Page 9 of The Wish List
Was it Freya’s imagination or did one side of her mother’s mouth curve up at that comment?
May shook her head and glanced around the room, her eyes going a little wild like those of a caged animal. “Ho,” she repeated. “May ho.”
“She wants to go home,” Trinity translated and May nodded.
“Goo grl.” May patted the sheet with her free hand, and Trinity hurried around the bed to grasp it. “May goo grls,” May said, looking between the three sisters. “Ho.”
Freya could only describe her mother’s expression as filled with love. So much overt love it made Freya’s heart pinch.
Beth cleared her throat. “Mom, you had a stroke. You’re in a rehabilitation center, where they can help you get better. It’s a long road—”
“We’ll take you home for Thanksgiving,” Freya promised, elbowing her sister. “I’m sure Greg has the connections to help us work something out.”
Beth shot a glare over her shoulder, but May’s gaze had tracked to Christopher Greer. There was no mistaking the smile she offered him, even though it was uneven.
“Ho,” she told him.
“Mom, please,” Beth pleaded.
Greer’s unreadable gaze met Freya’s, and her stomach pitched again. She expected him to side with her practical sister, the nursing professional who would never make a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep. At this moment, Freya would promise her mom the moon if it meant May would continue looking at her with love instead of the disapproval Freya remembered.
She shouldn’t care. She’d spent an embarrassing amount of time and money trying to prove that her mother’s opinion of her life didn’t matter.
An obvious crock if this moment was any indication.
Without glancing at Beth, which surprised Freya since most people automatically deferred to her older sister, Christopher Greer gripped the end of the bed and nodded. “We’ll find a way to get you home,” he told her mother.
At that moment, Freya felt her heart begin to thaw the tiniest bit. She rubbed two fingers against her chest, unfamiliar with that kind of ache.
May let out an obvious sigh of relief, clearly trusting her agent to make good on the promise her middle daughter had made.
Beth tsked as Trinity leaned in and hugged their mom. “You’re going to be home tomorrow and home for Christmas,” the baby of the family declared.
Okay, that was more than Freya had promised. But as Trinity pulled back, tears spilled from their mother’s eyes. May looked at each of them and then whispered, “I lo ew.”
“I love you,” Trinity translated, unnecessarily.
Because there were no mistaking May’s words, garbled as they might be.
Freya’s heart was pounding at that point. Over a decade of discontent, anger and years of estrangement and for what? Three mangled words, and she was suddenly fully committed to her mother once again.
Maybe that was the power of the maternal bond, or perhaps it was just years of unconsciously craving a way to connect to her mom again. May had been narcissistic, but she’d also been a bright and brilliant beacon, the sun her daughters orbited around. Freya had been living in the shadows for too long, and she realized how much she wanted to walk out into the light.
CHAPTER FOUR
BETHSATINher car at the curb in front of her mother’s house the following morning. Her heart pounded as much as her head. She’d barely slept the previous night with the emotions swirling through her.
May had drifted back to sleep shortly after eliciting the promise to bring her home from her daughters. Freya and Trinity had seemed almost giddy with the prospect, but Beth couldn’t manage to release the resentment and mistrust.
To her surprise, the doctor overseeing her mother’s care had supported the idea of May going home for Thanksgiving Day and then in a few weeks returning to her house on a permanent basis to continue her rehabilitation with the help of a private nurse.
Beth didn’t want to think about the cost of that because it made her feel like a bad daughter. Depending on how they arranged things and how long Freya was willing to stay, it wouldn’t necessarily be more than having her mother in the rehabilitation center for the holidays. But the price was more than Beth could pay unless she used the money she’d saved for school to cover it. And she didn’t think either of her sisters had that kind of savings available.
The cost of these developments felt different, at least for her. She hadn’t been in her childhood home for nearly five years. She had regular phone calls with her mom, but during the infrequent times they saw each other, it was for dinner or coffee in town or when May would pop by Beth’s house, generally around dinner time.
She climbed out of her car and heard children’s voices shouting at each other. Looking up, she saw Zach and Timmy, Shauna’s six-year-old twins, arguing as they made their way toward the driveway.
“I get to sit in the back with her.”
