Her Motherhood Wish (Parent Portal 3)

Silence descended, except for the sounds of a few of her distant neighbors out enjoying their stretch of the little private beach. Cassie had told her mother pretty much everything about Wood, other than her very private feelings for him. As soon as she’d heard herself tell the man he could be in her baby’s life, she’d known that she’d opened a door that could have painful and perhaps catastrophic consequences.

“It’s not like Wood has indicated, in any way, that he’d like us to even go on a date, but I have a feeling that if I allowed it, Wood would marry me because of the baby,” she said aloud. “In the moment, even knowing him as short a time as I have, the idea is tempting, but then life would settle down, and who knows what we’d find together? If anything. I can’t be responsible for breaking up another marriage...”

“Another?” Susan took off her sunglasses and stared at Cassie. “What marriage did you break up? And why don’t I know about it?”

“I broke up you and Dad,” she said, looking her mother right in the eye. “You don’t think I know that?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“I heard you arguing, Mom, though I don’t have specific memories of the words you said.” She could remember the fights, though. The anger in her mother’s voice. And the sadness in her dad’s. “I asked Dad about it once when I was in high school. And he told me that it had been his fault, but it wasn’t really. He said that when it was just the two of you, you working all the time was fine, especially with him being away. But that once I’d come around, he wanted me to have the kind of home life he’d never had. He wanted you to be a stay-at-home mom. He didn’t want me in daycare, or being raised by non–family members.”

“That’s true,” Susan said, nodding but still frowning. “But that wasn’t why we broke up, sweetie. We broke up because while we got along, we weren’t happy together. We were too different. Wanted different things, not just with you but with a lot of things. I wanted to be successful. To have a nice home with a pool, beautiful landscaping and a kiva fireplace out back. He wanted a cottage with grass in the yard.”

As she listened to her mother talk, Cassie smiled to herself. Her mother had just pretty much described Cassie’s home—both parts. Her cottage-style home had some grass in the front yard and she didn’t have the pool, but she had the beach. And the landscaping. She was the best of both of her parents.

Her Alan deserved that. To be able to access the best of both of his parents.

“So...why did the two of you get married in the first place?” she asked softly, a question she’d been carrying around for about as long as she could remember. And had never asked her dad because she’d been afraid the answer would hurt him too much.

“Because I was pregnant with you.”

“What!” Sitting forward, mouth hanging open, she stared back at her mother. “I was born a year after your wedding.”

Susan shook her head. “Your father didn’t want you to ever think you weren’t wanted, or were a mistake, so we fudged the date of our anniversary.”

“You’re kidding me.” She said the words. Needed them to be true so her world didn’t tilt so far off its axis, but she was reading the real truth in Susan’s gaze.

“As you know, we met at work the summer my folks died and our first date was at a beach bonfire,” Susan was saying. “We’d both just graduated, and he was on his way to boot camp, just like we told you. He was different from any guy I’d ever known. Sensitive. And extremely good-looking. He was in great shape. I was trying to forget my father’s death, and he sensed that I wasn’t in the same frame of mind as the rest of the kids that night. He just seemed to know. One thing led to another and...”

“...you didn’t use protection?”

“He didn’t have any and I...was a virgin, actually. I know, hard to believe, in this day and age, that a woman would make it all the way through school without having sex, but, like you, I graduated high school early, and I’ve always been very focused.” Susan chuckled, and Cassie smiled, too. She’d inherited a good bit of that professional mind-set.

“I’d never even considered hav

ing sex that night,” Susan continued softly, looking out at the ocean, sounding almost...nostalgic. “But I felt so much better, just being with him. I drank some wine. And...” Susan shrugged. “My life changed irrevocably that night, but I wasn’t sorry,” she said, still looking at Cassie. “I tell you that with complete and utter honesty. I have never regretted having you. Or knowing your father, for that matter. I regret hurting him, more than you’ll probably ever know. But I’m also convinced that my divorcing him hurt less in the long run than if I’d stayed. At least we were able to remain friends.”

She’d never really thought of them that way—her parents as friends. Adults with their own relationship. Had figured they remained kind and polite to each other because they shared her. But maybe there’d been more than that... Maybe she’d have seen more if he’d still been alive after she graduated high school.

“My point in all this was not to talk about your father. Or me. But to tell you to trust your heart, Cass. You’ve always managed to find a way to accomplish what you need to accomplish—even at three or four years old and hurting for your lonely daddy. You knowingly broke the rules, something you pretty much never did, you know, to accomplish what you felt needed to be accomplished. Think about it...you were a toddler, and yet you somehow knew not to come to me with that particular problem. You knew you had to find a way to take care of it. And you did.” Susan smiled, her eyes a bit misty, but she didn’t hide them behind her glasses as she might ordinarily have done. “I can’t believe I’d forgotten about that night. It defines you, Cass. It’s the you I’ve always known and loved.”

Cassie didn’t know about all that. “I snuck out with Drake and had sex,” she blurted out, naming the boyfriend from her senior year of high school. “We drank beer a few times, too.”

Nodding, Susan continued to smile. “I know.”

Frowning again, Cassie sat back, wondering if she should just go back to bed and start the day over. See if it would run a more normal course. “You knew?”

“Of course I knew. You left a condom wrapper in the back pocket of your jeans. And threw away a beer bottle in your bathroom trash. You wanted me to know. And that’s why I worked hard to find a way to keep the two of you on my radar any time you were together after that.”

She didn’t purposely do either of those things. But she couldn’t believe she’d been that careless, either. So unlike her.

“Like I said,” Susan said, putting her glasses back on, “you always know what you’re doing, Cass. You just might not always be honest with yourself about that.”

Okay, say she went with that...

“So what am I doing with Wood?”

This time when Susan removed her dark lenses, her expression was completely serious. “I have no idea. But I know that you’re doing what you need to do, and that you’ll make it right, somehow.”