He sighed. “My talk with my mother didn’t go well.”
“I gathered that already.”
There was another pause before he spoke again. “She told me I’ve broken her heart, and she isn’t sure she can ever forgive me.”
“You’re her son, Nathan. She loves you.”
“I know. But right now she doesn’t ever want to see me again.”
Caitlin’s fingers tightened spasmodically around her mug. “She said that?”
“Words to that effect.”
“She didn’t mean it. She’s hurt. And worried about what everyone will say when word gets out that you’ve brought your father’s child home with you. I’m sure she’s embarrassed about having the old gossip crop up again.”
“I understand all of that, and I told her so. I even tried to apologize for causing her pain, even though I really felt I had no choice. She didn’t want to hear anything I had to say.”
“Pain has a way of shutting down hearing. You’ve dealt with enough ugly divorces to understand that.”
Staring into his mug, Nathan nodded. “My head understands that. But my heart thinks I deserve better than to be thrown out of her life for doing no more than taking in a little girl who had nowhere else to go.”
“I didn’t say your mother was being fair. I said her reaction isn’t completely unexpected.”
“I’d hoped when she saw Isabelle—how sweet and vulnerable she is—maybe my mother could forget…”
“When she looked at Isabelle, she saw your father. And her own past, if Isabelle looks as much like Deborah as you said. I’m sure it was a shock to her. But still she managed not to say anything hurtful in front of Isabelle.”
“No. She said she didn’t wish any ill to the child, but she doesn’t want to have anything to do with her. She doesn’t want Isabelle in her home, and she doesn’t want to visit me in mine as long as Isabelle is here.”
“And what did you say?”
The hesitation was a bit longer this time. “I tried to be patient. I had made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t lose my temper or say anything I would regret later. I was just going to let her say whatever she needed to say and hope she would come around eventually.”
“But…?”
He sighed again. “I’m not very good at holding my tongue. I sort of lost my temper.”
Caitlin groaned. “Oh, Nathan. What did you say?”
His expression turned defensive. “I reminded her that she was just given a fancy award for her work with children’s charities, and I thought it was the height of hypocrisy for her to be willing to throw this child out in the streets because she’s a social embarrassment. I said anyone who would blame an innocent little girl for events that happened before she was born had a heart of stone. And I might have said something along the lines that she was letting me down by not standing behind me when I most need my family’s support.”
He’d had a right to speak his mind, of course, but perhaps it would have been better if Nathan had stuck to his original plan of letting his mother do all the talking during that first encounter. Still, he didn’t seem to have said anything that was ultimately unforgivable. “Give it time. Maybe she will come around.”
He scowled. “Maybe right now I don’t care if she does or not.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“At the moment I do. But I’ll get over it. I just don’t know if she will.”
Because he seemed to need the reassurance, Caitlin reached out to touch his hand where it lay so lifelessly on the table. “You knew this was a possibility, Nathan. You said you were prepared to face it for Isabelle’s sake.”
“I am,” he assured her. “I still believe Isabelle needs me more than my mother does. I’ll have to be content to be a family of two from now on.”
“No regrets about the decision you made?”
Nathan glanced toward the doorway in the direction of Isabelle’s room. “You saw how happy she looked in there. She’s already had her life turned upside down twice in the past year. The only reason she’s adjusting so well this time is because she already knew me and had a good relationship with me. Do you think she would have settled in so easily with strangers?”
Caitlin thought Isabelle was extremely resilient, but she couldn’t say with any certainty that she would have happily adjusted to a family she didn’t know. Isabelle adored Nathan, and she had talked about him constantly during their outing.