be happy."
"And she took advantage of that goodness,"
Gladys accused, stabbing the air between us with her
long forefinger.
"No, Mother Tate, I--"
"Don't sit
there and try to deny what you did to
my son." Her lips trembled. "My son," she moaned.
"Once, I was the apple of his eye. The sun rose and
fell on my happiness, not yours. Even when you were
enchanting him here in the bayou, he would love to sit
and talk with me, love to be with me. We had a
remarkable relationship and a remarkable love
between us," she said. "But you were relentless and
you charmed him away from me," she charged, and I
realized there was no hate such as that born out of
love betrayed. This was why her brain was screaming
out for revenge.
"I didn't do those things, Mother Tate," I said
quietly. "I tried to discourage our relationship. I even
told him the truth about us," I said.
"Yes, you did and viciously drove a wedge between him and me. He knew that I wasn't his real
mother. Don't you think that changed things?" "I didn't want to tell him. It wasn't my place to
tell him," I cried, recalling Grandmere Catherine's
warnings about causing any sort of split between a
Cajun mother and her child. "But you can't build a
house of love on a foundation of lies. You and your
husband should have been the ones to tell him the
truth."
She winced. "What truth? I was his mother until