The Family Plan (The McClouds of Mississippi 1)

“Nathan is hardly thick as a stump. And I’m not going to treat him like a slow child. He has some reason to be hurt that I didn’t tell him about Tom’s letters.”

“So now you’re defending him. Just what is it you do want, Caitlin?”

“What I want,” Caitlin said from between clenched teeth, “is for everyone to stop asking me what I want.”

Lindsey studied her for a moment, then reached for her wineglass. “There’s the rub, you see. Until you decide exactly what it is you want, and learn how to put it into words, you’re never going to have it.”

Caitlin looked back at her friend with tormented eyes. “And do you know what it is you want?”

Lindsey lifted her glass in a “touché” gesture. “Not yet. But I’m working on it. Here’s to us both deciding what we want—and having it all.”

Caitlin obligingly sipped her wine, but the excellent beverage tasted a bit like vinegar on her tongue. Lindsey was absolutely right, of course. Until she decided exactly what it would take to make her truly happy, she didn’t have a prayer of finding it.

Or had she already found it and was even now in danger of losing it forever?

All in all, she decided, it was much ea

sier to decide what to do in the most complicated lawsuit than in her personal life.

Carrying a small bouquet of yellow roses, Caitlin entered the nursing home room with the bright smile she always wore when she visited her mother. A uniformed, mocha-skinned woman was singing softly as she finished making up the room’s single bed. She broke off the gospel tune almost in midword to greet Caitlin cheerily.

“Good morning, Ms. Briley. How are you today?”

“I’m fine, thank you, India. And you?”

“Oh, can’t complain.” Gathering the used sheets, she nodded toward the silent wraith sitting in a chair by the room’s only window. “She’s doing real good today. Ate all her breakfast.”

Sylvia Briley had to be hand fed at every meal, one bit of soft food after another placed into her mouth. Sometimes throat massage was required to induce her to swallow. It was a slow, tedious process that Caitlin had done herself on countless occasions. “That’s good to hear.”

She crossed the room to set the roses in a clear plastic vase she kept there for that purpose, since she always brought flowers. Yellow roses or white and yellow daisies—those had always been her mother’s favorites. And even though Sylvia no longer appreciated the beauty of the blooms, Caitlin would continue to bring them.

Saying she would see Caitlin later, India left the room, taking up her song again exactly where she’d left off.

A couple of framed photographs sat beside the vase of roses. With a rush of nostalgia, Caitlin picked one up and looked at it a long time before carrying it with her to her mother’s side. She pulled up the straight-backed visitor’s chair and sank onto it, positioning herself where her mother could see her, had she bothered to look.

“Remember this day, Mama?” She turned the photograph toward her mother. “My college graduation. I was so self-conscious in that oversize gown and dopey cap, but you looked very nice in your best Sunday dress. And Daddy—”

She traced a fingertip over the image of a very large man in a cheap white shirt and limp polyester tie, his round, ruddy face creased by a huge, sweet smile. “Daddy was so proud I thought he would bust all the buttons off his shirt.”

She sighed. “Remember how he was always nagging me about doing my homework and taking the hardest courses? How he fretted about my school résumé because he said it would lead to an impressive career résumé? It was so important to him that I ‘make something’ of myself. ‘Caitlin,’ he would say in that big, booming voice of his, ‘you’ve been given special gifts. It would be a sin to waste them or to throw them away.’”

Sylvia showed no reaction to the change in Caitlin’s voice. But then, she rarely showed a reaction to anything, other than the occasional loud noise that would make her start, sometimes whimper a bit. Caitlin gazed down at the smiling woman in the photograph, seeing her real mother looking back at her from there.

“I listened to all Daddy’s lectures,” Caitlin whispered to the mother in the photo. “I believed him when he said I could be the best of the best if I was willing to work hard enough. Sometimes I wonder if I learned his lessons a bit too well.”

She looked back up then at her mother’s blank face, searching for any sign that she was heard and understood. Any clue at all. As had been the case for more than a year, she found absolutely no evidence that the woman who had once been Sylvia Briley still existed.

“I miss you, Mama,” she said. “I wish I could talk to you about Daddy. I’d like to ask how you really felt about him. I know you loved him, you always made that clear. But did you ever regret falling for him? Ever wish you’d married someone else or never married at all? Were you ever sorry that you gave up your own dreams—whatever they might have been—to take care of him and me?”

Sylvia’s clouded eyes moved, and for just a moment Caitlin wondered if there was some understanding there, after all. But then her mother’s eyes half closed again, obviously looking at nothing.

Caitlin cleared her throat. “I’ve had a job offer, Mama. Sort of. A nibble, anyway. I think I could get it if I go after it—just the way Daddy always said. If I decide to take the job, it would mean I’d have to move to California. I’m not exactly sure what I would do with you. I doubt that such a big move would be good for you, and you get such good care here. But if I leave you here, I wouldn’t be able to visit you very often. It’s a very demanding firm, and there would be little time off for me to fly back here.”

She stood to replace the photograph in its position beside the yellow roses. And then she walked back over to her mother, laying a gentle hand on Sylvia’s thin gray hair.

“I know you don’t even know I’m here. You wouldn’t miss me if I never came again. But I’m not so sure I could get on a plane and leave you behind. Because whether you would know or not, I would know. And it would haunt me.”

She leaned over to kiss her mother’s cheek. Sylvia automatically turned her face away. Caitlin didn’t take offense. “I love you, Mama. And I know that somewhere deep inside you is a kernel of the woman who once loved me, too.”