Page 124 of The Voice We Find

“Sophie? Sophie?” A hushed voice cuts through my subconscious.

I crack one eye open to find my mother’s face looming over me. “Mom?”

She holds a finger to her lips and points at the couch opposite mine. She mouths the words,Who is that?

My blurry gaze lands on August and the chubby cat who has once again made a home on his chest. Not that I can blame him. “My boyfriend.”

Her eyelashes flutter in response. “Oh. Oh my.”

It takes a moment for me to process how weird this entire scenario is, but once the events of last night have a chance to surface in my brain, it seems less so. “Are you okay, Mom? What are you doing here so early?”

I struggle to sit up, and she lifts the blanket off me and then tucksit around my shoulders as if I’m six and not twenty-six. I look around and realize who I don’t see. “Where’s Dad?”

“He didn’t come with me.” Her answer has the punch of a double espresso to my system. “He’s still ... processing what happened. And I simply can’t keep rehashing it.” She pauses and looks at me. “I think I could use some caffeine. How about you?”

I nod and follow her into the kitchen. “Definitely.”

It only takes me a second to realize I’m going to need to be the one to make the coffee. There might have been a day my mother knew where everything was in this kitchen, but that was long ago. Long before the events of last night rocked her entire world.

I touch her arm gently. “I’ll get the coffee. Why don’t you go take a seat.”

“Thank you,” she says.

As I pour the grounds into the coffeemaker, mom sits at the tattered round table tucked into the kitchen nook. It’s surrounded on three sides with bay windows overlooking the smallest vineyard. That table is one of the only original items left in the winery from when Gigi built it. I’ve always been partial to it—scratch marks and all. A part of me is shocked my brother didn’t get rid of it.

As if reading my mind, my mother addresses this very thing as she sits. “I told your brother he could get rid of anything in the estate but this. I have too many memories with my mother at this table to have it tossed due to aesthetic.”

I want to tell her I’m surprised he agreed, as it seems out of character for him, but after so many heavy realities involving my brother, perhaps this table’s presence can be a reminder of God’s light in the darkness.

While the coffee brews, I study my mother’s exhausted profile. She’s wearing a sweatshirt and leggings with minimal makeup and hair that’s been combed and clipped back. A far cry from how high society would know Anita Wilder.

“Did you sleep at all last night?” I ask.

“A power nap sometime around four. But it was fitful at best.”

“I’m sorry.” I set a full coffee mug down in front of her and takethe chair beside her. “Do you want me to make you something to eat?”

She places a hand over mine. “I don’t want you to make me anything. I just want to be near you.” The instant she says it, her eyes puddle with tears. “I know there is nothing in the world that can make up for all the mistakes I made when you were still mine to raise ... but I hope you’ll let me try.” Her voice trembles. “I have so many regrets, and if I could, I would go back and do so many things differently.” She sniffs, then pulls a napkin from the crystal holder in the center of the table and balls it in her fist. “I thought a lot about what you said last night, how your brother’s crimes don’t have to be the end of our family’s story. How we still have choices to make.” She takes a slow sip of her coffee, then looks out at the vineyard. “My mother predicted this would happen.”

“That what would happen?” Surely she hadn’t predicted my brother’s criminal activity; he was a pubescent teen when she passed.

“That your father’s greed and lust for success would drive this place, as well as our family, into the ground.” She continues to stare off into the distance. “That if we took God out of the equation, we’d lose more than we’d ever gain.” She turns to me then. “Those were her parting words to your father and me the night before she passed. Little did we know then that she’d taken your dad’s name off the trust and made the stipulations surrounding it nearly impossible for him to ever hold a place of ownership again.”

“Is that why dad hated her so much?”

She lifts a shoulder. “They disagreed on many things—most of them having to do with me.” She rubs her lips together before taking another half sip of coffee. “But his fate was sealed when he told her he would raise his family under the same atheistic mindset he’d been raised under.” Her eyes cloud again, and she blots her cheeks as soon as the tears drop. “I should have pushed back years ago. I had known God as a child. My mother and my stepdad baptized me when I was a teenager during a church picnic. But when I met your father, I was so struck by his confidence and his no-nonsense approach to life and logic that it was difficult to keep my stanceof faith. He thought it was nothing more than brainwashing and indoctrination. It’s what started my rebellion. And my mother died praying I would turn back to the faith she had instilled in me as a girl. That was decades ago now.”

Other than in the form of a curse, I’ve never once heard my mother reference God. So the fact that she was baptized as a teenager and then willingly chose to walk away is disorienting.

“You can come back, Mom,” I say with a boldness not my own. “It doesn’t matter how long it’s been. My pastor says there’s no expiration date when it comes to surrender. Or God’s grace and forgiveness.” I think of August then, of the years he spent too ashamed to be honest with himself, much less with God. And how all that shame and guilt and fear were broken the instant he surrendered.

She stretches out her hand to touch my cheek. “You’ve turned into such a beautiful woman, Sophie.” She purses her lips and looks down into her coffee. “I’ve missed so much of your life.”

I touch her arm. “Maybe we can start to get to know each other again.”

She smiles and tips her head to the doorway. “We could start by you telling me a little about the man sleeping in the front parlor.”

“His name is August Tate. He’s been the producer on the narration projects I’ve been working on over the summer and I ... I love him.” Tears prick my eyes as this unfiltered truth pours out of me. “And I hope I’ll get to spend the rest of my life loving him.”

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