Loving You Always Read Free Page B

transgression.
    “I’m gonna grab a cart,” Meredith said. “There’s always something you need at Walmart.”
    Kerris was studying a display while she waited for Meredith when she noticed a woman just a few feet away, checking and highlighting receipts for customers exiting the store. Kerris’s feet stuck to the floor. Goose bumps sprung up on her arms. The woman, though older, looked just like…
    “Mama Jess?” Kerris asked, hesitant, hopeful, taking the few steps that brought her directly in front of the older woman.
    Highlighter in hand and dark brown eyes sharpening in her still-smooth brown face, the woman studied Kerris. New lines framed those eyes, but the kindness Kerris had seen as a child was still there. She wore an I ♥ NY T-shirt over a denim skirt.
    Kerris blinked a few times, uncertain. She hadn’t seen Mama Jess since she was ten years old. Maybe her memory hadn’t served her right. Maybe her heart had leaped ahead and imagined this stranger as the woman she had always considered the mother she’d never had.
    “I’m s-sorry.” Kerris stuttered, embarrassed. “I thought you were—”
    “Kerris!” The woman cut off Kerris’s stilted apology.
    Kerris hurled herself at Mama Jess like a cannonball, wrapping her arms completely around the woman’s neck. Strong arms encircled her, pressing between her shoulder blades and pulling her as close as her swollen middle would allow.
    “I’m sorry,” Kerris mumbled through her tears, pulling away. “I’ve gotten your shirt all wet.”
    “Think I did the same.” Mama Jess laughed and wiped away her own tears. “As I live and breathe, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, Lil’ Bit.”
    “I wanted to find you after…” Kerris trailed off.
    The past rose up between them, tragic and awkward. Kerris’s reluctant, jumbled testimony on the witness stand had sent this woman’s brother to prison, where he had died. Because of her, Mama Jess had lost all of the foster children she’d loved so much, and was probably never allowed to foster again.
    “I wanted to see you, too.” Mama Jess didn’t look away, her voice soft and sure. “But I couldn’t. I always prayed we’d find each other again, though. And after all this time…well, God knows.”
    “Mary!” an impatient voice called from behind them.
    A balding man, not much taller than Kerris, crossed to where they stood. His mud-brown button-down shirt strained across his paunch. Censure was all over his face and in the eyes behind his wire-frame glasses.
    “It’s peak time, not time for socializing, Mary.”
    Kerris narrowed her eyes at the unpleasant man. She exchanged a quick look with Mama Jess, ready to snap at him on her behalf.
    “Yes, sir, Mr. Crawford.” Mama Jess offered a pleasant smile. “Just some old friends.”
    “Reunions on your own time.” He harrumphed his displeasure and walked back into the store.
    “Heard of a Napoleon complex?” Mama Jess asked from the side of her mouth. “That’s him. Tries to make up for in mouth what he ain’t got in inches.”
    “Probably not just inches in height.” Meredith parked her cart to the side and frowned at Crawford’s departing back.
    “Mer!” Kerris pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to hold back a laugh.
    “Oh, she’s probably right.” Mama Jess offered a hearty laugh of her own. “Who’s this?”
    “My friend Meredith. Mer, this is…”
    How should she describe this woman? There was so much she’d only ever told Walsh, and then later, Cam. She grappled with the proper way to address the woman after all this time.
    “It’s Mary Jessup, but you can call me Mama Jess.”
    “Nice to meet you,” Meredith said, shaking hands.
    “Well, you heard the man,” Mama Jess said. “I need to get back to work.”
    “We can’t just—couldn’t we…I mean, when do you get off?” Kerris was desperate not to lose Mama Jess again now that they’d run into each other. “Maybe we could have dinner or