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Lynette and said to wait for her. Momma came back and I could tell she’d been crying. Her and Aunt Lynette spoke in quiet tones and I couldn’t understand them. Momma never took me to Vero Beach again.

    Now I know a little bit of what happened on that day. She told Drew she’d brought me with her and she wanted him to see me. He wouldn’t do it.

    What pain Momma must have felt….

     

    If Bobby Wilder hadn’t left Momma and me, things might have been different.

    Bobby was nice to me and Momma for a time and I liked him. Then he took off one day and we never heard from him again.

    After Bobby left, I decided to make Momma a “feel better” card. She kept a big album of cutouts for scrapbooking. Pretty pictures from magazines. I looked in a book I thought had more clip outs, but it wasn’t for scrapbooking. It had some records in it. Important documents.

    And my birth certificate where I read “Andrew Tolman” for the Daddy part.

    I called Momma up at work and told her she had to come home right away. She did and I asked her why she lied to me about my daddy.

    She said she never wanted me to find out this way. She was going to tell me. One day.

    I asked Momma if Bobby knew he wasn’t my daddy and she said yes. I’m surprised Bobby went along with it for as long as he did. He wasn’t a bad father, he just had his own set of troubles and he hated living in Florida. He drove trucks for a living and I heard Momma and Aunt Lynette talking that Bobby had a woman in Georgia who he’d been seeing on the side.

    Aunt Lynette would say, “Now, Caroline, you always knew nobody could tame Bobby Wilder into the married life and you had him for ten years.”

    I don’t know if Momma ever really loved Bobby. I thought she did. And now I can’t ask her. She’s gone.

    I miss my mother more than anything.

     

    In February, when Drew came to Florida, I asked him two questions.

    1. Why didn’t you want to see me when I was seven?

    2. Why did you quit baseball?

    He answered both with the same one-word answer:

    Stupid.

    I’d agree:

    Drew Tolman, you are stupid.

Three

    E ighteen years of her life. That’s how long Lucy was married to Gary, and the man left her for another woman.

    It had been almost two years, and the burning reality still singed the skin right off her if she let the past fester. And sometimes she did.

    Scrubbing the rust stains in the dingy porcelain sink, she thrust her best energy into the job, hoping to get the rejection out of her system. Sometimes it crept up on her, and she hated that feeling of helplessness, that weakness that made her doubt herself. She could tell herself Gary’s leaving had nothing to do with her, but the honest truth was, Lucy still beat herself up over it at the most inopportune times.

    Right now she was questioning this move. She’d thought it through with a lot of care before making the jump, so why this doubt was hitting her she couldn’t exactly be sure. But it was there. And it wasn’t going away no matter how hard she jerked a sponge with cleanser over the rust.

    Her life was like this sink. Tarnished in some spots, but without chips. She had survived, intact and whole. Or as whole as she’d ever been.

    Gary had been the love of her life, her high school sweetheart. They’d met in the tenth grade, dated through graduation, had a parting of ways, lived independently until they got back together and married in 1987. For the most part, her marriage had been wonderful. She’d been so happy, especially after she’d had the boys.

    Her husband doted on them and was a good father. But then, as the years passed, and one or two of his business ventures began to fail, he lacked the confidence she’d once found so attractive in him. He began to stay out a little later, go into work a little earlier. Five years ago, he’d had his first affair, and it about killed her.

    The boys never knew what happened, but the tension in the house was so thick it was