Faith hadn’t slept more than an hour the night before. Between worrying about her dad and fuming about Hunter and her mother, she’d tossed and turned until she’d finally rolled out of bed at a quarter to five.
With nothing else to occupy her mind, she showered and headed to the spa to catch up on admin work. The first thing she noticed when she fired up the computer was the appointment calendar, and her eyes nearly bugged out. Her personal schedule had been cleared for the day, but the rest of the week was booked solid with massages, facials, and mani-pedis. More than half were highlighted in blue, indicating that Vivian had secured the appointments. She wanted to call Vivian to express her appreciation, but it was still way too early. Instead, she made a note to do that later and tackled the unpaid invoices.
She was knee deep in the financials when her cell phone rang. The number indicated it was coming from Eureka, and she answered it immediately. It was the doctor at the hospital. Her father was awake.
Faith quickly stopped at Incantation Café for sugar and caffeine and then got on the road immediately. But the traffic was so bad that it still took her over an hour to get there. By the time she arrived, Clair, her father’s girlfriend, was in the waiting room pacing. She’d come to the hospital late the previous evening and had still been there when Faith had left. Faith imagined that she hadn’t gotten much sleep either.
Faith gave her a quick hug and asked, “What’s going on?”
Anger flashed in Clair’s eyes, something Faith rarely saw, and she spat out, “Gabrielle is here again. After twenty years, what makes her think she can just stroll right back into his life? I can’t believe she convinced the nurses to let her in. I’m just so mad I could spit. Here I am waiting, while she’s in there doing… I have no idea, but he doesn’t need this stress. She needs to leave.”
Faith couldn’t agree more. “I’ll take care of it.” She hugged Clair one more time and took off down the hall to her father’s room. She stood in the doorway and glared at her mother, who was sitting beside Lin’s bed, holding his hand. “I thought we told you your presence wasn’t welcome,” Faith said. “You should leave.”
“Faith, it’s okay,” Lin said, his voice raspy.
Gabrielle Townsend rose from her chair but didn’t release Lin’s hand.
Faith’s eyes narrowed as she stared at their connection. How dare she? She strode over to her father’s side. “What are you doing here, Gabrielle?” she asked, deliberately not calling her Mom. “What do you and Hunter want from us?”
“Hunter?” she asked, confusion swimming in her blue eyes. “He doesn’t know I’m here.” She let out a humorless laugh. “If he did, he’d likely be here tossing me out.”
“Maybe I should give him a call then,” Faith said coldly.
“Faith,” her father said again.
She turned her attention to him and felt the anxiety she’d been carrying around since the day before start to drain away. His eyes were bright, and his cheeks were rosy. But more importantly, he no longer looked frail, as if he’d break at any moment. “You scared us, Dad.”
“I don’t mind telling you I scared myself, baby girl.” He reached for her hand. The moment his skin touched hers, she felt the difference. The dread, anxiety, and unease had vanished, and all she felt was extreme fatigue. He wasn’t completely out of the woods, but the meds had worked, and her dad was in the process of getting better.
“Don’t do that again,” she ordered and pressed a kiss to his cheek. When she straightened, she looked at her mother and again asked, “What do you want?”
“Nothing… I just wanted to explain, to make amends, I guess.” She turned her head, averting her gaze.
“Faith,” her father said gently. “Can you give me and your mother a few minutes? There are a couple things we need to discuss.”
“But…” Faith shook her head. Her mother had broken his heart. Broken her four girls’ hearts.
“Please,” he said. “It will only be a few minutes.”
She wanted to scream, but she wasn’t going to argue with him. For today, it was enough that he was awake and beating the infection. “All right. But Clair and I will be waiting.”
“I know Clair’s out there. At least I hoped she was.” He gave Faith a chagrined smile. “Tell her not to be too angry with me. She’s still the only one I’ll let steal my morning coffee.”
Faith chuckled. “I’ll tell her, but I’m not sure your charm is going to work. She’s pretty annoyed.”
“Don’t worry. Clair will forgive me.” He kissed the back of her hand and let go. “Five more minutes.”
Gabrielle just stood there, staring at her feet.
Faith was disgusted, and the primal anger that had overtaken her earlier in the week came roaring back. She wanted to scream, cry, break things. But she didn’t. She kept her head held high and walked back out to the waiting room, where she relayed her dad’s message to Clair.
Clair, to her surprise, threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, he knows he’s in deep. Share his coffee indeed.”
“Inside joke?” Faith asked.
“Something like that.”
“So, you’re not mad at him?”
Clair frowned. “I was never mad at him, but I’m furious with her. This was not the time for her to just show up out of nowhere. It was already stressful enough for you girls. You don’t need her drama, too.”
The anger that Faith had been holding down started to fade. Clair was right. They didn’t need Gabrielle’s drama right then, and Faith had no obligation to spend any energy worrying about it. She leaned back and closed her eyes. In seconds, she was asleep.
“Faith, wake up.”
A sharp pain seized Faith’s neck as she jerked awake. “Oh, ouch,” she said, pressing her hand to her neck as she stretched from side to side. “That was a bad idea.”
Clair nudged her and pointed to Gabrielle, who was standing at the nurse’s station. She was wearing a long, flowery, faded blue and white skirt and a white fleece jacket with a pair of very worn leather boots. She was neat and clean, but it was clear her clothes were several years old with many miles of wear. And for the first time, Faith could really see how rough her mother’s life had been. Hunter had told her, but she hadn’t fully understood what that life must’ve meant for her as well as Hunter.
“Looks like run-away-mommy is done,” Faith said, getting to her feet. She glanced at Clair, “Are you coming?”
Clair stared at Gabrielle and shook her head. “You go along. I have something to take care of first.”
Faith watched as Clair rose and walked across the room to Gabrielle. After a few words, the pair walked down the hall toward the exit. “Well, that’s interesting,” she said to no one as she headed back to her dad’s room.
He was sitting up, carefully sipping from a paper cup when she returned.
“Hey, baby girl. Come sit with me,” he said, patting the edge of the bed.
She did as she was told, and as he draped an arm around her shoulders, she snuggled into him. “Feeling better?”
“Better is an understatement,” he said. “The energy potions in this place make me feel eighteen again.”
“Is that why you let Mom stay? Nostalgia for the good old days?”
He snorted. “Hardly.”
Faith dropped the teasing pretense and looked up at her father. “Then why? It’s been twenty years. Why should we listen to what she has to say?”
Lin Townsend brushed a lock of hair out of his daughter’s eyes and gave her a gentle smile. “Baby girl, I didn’t let her stay for her. I let her stay for me. I wanted answers.”
“Did you get them?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Some.”
“Did it make a difference?” Faith understood wanting answers, but she was dubious that Gabrielle’s revelations would heal any of the wounds her mother had inflicted on all of them, especially her dad, who’d loved her and would’ve done anything for her.
“It’s hard to say. Probably.” Lin tightened his hold on his daughter and said, “I was angry for a very long time, Faith. I don’t want that for you.”
“It’s too late, Dad. I didn’t know just how much anger I had until she contacted me. It was as if I’d suppressed all of my feelings when it came to her. She was gone, and as far as we all knew, we’d never see her. But then suddenly there she was, wanting… I don’t even know what she wants, but I suspect it’s our forgiveness or understanding, and I just don’t think I have it in me to get there.” She used her thumb to twist the silver ring she wore on her right hand. It had waves carved in the silver, representing her ability to manipulate water. “I lost it the other day. I had a full-blown melt down, and ever since then, I’ve just been empty. I don’t have anything to give her.”
“Sure you do, honey. We always have compassion.”
“I can’t forgive her, Dad. How does any decent person do what she did?” The image of her mom driving away for the last time was right there in Faith’s memory. She’d dreamed about it as a kid. In every dream, her mother would turn around and come back to them, the dream ending with her mom engulfing all four of them in a hug and promising to never leave them again. During the hour she’d been asleep the night before, she’d dreamed that same dream again. Only instead of waking up missing her mom, she’d woken up with an icy indifference. She no longer wanted her mother to turn that car around. It was better for everyone if she just stayed away.
“No one says you have to forgive her, Faith,” her father said gently. “But if you can find your way to forgiveness, it might help you more than it will her.”
“Do you forgive her?” Faith asked.
“I’m getting there, I think.” He picked his cup up again and took a sip. “Your mother, well, now that I’ve talked to her, I’ve come to the conclusion that she didn’t want to leave us but felt she had to.”
“Had to? Why? Is she some sort of monster who turns into a psycho killer after midnight? Because otherwise, that sounds like a copout.” Faith knew she was being unreasonable, that she should listen to what her father had to say before lashing out, but she couldn’t help it. She’d spent twenty years pretending her mother’s abandonment hadn’t affected her, but it clearly had, and now she was having trouble processing.
“Not exactly,” he said frowning. “But in her mind, it was close enough.”
Faith sat up and looked her father in the eye. “Does Mom have a mental illness or something?”
He shook his head. “No, baby girl. She’s an addict. Potions. She used to make energy potions, and at some point she turned to banned substances to make them stronger and became addicted. The day before she disappeared, she left you in Eureka and couldn’t remember where. Do you remember that?”
“What?” Faith frowned, searching her memory. Nothing surfaced. “No.”
“She took you to the beach while your sisters were at a birthday party for one of the older kids at school. When she got home, you weren’t with her.”
Faith blinked. “Where was I?”
He chuckled. “You’d hooked up with a little boy at the beach and built a sand castle. It was well over an hour before his family realized your mom was gone. So they took you out for ice cream and called the sheriff’s office, who got in touch with me without much trouble. We picked you up a few hours later. You were fine, but I was furious and your mom, well, she was devastated.”
She vaguely remembered going for ice cream after a day at the beach, but the memory was blurry and obviously not a traumatic one for her. “Was that the first time she did something like that?”
“You mean losing one of our children?” His brows drew together, and he got a pained expression on his face. “That was a first. But she had been acting strange, sort of manic depressive, and I’d been asking her to go see someone, but she flatly refused. Now I know it was the potions. She left because she was addicted and didn’t want to hurt you or your sisters.”
Faith let that piece of news sink in. She had no idea how she was supposed to feel knowing her mother left them for her drug addiction. On the one hand, she was grateful her mother cared enough that she didn’t want them subjected to her drugged mental state. On the other, she hadn’t loved them enough to try to get help. She’d loved the potions more. “I don’t know what to do with that, Dad.”
“You don’t have to do anything with it, Faith. Just know whatever her faults and issues, she did and still does love you. Addiction is a disease. Try to remember that and maybe someday you’ll be able to understand what she did, even if you can’t forgive.”
“Forgiveness is a hard ask.”
“That’s why it’s more for you than her. If you can let go of the pain, you’ll be better for it.” He kissed her on the top of her head. “By the way, thank you for what you did for me yesterday.”
She jerked back a little, startled. “I didn’t do anything other than call 911.”
“You did a lot more than that. Your magic, whatever you did… the healer said you helped speed up my healing process. They weren’t expecting me to bounce back quite so fast.”
“I did?” she asked, still not quite believing it.
“You did. Now go tell Clair I’d like to see her. I think I might have some groveling to do.”
Faith laughed. “Yeah, you definitely do. But don’t worry, she loves you. She’ll get over it soon enough. Just tell her you like her shoes. Girls like that.”
He grinned. “Always.”
But before Faith could even get to her feet, the door cracked open, and Clair walked in with a smirk on her face.
Faith raised a curious eyebrow. “Did you get that thing taken care of?”
Clair gave her a decisive nod and then turned her attention to Lin. “Your ex-wife won’t be barging in here again. Not unless she calls first and you decide you want to see her, anyway.”
“You saw to that?” Lin asked, sounding surprised.
“Absolutely. Is that a problem?”
“No.” He chuckled. “I’ve said everything I needed to say to her.” He held his hand out to her. When she took it, he asked, “Am I forgiven?”
“Yes, but only because you’re in the hospital. Do that again and…” She glanced at Faith then leaned down and whispered something in his ear.
Lin winced.
Faith laughed and slipped out, giving them their privacy.