“They?” Tate questions and Daisy pauses with her hand on the door, glances inside and turns back to me and Tate.
“Just please keep an open mind. Both of you.”
She opens the door and holds it for me and Tate to step inside. The place is cozy and smells like espresso beans and buttery baked goods. My eyes scan the room. There’re a few people in line by the counter with a display case of decadent-looking muffins and cookies and a smiling blonde lady serving everyone. To the right side of the room there’re tables and chairs clustered about, and I see a patio at the other end for warmer days. My eyes bounce around to all the occupied tables and stop dead on one in particular. Before Daisy even says a word I know the woman with the shoulder length strawberry-gray hair and camel-colored sweater with her hands clenched together on the tabletop next to an untouched muffin is my grandmother.
She’s sitting next to a raven-haired woman who is talking but her gaze floats up to us. Daisy waves and she stands. Betsy’s amber eyes jump from me to Daisy and back to me and she smiles, tears brimming in her eyes. I can see her internal struggle to contain them and I’m having the same one. Tate’s arm gently wraps around my shoulders.
The woman she was talking to stands too. She’s got near black hair, peppered with gray and dark green eyes. The color of…the color of Tate’s.
“Hi again,” Daisy says easily to our grandmother and they hug. Then she hugs the woman with the green eyes. Daisy takes a deep breath. “Maggie and Tate, this is Betsy Levy, formerly Elizabeth Todd.”
“Hi,” she says simply. “Oh my you are beautiful, Magnolia.”
“She is,” Tate pipes in and reaches out to shake her hand which she accepts. I can’t seem to move at all so I just watch, wordless.
“And this,” Daisy says motioning toward the other woman. “Is her life partner. Marty Dunn. Formerly Martha Adler.”
Boom.
Seconds tick by with nothing but the bustle of the coffee shop and the chatter of other customers buzzing around us as we all stand still and silent. Then Tate speaks, his voice high yet rough. “What?”
“I’m Martha Adler,” the woman repeats. “Well, I was when I was married to George Adler. Your father…he’s my son.”
I finally move, reaching out and grabbing Tate’s hand in mine, hoping my touch steadies him the way his does me. Because it’s all I can do while this bomb goes off in front of us.
22
Tate
Daisy motions for us to sit across from the couple, and Maggie and I do. Then she reaches for a chair from a nearby empty table for herself but she doesn’t sit. She announces she’s going to go get us some food and drinks and urges Betsy and Marty to tell us what they told her earlier this week.
They do.
Betsy’s side of the story is easy to accept. She married Clyde, her high school boyfriend, because it was expected of her. They were young—nineteen—both local kids with not much else expected of them except to get married, have babies, and in Clyde’s case take over the family farm. And that’s what they did. But was it love? According to Betsy no, not for either of them. The only really shocking part is that Clyde wasn’t a heavy drinker back then. Shortly after Maggie and Daisy’s dad was born, my grandfather bought the farm next door and moved in with his wife and infant son—my own father. That part is the history I know. But the young wife was supposed to be Faith Brent Adler. That’s what I was always told.
“George and I were even less of a love story than Betsy and Clyde,” Marty explains to us all as Daisy comes back with three fruity smelling teas and a variety of muffins. “George was the hotshot playboy in my hometown. He was out for any conquest he could get. I was trying to convince myself I didn’t like girls. So we slept together, and I got knocked up.”
“With…with my dad?” I croak out. I can’t believe this. How is this true? How did I never know? How does my dad not know?
Marty nods and continues. “We married. We were both miserable from the beginning. He cheated like it was his job. I tried to leave him, but he promised he would change. We both just needed a fresh start. A simpler life. So he convinced me to buy a farm with the little money we had and move to Vermont.”
According to both Betsy and Marty, George and Clyde became fast friends. Best friends. And their wives did too, helping each other out with the kids and confiding in each other about the dismal state of both their marriages. And then…they fell in love.
“I know the history books like to portray the seventies as a decade of free love and liberal awakening, but that wasn’t exactly true everywhere,” Betsy says, gently placing a hand over Marty’s as if she’s trying to comfort her. “And Clyde and George, when they caught us, made sure it wasn’t the case for us.”
“Our great, great gramps was a judge,” Daisy interjects as she reaches for a poppy seed and lemon muffin. Neither Maggie nor I have touched any food or drink and neither have Betsy or Marty. “Clyde’s mom’s father, and he made it clear Clyde and George would retain custody. Full custody.”
“George was still cheating and he had knocked up a waitress in town named Faith,” Marty adds and she might as well have just punched me in the gut. “Your grandma, as you know her. So he convinced me, pressured me, to sign away my rights and let Faith adopt Vinnie.”
Vinnie. Nobody calls him that. In fact if they try in front of George he corrects them. Now I know why.
“He swore that Faith would love him and treat him like her own. There was no way they were going to give custody to two adulterous lesbians, not back then. So I gave them Vinnie, legally,” Marty says, her voice breaking and a tear slipping down her cheek. I don’t know if I forgive this woman. I don’t know anything except that I’m not going to make her pain worse right now by telling her that they lied. They didn’t treat my dad the same as they did their daughter Louise. And now I know why. And he will too. I intend to tell him.
“This is a lot to unpack,” I say and Maggie’s hand reaches for mine under the table. I squeeze it and my shoulders relax a little. “I had no idea that you exist.”
Marty nods. “I know. I’m sorry. I am willing to stay gone if that’s what you think is right. But Betsy… She always wanted to reconnect with her boys, so when Daisy found her… Well, her truth is impossible to tell without mine and I wasn’t going to deny her this. She’s the love of my life.”
“That part I get,” I admit and squeeze Maggie’s hand again. She looks over at me and blushes.
