Harvesting the Heart Read online

  "I didn't understand that, either," I said quietly, and I wondered if she thought I was talking about her or about me.

  My mother sat up and crossed her legs. "You're happy here," she said. "And you fit. I saw it in the way you rode Donegal. If you lived here you could teach some of the beginner kids. If you want, you could even start to show." Her voice trailed off as she stared out the window, and then she turned her gaze back to me. "Paige," she said, "why don't you just stay here with me?"

  Just stay here with me. As she spoke, something inside me burst and coursed warm through my veins, and I realized that all along I must have been a little bit cold. Then that rush stopped, and there was nothing. This was what I had wanted, wasn't it? Her stamp of approval, her need for me. I'd waited twenty years. But something was missing.

  She said she wanted me to stay, but I was the one who'd found her. If I did stay, I'd never know the one thing I really wanted to know. Would she ever have come looking for me?

  It was a choice, a simple choice. If I stayed, I would not be with Nicholas and Max. I wouldn't be around when Max threw his first loopy pitch; I wouldn't run my fingers over the plaque on Nicholas's office door. If I stayed, it was for good; I would never be going home.

  Then it struck me for the first time: the meaning of the words I'd been saying over and over since I'd arrived. I really did have to go home, although I was only now beginning to believe it. "I have to go back," I said. The words fell heavy, a wall between my mother and myself.

  I saw something flicker across my mother's eyes, but just as quickly it was gone. "You can't undo what's done, Paige," she said, squaring her shoulders the same way I did when I fought with Nicholas. "People forgive, but they never forget. I made a mistake, but if I had come back to Chicago, I never would have been able to live it down. You always would have been throwing that up at me, like you are now. What do you think Nicholas is going to do? And Max, when he's old enough to understand?"

  "I didn't run away from them," I said stubbornly. "I ran to find you."

  "You ran to remind yourself you still had a self," my mother said, getting up from the bed. "Be honest. It's about you, isn't it?"

  She stood beside the window, blocking out the reflected light so that I was left in almost total darkness. All right, I was at my mother's horse farm and we were catching up and all that was good, but it hadn't been the reason I'd left home. In my mind, both actions were tangled together, but one hadn't caused the other. Still, no matter what, leaving home had to do with more than just me. It may have started out that way, but I was beginning to see how many chain reactions had been set off and how many people had been hurt. If the simple act of my disappearance could unravel my whole family, I must have held more power--been more important--than I'd ever considered.

  Leaving home was all about us. I realized this was something that my mother had never stopped to learn.

  I stood up and rounded on her so quickly she fell back against the pale glass of the window. "What makes you think it's that simple?" I said. "Yes, you walk out--but you leave people behind. You fix your life--but at someone else's expense. I waited for you," I said quietly. "I needed you." I leaned closer. "Did you ever wonder what you missed? You know, all the little things, like teaching me to put on mascara and clapping at my school plays and seeing me fall in love?"

  My mother turned away. "I would have liked to see that," she said softly. "Yes."

  "I guess you don't always get what you want," I said. "Do you know that when I was seven, eight, I used to keep a suitcase, all packed and ready, hidden in my closet? I used to write to you two or three times a year, begging you to come and get me, but I never knew where to send the letters."

  "I wouldn't have taken you away from Patrick," my mother said. "It wouldn't have been fair."

  "Fair? By whose standards?" I stared at her, feeling worse than I had in a very long time. "What about me? Why didn't you ever ask me?"

  My mother sighed. "I couldn't have forced you to make that kind of choice, Paige. It was a no-win situation."

  "Yes. Well," I said bitterly, "I know all about those." Suddenly I was so tired that all the rage rushed out of my body. I wanted to sleep for months; for, maybe, years. "There are some things you can't tell your father," I said, sinking onto the bed. My voice was even and matter-of-fact, and in a moment of courage I lifted my eyes to see, quicksilver, my soul fly out of hiding. "I had an abortion when I was eighteen," I said flatly. "You weren't there."

  Even as my mother reached for me, I could see her face blanch. "Oh, Paige," she said, "you should have come to me."

  "You should have been there," I murmured. But really, what difference could it have made? My mother would have believed it was her duty to tell me of the choices. She might have whispered about the certain smell of a baby, or reminded me of the spell we had woven, mother and daughter, lying beside each other on a narrow kitchen table, wrapping our future around us like a hand-worked shawl. My mother might have told me the things I didn't want to hear back then and could not bear to hear right now.

  At least my baby never knew me, I thought. At least I spared her all that pain.

  My mother lifted my chin. "Look at me, Paige. You can't go back. You can't ever go back." She moved her hands to rest on my shoulders like gripped clamps. "You're just like me," she said.

  Was I? I had spent the past three months trying to find all the easy comparisons--our eyes, our hair, and the less obvious traits, like the tendency to run and to hide. But there were some traits I didn't want to admit I shared with her. I had given up the gift of a child because I was so scared that my mother's irresponsibility would be passed on in my bloodline. I had left my family and chalked it up to Fate. For years I had convinced myself that if I could find my own mother, if I could just see what might have been, I would possess all the answers.

  "I'm not like you," I said. It wasn't an accusation but a statement, curled at the end in surprise. Maybe I had expected to be like her, maybe I had even secretly hoped to be like her, but now I wasn't going to lie down and just let it happen. This time I was fighting back. This time I was choosing my own direction. "I'm not like you," I said again, and I felt a knot tighten at the base of my stomach, now that all of a sudden I had no excuse.

  I stood up and walked around the little-girl's bedroom, already knowing what I was going to do. I had spent my life wondering what I could have done wrong that made the one person I loved more than anything leave me behind; I wasn't going to pin that blame like a scarlet letter on Nicholas or Max. I pulled my underwear out of a drawer. I stuffed my jeans, still covered with hay and manure, into

  the bottom of the small overnight bag I'd arrived with. I carefully wrapped up my sticks of charcoal. I started to envision the quickest route home, and I counted off the hours in my mind. "How can you even ask me to stay?" I whispered.

  My mother's eyes glowed like a mountain cat's. She shook with the effort of holding her tears at bay. "They won't take you back," she said.

  I stared at her, and then I slowly smiled. "You did," I said.

  chapter 32

  Nicholas

  ax had his first cold. It was amazing that he'd made it this long--the pediatrician said it had something to do with breast-feeding and antibodies. Nicholas had got almost no sleep in the past two days, which were supposed to be his time off from the hospital. He sat helpless, watching Max's nose bubble and run, scrubbing clean the cool-mist vaporizer, and wishing he could breathe for his son.

  Astrid was the one to diagnose the cold. She had taken Max to the pediatrician because she thought he'd swallowed a willow pod-- which was an entirely different story--and she wanted to know if it was poisonous. But when the doctor listened to his chest and heard the upper-respiratory rattle and hum, he'd prescribed PediaCare and rest.

  Nicholas was miserable. He hated watching Max choke and sputter over his bottle, unable to drink since he couldn't breathe through his nose. He had to rock him to sleep, a lousy habit, becau