he went over to the Wolfes to make his demands. I was sick. I didn’t want to let him have another one of my babies. By now, he was the absolute power in town. ”
She shakes her head at the memory, her eyes filling with tears again.
“But…then while Joel was gone, Agnes, Drew’s mother came and cut me loose. She put me on a plane to Albany New York, and gave me five thousand dollars in cash. She sent me to her friends who lived in Schenectady. When I left, Joel was alive and that house was not on fire. I didn’t hear anything about what happened once I left. I was staying with her friends. They took care of me, doctor’s visits and all. They talked about helping me find a job and get settled once you were born. Then, we found out I was having twins.”