Girl in the Shadows (Shadows 2)

"My mother has come home," she signed. My heart sank.

Rhona was right to be confident. I had forgotten how desperately we all need our mothers, no matter how terrible they seem to be to us. It wasn't that difficult to imagine a young Echo searching the house for her mother after she had left, waiting at the doorway for her to return, looking for her at the sight of any approaching car, waiting for her in the night. Neither I nor her grandmother could ever imagine the dreams she had, the silent prayers of hope she had recited to herself and maybe still did.

And I had no idea what sort of promises Rhona had just made to her. I didn't know what to say. I smiled weakly and she took back the picture and this time, instead of putting it under her clothing in a drawer, she put it on the dresser top in front of and against another picture of herself. She was obviously no longer afraid of her grandmother knowing she had the picture and getting angry about it.

For now. however, she wanted to talk about Tyler again, about the mall and the kids she had seen. Since she now knew I could drive, she wanted to know if I would take her in the car to see Tyler's store. He had promised to do that one day but had not. I didn't have any trouble imagining why. She thought it would be a wonderful surprise if we just walked into the store.

I couldn't say I wouldn't want to do that. but I hesitated to make any promises. Too often in my life promises turned out to be as far away as rainbows, beautiful for a moment and then gone. They might not be forgotten, but they were gone.

"We'll see," I told her. She was still trusting enough to take that as a promise, nevertheless.

I looked up when I heard footsteps in the hallway. Both Rhona and Skeeter stopped at Echo's doorway. Skeeter had his hair brushed and tied back in a ponytail and was now cleanly shaven. He was wearing a relatively clean looking dark blue shirt and a pair of slacks that were wrinkled, but were nicer than his jeans, of course. He wore slightly scuffed black shoes and socks and some sort of turquoise wristband.

Rhona had put on one of her old "new" dresses, a light pink one-piece tied at the waist. She had washed off the tattoo on her cheek and had her hair brushed back neatly and pinned, clearly showing a pair of gold teardrop earrings. I noticed she was wearing one of the newer pair of flats that matched her dress.

"What are you doing in her room?" Rhona asked in a demanding tone of voice.

"We're practicing communication skills." I said.

"Is that all you're practicing?" Skeeter asked. "What's that mean?"

He laughed. "C'mon, Rhona. We have more important things to do right now,"

Rhona started away and then stopped. "Wait a minute," she told him, and walked into the room right to the dresser. She looked at the picture of herself, picked it up, and smiled at Echo, who was staring up at her like an idolizing rock fan at her favorite performer.

"What's that?" Skeeter asked, coming in. too.

"It's me when I was just eighteen." She showed it to him. "I don't look much different. do I?"

"Not that I can tell,' he said, which was just what she wanted to hear.

She knelt down and looked at Echo. "I'm glad you kept this, sweetheart." she told her, and then she embraced her and kissed her cheek.

Slowly. Echo brought her hand to her cheek as if she wanted to be sure she had really just felt a kiss from her mother. Rhona laughed, put the picture back on the dresser, turned to me with a sly, confident smile on her face, and then walked out of the room with Skeeter.

When I looked back at Echo. I saw she was crying and I knew it was possible to break a child's heart many, many times. She had too much hope to be cynical and distrusting or rather, she had too great a need to believe and be loved.

I talked her into going out for a walk with me and we started down the stairs. I paused when we reached the bottom because I could clearly hear the conversation among Rhona. Skeeter. and Mrs. Westington in the living room. I gestured for us to be silent and we stood there, me listening. Echo appeared to understand I was eavesdropping. She lowered herself slowly to the last step on the stairway and waited patiently.

"We just need this chance. Ma," I heard Rhona say. "The money we need is not a big deal to you, but to us it will mean a whole new start, and that's what you would like for me, isn't it? A new start?"

"If it was a real start that had any chance of making sense. I'd be for it. yes."

"This is a real start. Mrs. Westington," Skeeter said. "I've been working construction on and off for twenty or so years now. I know the business."

"You know it from a laborer's point of view, not an entrepreneur's point of view, and as my husband would say, that's a horse of a different color,"

"He wouldn't say that. Ma." Rhona told her. "He'd be willing to stake us."

"As a home developer? Please, spare me," Mrs Westington said.

"We've been studying how to do this for some time now. You buy an old property no one really wants, so you get it for a song." Skeeter said. "Sometimes, you can find a foreclosure. too. Then you go in there and you rip it up and rebuild it with the best materials and modern appliances and you can literally double or even triple your investment. You'll end up making money on this deal, not losing it. Mrs. Westington. And at the same time, you'll be helping Rhona get a foundation upon which to build a new life for her and her daughter."

"Her daughter? You leave that girl here for nearly ten years with nary a phone call, a letter, and then you return with this fantasy and expect all that has washed under the bridge to be forgotten?"

"I know I was a bad mother. but--"

"Bad mother? First you have to be any sort of a mother to be good or bad. You abandoned ship, girl, and you never cared to know if the ship sank or not."