A Mother's Homecoming Read Free

told her she had to slow down. She has a room over at Magnolia Hills Senior Community, but she’s in here at least once a week to make sure everything’s shipshape. She sold part ownership to Davy Lowe, but he didn’t come in to oversee dinner shift tonight because his champion beagle is supposed to have her pups.”
    â€œThank you.” Pam had cut all ties with Mimosa the night she left; the relatively impersonal inquiry about Kat McAdams was a low-risk way of easing back into her past life. It was unexpectedly reassuring to know that Granny K was alive and kicking and still looking out for her diner.
    Helen moved to the next table, greeting a youngcouple and their boisterous toddler, and Pam surveyed the diner. The setup hadn’t changed much over the years, although the color scheme—formerly red and white—had been altered to a deep green and softer ivory. Additional booths had been installed toward the back where there had once been a jukebox and a coin-operated air-hockey table. During her perusal of the surroundings, Pam noticed that a young woman—maybe early twenties—was staring at her. Pam couldn’t understand why. The stranger seemed too young to be anyone from Pam’s past.
And too old to be Faith.
    Swallowing, Pam pushed away the thought. If she kept picking at emotional scabs, she would never heal.
    Suddenly she realized that the other woman had stood and she looked as if she were coming this way. Crap, for all Pam knew, Mae had remarried and this girl was her stepsister. But before the stranger had taken two steps, another woman ducked into Pam’s line of sight and the twentysomething altered course.
    â€œWhy, Pamela Jo, that
is
you,” a tiny redhead drawled.
    Pam tensed, feeling ridiculously vulnerable without her baseball cap and no food yet to occupy her attention or make her look busy. Luckily the woman already cheerfully seating herself on the other side of the table seemed friendly. She wore a sleeveless floral dress and barely topped five feet—not exactly the intimidating type. If she managed to break a hundred pounds, it would be because the heavy cloud of auburn framing her face tipped her over the edge. Pam forced her expression into an answering smile.
    â€œYep. It’s me. But I just go by Pam now.”
    The woman winked, conspiratorial. “Now that we’reall grown up, hmm? Well, I’m still Violet, same as I ever was.”
    Violet Keithley. Pam blinked, reacclimating to yet another piece of her past rising up to meet her. “Sure, I remember you.” They’d been in different grades, not close at all, but Violet had been a member of church choir with her. Backup soprano, not one of the frequent soloists like Pam.
    â€œIt’s so nice to see you again.” Violet shook her head, setting the voluminous mass in motion. “I always expected I’d turn on the radio one day and hear your voice.”
    â€œYeah, well … So are you here tonight with your family? Husband, kids?” Pam was more than willing to coo appreciatively over wallet-sized pictures of Violet’s children if it meant not having to talk about herself.
    â€œOh, no.” Violet tittered. “Haven’t found the right guy to make an honest woman of me yet. My sister Cora got married last June and told me I should take up fishing to meet men. That’s how she did it.”
    At the image of ultrapetite Violet wrestling a bass out of the Yazoo River, Pam fought a grin.
    â€œI was going to meet one of my friends for dinner,” Violet continued, “but she called when I was already halfway here to say her little boy is feeling funny. He doesn’t usually mind staying with his daddy, but you know how it is. Everyone wants Mama when they’re sick.”
    Not everyone.
    Almost as soon as Pam formed the sardonic thought—born more of habit than heat—she reconsidered. Alcoholism was an illness and, as part