A Mother's Homecoming Read Free Page B

Meadowberry. She’s probably got a couple of vacancies. Although …”
    â€œAlthough what?” Pam prompted reluctantly. From the way Violet was squirming in her seat, it couldn’t be good.
    â€œExcuse me, ladies.” Helen reached between them to set down two steaming plates of food. Too bad Pam had entirely lost her appetite. “Can I get y’all anything else?”
    Pam shook her head mutely, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She tried to take comfort in the fact that no matter what Violet’s next words were, they could hardly compare to the shocking news of Mae’s death.
    When the waitress bustled off, Violet attempted an unconvincing smile. “Mmm. Nothing like Granny K’s home cookin’, is there?”
    â€œBefore we were interrupted, you were going to tell me something?”
    Violet toyed with the lacy collar on her dress. “Now, I don’t want to speak out of turn—Cora always scolds about me being a gossip—but it’s no secret that you and Nick Shepard used to—”
    â€œNick?” The world tilted with nauseating speed, the way it had on mornings she’d tried to stand up too fast with a hangover. “What about him?”
    â€œHe lives on Meadowberry, too. Kind of across the street from Trudy. With his daughter.”
    â€œF-Faith is in town?” Nothing was right in the universe. Her mother was suddenly unexpectedly gone, and her daughter—who had supposedly relocated to North Carolina—was here?
I have no right to be within ten counties of that poor kid.
If you looked up
unfit
in the dictionary, there’d be a picture of Pam. It seemed to be a female family legacy, one she had vowed would stop with her.
    Belatedly, the other half of what Violet said clicked. Tiny black spots obscured Pam’s vision as the blood drained from her face.
    Nick was in Mimosa.

Chapter Two
    If this evening was a sign of what the teenage years were going to be like, Nick Shepard should go out right now and buy up the pharmacy’s aspirin supply. Maybe he could get some kind of bulk discount. He’d have to drag his mutinous twelve-and-a-half-year-old daughter along with him to the store rather than leave her here because apparently she couldn’t be trusted.
    He and Faith were currently having dinner, seated side by side on high-backed stools at the breakfast bar—a habit that drove his mother crazy. “You have a perfectly nice kitchen table, Nicholas,” his mother would say. “I don’t understand why you insist on eating at the counter as if this were some low-budget diner.” For once, he found himself wishing that they were at the table. If Faith were sitting across from him, it might be easier to read what was going on in that tween brain of hers.
    As it was, she kept her head bent over the plate. She scraped her fork across the ceramic at discordant intervals but didn’t actually eat anything. Her dark hair—the only visible trait she’d inherited from him—hung down, obscuring her features and shutting him out.
    They’d always been so close, but lately …
    He sighed, determined to try again. “Can you explain to me, rationally, why you’re the one who’s angry? You’re a good kid, so you know what you did was wrong and that grounding you for the upcoming weekend is probably less than you deserve. Your grandmom and aunt Leigh already think I’m too soft on you.”
    From behind the curtain of Faith’s wavy hair, he could swear he actually
heard
her eyes roll.
    â€œWhy can’t they just butt out?” she grumbled.
    He occasionally had that same thought. But then he remembered that, technically, he’d blown two marriages and his daughter needed some female influence in her life to counterbalance the rough-edged construction workers Nick employed. “If you want them to interfere less,” he suggested, “stop proving them