“She’ll express her thanks later,” Mary said, shooing him out of the house with such perfect manners that most men wouldn’t even realize they’d been dismissed. Jake wasn’t most men, however, and he didn’t miss much.
Susan took her coffee and wandered back into the living room, looking at it with fresh eyes. She recognized the secretary desk in the corner—it had been in Tallulah’s bedroom. So had the china dogs on the mantel. She was holding one when her mother came back into the room.
She set the porcelain figurine back on tire mantel and turned to her mother. There was only one way to find out whether she’d dreamed it all. “Will Aunt Tallulah be coming to the wedding?”
It was a stupid way to phrase it, and for a moment Mary Abbott looked truly shocked. And then she sat on the toile-covered sofa, small and graceful, not much bigger than she had been at age nine, and looked up at her daughter. “You know perfectly well my sister died on her wedding day in 1949, Susan,” she said. “She’s hardly going to rise from the grave at this late date. If that’s your idea of a joke then I must say it’s in extremely bad taste.”
“I’m sorry,” Susan muttered, guilt and disorientation warring with the tangled memories. “It’s just that I had the strangest dreams while I was asleep, and they seemed so real.”
“Did you? What did you dream?”
“That I traveled back fifty years and saved Lou’s life,”
Mary’s odd expression was tinged with sorrow. “You can’t change the past, Susan. You can only change the future. As a matter of fact, I had strange dreams about my sister as well, and I haven’t dreamed about her in years.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save her for you.”
“I’m sorry you couldn’t, too, sweetie. But I’m very happy to have you back among the living, wideawake. There’s something I want to talk to you about Your father’s back.”
“I know. I saw him before I fell asleep.”
“And?”
Her mother was utterly patient, seemingly focused on her daughter’s reaction. She would send him away if Susan told her to, send him away without hesitation. And part of Susan wanted nothing more than to banish the man who’d abandoned them.
But if she’d learned one thing from the past few days, she’d learned that things weren’t always as they seemed. And if Alex had married little Mary Abbott, daughter of Ridley and Elda, then the odds would have been stacked against him in the first place.
“Why did he come back? Does he think he’s going to give me away? He never had me in the first place, did he?”
“No, he didn’t,” Mary said patiently. “He left, and nothing will change that Shall I tell him to go away?”
“Do you want to?” Susan already knew the answer. The answer to questions that had plagued her all her life. She still didn’t know why or how her parents had parted, but she knew why her mother had never remarried. She was still in love with her husband.
Her mother still hadn’t said anything. In the fifty years since she’d last seen her, Mary Abbott had become a master of diplomacy and caution, a far cry from the passionate girl who’d lost her older sister.
Susan gave herself a little shake. Hadn’t she already proven that it was nothing more than a crazy dream? “Invite him to the wedding,” she said finally. “He can sit with you.”
“I already did.”
She hadn’t changed that much in fifty years. There was still a streak of stubborn mischief beneath the calm exterior. “I know,” Susan said.
“I should call Edward and tell him you’re awake,” Mary said, and there was only the hint of a question in her voice.
“I suppose you managed to send him into a panic, as well. I was just tired, mother.”
“That’s what Edward said. He had no doubt that you simply needed a good long rest and you’d wake up in plenty of time for the wedding. He seemed slightly annoyed that you had to miss the rehearsal and two of the dinner parties planned in your honor, but he carried on without you, once I assured him you looked quite healthy.”
“He didn’t check for himself?”
“No, dear. I suspect Edward is like most men—absolutely useless around any kind of illness. He reminds me a bit of my father.”
“That’s an awful thing to say!” Susan protested hotly.
Mary looked at her strangely. “Your grandfather died when you were three years old, Susan. You’d hardly remember him.”
There was no way Susan could explain her sudden revulsion, hi truth, Ridley Abbott could have been a charming, devoted father. Mary had certainly never said otherwise. And she’d never voiced a single criticism of Elda. Or mentioned that Elda was her stepmother rather than her real mother.
It was all a dream, Susan told herself. None of it happened, none of it was real. Tallulah died in a train wreck on her wedding day, Ridley and Elda were devoted parents, and Mary had no secrets.
