“It’s true.” Mary Jo sighed, turned away to stare at the wall on the other side of the room as if someone else had spoken to her. “I’m sorry I caused you all this trouble, sweetheart. You should be back in Washington. I’ve messed up everything.”
Audrey put her arms around her mother’s shoulders. “You didn’t mess up a thing. Remember? I moved back to Winchester six months ago to buy the paper.” The surprise in her mother’s eyes warned that she’d forgotten. “I took over the Gazette for Uncle Phil. He wanted to retire.”
She looked away, a classic indication she did not recall. The lines on her face appeared deeper than ever. Worry. Even with her memories fading, she still worried. Was that the curse of being a woman? A mother?
Or was it the secret they had been keeping for so long?
Audrey pushed away the thought. That was taken care of for now. No need for either of them to worry.
“We can’t hide our secret forever,” her mother whispered.
Mary Jo’s words brought Audrey’s attention back to her. She glanced at the door—couldn’t help herself. No one needed to hear this. No doubt anyone who did overhear would think it was just the disease talking. Still, Audrey would feel better if her mother didn’t mention that part of their past. “Mom, you don’t need to worry about the secret. No one will ever know. I promise.”
Her gaze latched onto Audrey’s once more, the urgency there painful to look at. “You can’t stop it. Fate or whatever they call it...the Lord. The Bible says so.” She heaved a big breath. “They will find us out and it’s my fault. All my fault.”
She muttered those last three words over and over.
Audrey would need to check with Roberta to see if Mary Jo had any visitors today. Usually something set off this kind of episode. Maybe she’d somehow heard the news about the shooting on Buncombe Road. Audrey didn’t see how that was possible. Could have been some other shooting or death. Sometimes startling events sent her mother off on a tangent. On those occasions, Audrey did all she could to soothe her frayed nerves and to guide her toward more comforting memories.
“Mom, do you remember my junior play? You had to make my costume. I was the nurse and you were so upset that I wasn’t cast as Juliet.”
“The costume was hideous.” She shook her head. “You should have been Juliet.”
Audrey laughed. “Well, Mrs. Bishop was the director and I guess she wanted her daughter to play the lead role.”
Mary Jo chuckled. “I think the only thing worse than that costume was your dress for the senior prom.”
“Oh.” Audrey shuddered at the thought. The dress was one memory she had worked hard to exile. “It was absolutely awful.”
Her mother rambled on about the dress order and the numerous fittings and how the garment still would not fit properly. Audrey had been reduced to tears at least twice until she’d decided enough was enough and had worn her favorite jeans and tee to the damned prom. Half the senior class as well as the school staff had been mortified; the other half couldn’t have cared less. Audrey would wager that she was the only girl who had ever dared wear jeans to a prom in Franklin County, maybe in the whole state of Tennessee.
Colt had grinned and told her she was the most beautiful girl in the gymnasium—and maybe the world. The old ache that accompanied memories of her senior year squeezed deep inside Audrey’s chest. She had been madly in love with Colt Tanner. They had been planning their future together since eighth grade when he sneaked a kiss on the school bus. That kiss had startled them both. The perfect balance of sweetness and innocence.
She had known the boy and then the man inside out. At least, she’d thought she had. But you never really know a person. Not really. When he’d married someone else—a pregnant-with-his-child someone else—Audrey had realized she could never trust anyone with her heart ever again. If Colt would break it, there was no hope with anyone else.
True to her decision, she never had. In December she would turn thirty-seven. Forty was right down the road. In all probability she would never know how it felt to hold her own child in her arms or to share her life with a man she loved the way her mother had loved her father. Of course her career had been immensely fulfilling—until things had gone so very wrong.
The newspaper would just have to be her baby, she supposed. Certainly the staff was like family. And she still had her mother. Well, most of the time, anyway.
Rather than wallowing in self-pity, Audrey listened as her mother talked on and on about the distant past—the good days, she called them. The ones before that awful year of darkness that came after her father’s heart attack...and the secret that she and her mother would take to their graves.
Some things had to stay buried. There was no other option—not then and not now.
“Then you went off to become the celebrated investigative journalist,” Mary Jo said after a long pause, her eyes gleaming with pride. “Your father would have been so proud. He never wanted you stuck here running that damned newspaper. He wanted you to explore the world, to conquer all the glass ceilings.”
Except there really was no choice now. Six months ago her mother had called with the news that Phillip was retiring and a developer wanted to buy the paper. Said developer planned to demolish the old building and start fresh—his words. That could not happen. Not in this lifetime. The building had to stay exactly where it was for the foreseeable future.
“To tell you the truth, Mom, I was tired of all the travel and the limelight.” Audrey waved off the career that had once been her singular focus. “Let someone else have a turn at being the best.” She winked at her mother. “I couldn’t hog all the glamour forever.”
Mary Jo smiled and patted Audrey on the leg. “You were always such a thoughtful girl. I’ll never forget the time you came home and bagged up all your clothes to take to that little girl whose house had burned down. I finally convinced you that we could take her shopping for new clothes. You really made your father and I proud. I know he has watched your career from heaven.”
There was another secret Audrey planned to keep. Her mother would never know—nor would anyone else for that matter—that her career had gone to hell in a handbasket. She’d made a mistake. Ten years at the top of her game and she’d made a totally dumb, foolish mistake. She’d wanted the story so badly, she’d trusted a source without going through all the usual steps to verify that source. She had allowed her friendship with that source to guide her, and she’d rushed to beat everyone else. She’d screwed up.
Big-time.
Bottom line, she had no one to blame but herself. While she had been licking her wounds, her mother had called with news about Phil’s retirement. Audrey had done what she had to do. She’d zoomed home and bought out her uncle’s portion of the family business. With her savings basically depleted after that, she’d decided to stay on and try turning the paper around. No one knew how to lay out a titillating story better than Audrey. She could have the paper thriving again within a year. No problem. An entire human could be made in less time. Of course she could do it. It was the perfect distraction. If she was busy saving the family legacy, she didn’t have to think about the rubble that was once her career.
Or the secret that no one else could ever know.
Her mother laid her head on Audrey’s shoulder, exhaustion overtaking her now that the manic episode had passed.
But it was coming home to do what must be done that served up another cold hard reality to Audrey. Her mother was not well. The forgetfulness and absentmindedness were not merely age or the overabundance of civic commitments to which she had obligated herself for the past thirty-five years.
Mary Jo Anderson had dementia. If Audrey had come home more often, she would have realized the lost keys and missed appointments her mother had laughed about on