Unfinished Symphony (Logan 3)

Twenty minutes later, after the phone had rung, I heard Richard yelling, blaming Mommy for not getting yet another part. Then I heard him leave the apartment. Minutes later, Mommy came to my bedroom. She wore her sunglasses again and she looked very pale and unhappy.

"I guess you heard," she said. "I didn't get a call back from today's audition. Richard says it's because I'm too distracted these days."

"Maybe it's because you're not meant to be an actress, Mommy," I said and closed my bag.

"No, I can do it. I know I can. It's just taking a little longer than we expected, that's all."

"I didn't do what he said I did, Mommy. It was the other way around. I swear it."

"It doesn't matter, Melody. Richard's right. You don't belong here. I don't know what I was thinking when I agreed to let you stay."

"You were thinking like my mother," I told her. "You were thinking about doing the right thing."

She smiled.

"You were always the dreamer."

"Me?" I started to laugh. "Look around you, Mommy. Look where you are. This place grows dreams like . . . like we grew weeds back in Sewell."

"I meant you were a dreamer because you saw more in me than there is. I'm sorry, honey. I'm not the mother you want me to be."

I nodded. Maybe, finally, she was speaking the truth. I sat on the bed and stared into my lap.

"What are you going to do? Do you have any money?" Mommy asked.

"Yes, I have most of my money. I didn't tell Richard the truth. He would have taken it all. I have my return ticket, too.I'll go to the airport and get myself on the first flight I can," I added.

"And go back to Provincetown?"

"Yes."

"Good.I'll be happier knowing you're safe, and you'll be safe there," she said.

"You mean then your conscience won't bother you, don't you, Mommy?" I shot back at her.

She started to get angry and then her shoulders sank and she nodded.

"Yes," she admitted. "I guess it's time for the lies between us to stop."

I stared at her, trying to blink away my disbelief.

"Chester was always a better father to you than I was a mother," she said and then she laughed. "And the funny thing was he wasn't your real father. Though that didn't bother him at all."

"Mommy," I said sucking in my breath, "when you left me in Provincetown and I discovered the truth about you and my stepdaddy, I started to think that Kenneth was my real father. I just knew you had to be lying about Grandpa Samuel. Please, please, tell me the truth."

She looked at me for a long moment and I thought she was just going to shake her head and walk away, but she came farther into the room instead.

"I hated them," she said, "as you know. When Judge Childs told me he was my real father and therefore Kenneth and I were half-brother and halfsister, I felt as if he had reached his hand into my chest and ripped out my heart. I felt so betrayed, Melody. You can't imagine. Here were all these high and mighty people always making me feel like someone inferior because my mother had me out of wedlock and Olivia had to take me in like some wayward orphan. They never stopped reminding me how grateful I should be, how lucky I was.

"And all the while . . . the lot of them were no better, and in fact, much worse. They were deceitful, greedy people, liars and charlatans, so I decided I would get back at them. When they realized I was pregnant, Olivia was ready to pounce, to point her finger at me and shout, `See, see, this proves how low-down and no good she is, how she's nothing more than a tramp.'

"But I fooled her, I fooled the whole lot of them when I turned the tide and accused Samuel of being the father of my unborn baby. Olivia," Mommy smiled at the memory, "almost died of

embarrassment. She was sick and in her room for days. I told her I would expose the whole sinful lot of them. I would shout it in the streets.

"Chester . . Chester always loved me. He was quick to take my side, especially when I went to him and cried on his shoulder. He promised to look after me, no matter what. I played them all against each other. Chester and Jacob fought. Olivia pulled her tail between her legs and crawled into a hole. I felt sorry for Samuel, but he was someone to pity anyway, letting her bulldoze him all the time, pretending he didn't know she was really in love with Nelson Childs, who had an affair with her sister, my mother. They were hideously cruel to her. They put her away in that institution and made me ashamed of my own mother.

"Nothing I did to them equaled what they had done to me, Melody. I regret nothing except ... except what I had to do to you. I'm sorry, but I know you're going to be all right."