Chapter 11

Gina stared, her mind barely able to comprehend what her eyes were seeing. A woman with dark, shoulder-length hair. Finely arched eyebrows twitched over the azure-blue eyes that stared back at her. There were more lines beside those eyes and more grey at the temples than Gina remembered from ten years ago. Even so, Gina couldn’t have denied who was standing at Kate’s door, no matter how much she might have wanted to. It was like looking at her older self in the mirror.

Alison Temple. Her mother.

“I’m sorry. I know this probably isn’t the best time to come, but I just needed to see you were okay.”

Alison… No that didn’t feel right, but neither did thinking of this woman as her mother.

She wrung her hands together as she stood on the doorstep. “I just needed to see with my own eyes.” She reached a hand forward, towards Gina’s cheek, then let it drop as Gina jerked her head back and away from her like she was a snake about to strike. Alison’s…her mother’s…her face fell. “I’ll go now.” She turned.

Gina opened her mouth to speak, but she didn’t know what to say. When she’d fallen pregnant, her father had ordered her to get an abortion. To have her baby—her Sammy—terminated. The woman in front of her had said nothing, done nothing. She hadn’t tried to talk him around, but to be fair, she hadn’t tried to talk Gina around to her father’s position either. She’d simply sat silent as Gina’s father had thrown her out of the house a decade ago. At seventeen, Gina had been all alone and pregnant, with no job, no prospects, and no clue what to do with herself. She hadn’t seen either of her parents since.

It had been less than a week since Kate had met Alison during a case and Alison had asked about Gina. Less than a week since Gina had begun to think about her again, and the relationship they didn’t have. The relationship they’d never had. Gina’s anger at this woman’s inaction when she’d most needed her had driven her to the decision to never allow Alison back into her life—into their lives. She didn’t need the heartache that would come with the discussion they’d need to have, the memories they’d have to rake over.

Gina had enough to deal with, and she was more than happy with the way her life was going right now. She didn’t need Alison Temple’s complications to add to it.

Well, tonight she had the chance to get all those negative thoughts out of the way in one epic fuck you to the woman who had abandoned her.

But she hadn’t done that. She hadn’t told her where to go or slammed the door in her face, as she’d pictured herself doing so many times. No, she’d opened the door and let her speak. Why?

It was simple.

Pat.

Gina had listened to Kate read Pat’s beautiful letter last night and wept for the heartbreaking decision she’d made with the best of intentions for everyone involved. She’d had no way of knowing if it was the right decision then and still hadn’t when she had died. But she had loved that baby girl, and George, even if her actions had spoken to the contrary. It was so clear in every word she’d written. There had been no good choices for her to make, so she’d chosen the path where she saw the least harm, the lesser of the two evils she was presented with.

Kate had told her that Alison had fought her own demons in her marriage to Gina’s father. Maybe silence was the lesser of her two evils. Would an explanation really hurt Gina any more at this point? Could anything her mother have to say for herself hurt more than her silence had a decade ago?

“Wait.” Her voice was quiet, little more than a whisper, as her mother—no, Alison—started to walk away. She wouldn’t call her mother. It just didn’t feel right. There was too much unsaid to be able to think of her like that. Too many years had passed, too much pain still to be accounted for before she could accept this woman as her mother. She needed time to get her head around that. Time and an explanation she could understand. This wasn’t the woman she’d grown up with, and Gina sure as shit wasn’t the same little girl who had called her mum. This was Alison Temple. Not mum, not mother—Alison. It was a step forward to thinking of her as bitch, though.

Alison stopped and turned back, the look on her face as hopeful as any Gina had ever seen.

“Would you—” Gina’s voice cracked and gave out. She coughed to clear it and tried again. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

Alison smiled and brushed a tear from her cheek. “I’d love one.”

Gina held the door open and let her mother inside.

“Mum, who is it?” Sammy shouted from the front room, then appeared in the doorway. Her pyjama top was on inside out, and there was a ketchup stain in the middle of her chest. Her hair was slicked back, still wet on top, even though the ends had dried after her bath. “Mum? You okay?” She walked over and tucked her hand inside Gina’s as Gina pulled her into her body and wrapped her arms around Sammy’s skinny frame.

Sammy had never met her grandmother, and Gina couldn’t for the life of her decide how to introduce her.

Tears were running down Alison’s cheeks, tears of guilt, tears of pride, tears of all the years they’d lost—Gina didn’t know. Maybe later she’d find out, but right now Sammy was her focus. She squatted down so she was at the same height as Sammy and nodded. “I’m good, kiddo.” She cupped Sammy’s cheek, and ruffled her hair. “This is Alison Temple.” She turned a little to look at her.

Sammy followed her gaze. “That’s our name.”

Gina nodded and smiled at Sammy’s wide-eyed stare. “That’s because she’s my mum.”

Sammy spun to face Alison fully and looked at her like a bug under the microscope Kate had been showing her how to use. She leant close to Gina’s ear and whispered loud enough for Alison to hear. “She looks like you but old.”

Gina slapped her hand over Sammy’s mouth as Alison barked out a laugh.

“I’m sorry.” Gina said. “Sammy, apologise.”

“What for?”

“For being rude.”

Sammy frowned, clearly confused about what was rude in her statement. “I’m sorry for being rude.”

Alison squatted down. “That’s okay, Sammy. I don’t think you meant to be rude. You just told the truth, didn’t you?”

Sammy nodded and threw her mother a withering look.

Alison laughed again. “I’ll bet you keep your mother on her toes, don’t you?”

Sammy frowned. “She doesn’t do ballet.”

It was Alison’s turn to frown.

“She watched a TV show with ballet dancers in and I had to explain dancing on pointe.”

“Oh, I see. Well, what I meant was that you’re a clever little girl who’s full of fun.”

Sammy grinned. “Yup. That’s me.”

Gina rubbed her hair. “Go and put your top on the right way, and brush your teeth. It’s time for bed.”

“But the film hasn’t finished yet,” Sammy complained.

“You can finish watching it in bed. Go on.”

Sammy sighed heavily and trudged up the stairs.

Gina stood up and went to the kitchen.

“She’s beautiful.”

Gina smiled. “Thank you.” She held up the kettle. “Do you want tea or something a bit stronger? I’ve got a bottle of wine in the fridge.”

Alison smiled. “A glass of wine would be lovely. Thank you.”

Gina opened a cupboard and pulled out two glasses. The white Marlborough was crisp and clean on her tongue as she led Alison into the living room and put the TV on mute. She didn’t turn it off when Sammy was being allowed to watch TV in her room. That was a fatal mistake that led to Sammy watching action movies and staying up to all hours.

“So…?” Gina said.

“Yes. Where to start?”

Gina shrugged and sipped her wine. “I guess that’s up to you. You’re here.”

Alison nodded. “Did Kate tell you? About your father?”

“Which part?”

“Where he is now?”

Gina nodded. “He’s in prison.”

“Did she tell you why?”

Gina nodded again. Kate had given her the details Alison had shared with her. Including the full list of Alison’s injuries at the hands of the man Gina had called “Dad” for so long. “I’m sorry he did that to you.”

Alison shrugged off the comment. “Not half as sorry as I am for what we did to you.” She swiped at the tears again. “Sorry. You don’t want a blubbering mess complaining about everything that happened.”

Gina took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “If you’d come to see me a couple of months ago, I’d have told you where to go.”

“I don’t blame you.” Alison put her glass on the coffee table and started to stand up.

“But a lot has changed in the last couple of months,” Gina continued. “Yesterday I held the hand of a woman who was dying. She told me about a mistake she made and spent her entire life regretting because she didn’t tell the truth. When she died, all she wanted was to set the record straight, but by then it was too late. She’d missed her chance.” Gina sipped her drink, giving herself a moment to get her thoughts in order, to find the words she wasn’t totally sure she felt, but she didn’t want to regret not trying. “I don’t want to die like that. I might not like the truth. I might get angry about it. I might not understand. But unless I know…” She shrugged and sat back in her chair. “I’ve changed a lot, and I want to know what happened. The good, the bad, and the ugly, as they say.”

“You’re sure?”

Gina nodded and sipped her drink.

“You might need more of that.”

Gina smiled sadly. “Kate has a pretty well-stocked wine cupboard.”

“She’s a lovely woman, your Kate.”

Gina couldn’t stop the smile that spread over her lips. She didn’t even want to try. “Yes, she is. I’m very lucky to have found her.”

“She gets on with Sammy too?”

“They’re like best pals.” Gina finished her glass and put it on the table. “Now, stop stalling.”

Alison smirked. “As patient as ever, I see.”

Gina stared. She wasn’t ready for that kind of banter, for that level of easy conversation that resulted in piss-taking and reminiscing. Gina wasn’t anywhere near ready to face that, to accept that kind of relationship with Alison. That was a mother’s privilege. Not Alison’s. She hadn’t earned it. Not yet, maybe not ever.

“Sorry that was out of line.” Alison said, obviously seeing Gina’s discomfort. She cleared her throat and started, “When I was a girl, my parents were very strict. Very controlling. But that wasn’t unusual for the time. Far from it. They were older than most of my friends’ parents and always a bit, I don’t know, aloof, maybe. They didn’t really mix with anyone else. Kept themselves to themselves, and there was never any family around. That was unusual. It was just the three of us. I found out after my mum died that it was because they couldn’t have children. They adopted me and moved away from everyone who knew them to keep it a secret. My dad told me while I was helping him box up her things.”

“I didn’t know that.” It was an aspect of Alison’s history Gina had never known. Was it something Alison was ashamed of? Was that why she’d kept it a secret? Or was it simply a reflection of just how estranged they’d been as a family even when Gina had lived at home? She didn’t remember ever really talking to Alison. Not the way some of her friends at school said they could tell their mums anything. Not the way the girls at work had done. They’d never had that kind of bond. She’d never sat at the dinner table and spoken to Alison the way Sammy talked to her. It made her realize just how amazing her relationship with Sammy was. And she vowed right there to make sure that it only ever got stronger. She never wanted to be faced with having this conversation with Sammy in twenty years. Never.

Alison shook her head. “Not something they ever talked about. When I found out like that, when my dad told me, it made me feel like they were ashamed. Keeping it a secret like that all those years.” She sipped her own drink. “I think they were ashamed. Not having children was seen as a failure, especially for the woman. Back then women were wives and mothers. They weren’t career women. They were born and raised to give birth to the next generation. Those unfortunates who couldn’t were ashamed and saw themselves as less than the other women around them. I think my mother felt like that. That she’d failed my dad.” She swallowed. “And I think my dad blamed her. He couldn’t prove his mettle as a man because she didn’t get pregnant.”

“It might have been his fault, not hers.”

Alison nodded. “We know that now, Gina. Back then…” She shook her head.

“But they went to all the trouble of adopting you.”

“Yes.”

“Why would they do that if they were ashamed of you? Or going to be ashamed of you?” She shook her head, not sure she could express exactly what she meant.

“No, I don’t think they were ashamed of me. At least, I don’t think that now. Back then I suppose I did. Now I just think they were ashamed of how they got me. Of what they had to go through to get the family they were supposed to have, that society expected them to have. That they couldn’t have their own kids.” She shrugged. “It made me feel a bit different, I guess. And my mum was already gone then, so I couldn’t talk to her about it. That and the fact that Dad never spoke of it again.” She snorted a quick laugh. “I thought I’d imagined it until I was emptying the house when he died and found all the papers and my real birth certificate.” She shook her head. “Anyway, where was I?”

“Just the three of you.”

“Oh, right. Well, I wanted to be like all the other kids, going out and having fun. Like teenagers do. And I met your father. He was a little bit older than me, as you know, and he seemed so sophisticated, so grown up compared to all the other boys. Well, your grandfather forbade me from seeing him. I should have listened, but of course, I knew best. I told my dad that I was old enough to decide who I was going to see and that he couldn’t control me anymore.” She chuckled. “I was a stroppy teenager, and I got myself a good belting for that, just like every other stroppy teenager got at that time. He wasn’t a cruel man, just a strict one. But then I didn’t know the difference. I didn’t like it, so I ran away with Howard. We got married, and before I knew it, I was pregnant.”

Gina frowned. She knew her mother and father had been married for several years before she was born. “But—”

“I had a little boy.”

Gina’s mouth fell open, and her brain stuttered to a halt. She had no sibling. She’d grown up an only child and had never even really thought about having a brother or a sister. To find out there was one…that there was yet another secret kept from her… It was like she’d lived an entirely different life in the same house as her parents. Yes, there were things that, as a parent, she protected Sammy from, but they shared a home, a life, and what happened to them both affected them both. So they both dealt with it all. At a level Sammy could handle wherever possible, but the past few months had shown Gina that Sammy could handle way more than Gina wished she had to. Clearly her own parents had never shared that sentiment. “I have a brother?”

Alison shook her head. “No, he died while I was pregnant with you. He got tonsillitis. Not usually fatal to children, but he’d never been poorly before. Just the odd sniffle, you know, like children get. So they put him on penicillin.” She sniffed. “We didn’t know he was allergic to it. He came out in these big, black spots that swelled up. They thought it was meningitis, so they gave him more penicillin.”

Gina plucked a tissue from the box and handed it to Alison.

“Thank you.” She blew her nose. “It was the allergy that killed him, but they didn’t know that then. They thought it might be something I could catch from him. They wouldn’t let me in with him. He kept crying for me, and all I wanted to do was hold him, but they wouldn’t let me in to see him. They didn’t want to risk you too.” Her shoulders shook with the heaving sobs as she held the tissue to her face and cried.

Gina put her glass on the table and moved to sit next to Alison. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders and held her as she wept. She held a woman weeping for her dead infant, her son, and as Gina offered her comfort, so many pieces fell into place. They tumbled into order as Gina remembered what little she could of her early childhood. The sad, almost vacant look on her mum’s face in pictures of her as a little girl. Gina had always thought it was something she’d done wrong. Something wrong they saw in her. How self-absorbed we are when we’re young. Until our Galileo moment when we realise that the universe doesn’t revolve around us.

“It’s so easy now to look back and know I was depressed,” Alison continued slowly. Her words coming in fits and starts as she wiped at her face, and caught her breath. “I was grieving, and I should have gotten help, but I don’t think the doctors knew all that much about depression back then. Not really. All I knew was that I couldn’t be with my little boy when he died because I was pregnant. And I know it isn’t rational, but I blamed you for it. It didn’t help later when your father started to show his true colours.”

“Later?”

Alison nodded slowly. “He wasn’t always bad. He just got worse and worse. He wanted a son, you see. But after Michael died, I didn’t want to have another baby. I couldn’t face it. He blamed me for Michael’s death. Told me I’d failed him as a wife.” She laughed harshly. “As if that was the only thing I was good for. So, as much as he wanted it, I refused to give him what he craved most. My little rebellion, I guess. Anyway, he started to take it out on me in other ways.”

“So he wasn’t always violent?”

Alison shook her head. “Not at all. We were bad for each other, and instead of bringing us together, losing Michael tore us apart. In our grief, we brought out the worst in each other and couldn’t find a way to change that. I’m not even sure your father wanted to.” She wiped her nose.

Gina wasn’t able to make sense of every new emotion that filled her only to be replaced moments later by a new one, one even more intense than before. Every scrap of information was pushing her closer and closer to emotional overload, and she knew it would take days, weeks, to process it all. There was no way she could do it all in one night. Instead, she decided that tonight, all she should do was listen and try to absorb what she could. The rest she’d deal with later. She made a mental note to call Jodi and make an appointment. Between the bombing and Alison’s visit…maybe a little counselling session was in order. But that would wait until tomorrow, or Monday. Right now she had to get through the rest of this conversation. “Did you want to?”

She shrugged. “At one time, perhaps. But not for long, and not until it was far too late for he and I to ever make it work again.”

“You wanted it to be over?”

Alison nodded. “For many years before it happened.” She sighed. “I think if he were honest, he did too. Like I said, we were bad for each other. But that’s not really what you need to know about. I’m here to see if there’s anything we can change between us, or if that’s too late too.”

From everything Kate had told her about Alison showing up on her doorstep, Gina knew that this was the ending that Alison wanted. But was it what she wanted? The question was still so new to her—and the emotions still so raw—but there was something Alison hadn’t yet touched on. Something Gina still had to know before she could even think about a future relationship with Alison, because it would impact on the most important person in Gina’s life. She pulled away from Alison and slid across the sofa. “I suppose that depends.”

“On what?”

“Did you want me to get rid of the baby?”

Alison frowned. “I wished you weren’t pregnant.”

The words struck Gina like a cannonball slamming into her chest and expelling the air from her lungs in one great gasp. She grabbed at the fabric covering her chest like it weighed too much and she had to be free of its constricting presence. It was too much. There could be no room for this woman in her life. Yes, it was good to know what had been behind the pitiful relationship they’d had while Gina was growing up. She was sure that would help her in the long-term…maybe. But there was no room in her life for anyone who wished her daughter had been terminated before she was even born. There was no way Gina was going to introduce someone to Sammy who had the potential to make her daughter feel bad about herself. There was already way too much of that in Sammy’s life. Between Connie’s death and the circumstances surrounding it—including Sammy believing for three godawful days that she was the one who had killed her—and Sammy’s father’s absence from her life because of his own poor parenting decisions that had led to that fateful morning on the marsh, well, Sammy had enough to deal with. Alison would not be another millstone about the child’s neck. “So, yes—”

“No. That’s not what I said or what I wanted.”

“You said you wished I wasn’t pregnant.” Gina ran her fingers through her hair, like she wished she could grab the thoughts—those memories—and pull them from her brain. She could still see her father’s face so clearly as he’d raised his hand and pointed to the door. “You’re no child of mine”, he’d screamed at her, spittle collected at the corner of his mouth. “My daughter wouldn’t shame me or herself shagging every Tom, Dick, or Harry that fancied a look in her knickers.” He’d spat at her. She could still feel the sticky mucus from his throat like it had burned her face and left its mark forever upon her skin. “Whore” had been the last word her father had ever screamed at her before she’d run.

Gina took a deep breath before she said, “What else could you possibly mean?”

“For me, getting pregnant imprisoned me in a marriage where I was never happy. If I hadn’t had Michael, I’m not sure your dad and I would’ve lasted those first few years, and then, when I was pregnant with you, well, I came to associate pregnancy with being trapped, not with the wonder of having a beautiful child at the end of it. I didn’t want you to get rid of the baby. But I wished you hadn’t got trapped. Because that’s what it was for me. I was seeing my own nightmares again in what you were going through, rather than trying to help you find your path through it.”

Gina frowned. She couldn’t imagine ever seeing the world from her own perspective, if Sammy needed her, but then she’d never suffered the devastating loss of a child. Her child. Her firstborn child. She’d never been stuck in a loveless marriage, abused, controlled, and seemingly despised by the person who should understand you most. She’d never been forced to face, day after day, the person she blamed for not being able to say goodbye to that child either. Would she have been able to put all that aside if she saw Sammy looking at the same possible future?

She had to be honest, with herself if no one else. And the truth was, she didn’t know. She’d like to think that she would put Sammy and Sammy’s needs first. In her heart of hearts, she was pretty sure she would. But she also accepted that she and Sammy were closer than she and Alison had ever been. A sad fact, but a fact nonetheless.

“You said you wanted the truth,” Alison said quietly.

“Yes, I did.”

“The truth is I was selfish. I was scared. I was lonely, and I only thought of myself and what I could face from one day to the next. Your father never hit you. I was confident he never would. He loved you.”

“He had a funny way of showing it.”

Alison nodded. “Yes, he did. But he loved you. He only wanted what was best for you. What he considered best for you, not necessarily what you considered best for you. His anger was always directed at me. And I had to make the decision daily whether I could take another beating for standing up to him, or if today was a day to keep my mouth shut and hope he’d sleep on the couch.”

The tears welled in Gina’s eyes. How different it all could have been if Alison’s depression had been treated. How all their lives could have changed.

“I was very good at pushing his buttons.”

Alison smiled. “You kept us on our toes.”

Gina smiled. “Is that your way of telling me that Sammy’s my own fault?” She couldn’t help but let her smile broaden. Sammy was certainly full of mirth and merriment. Mischief followed her as faithfully as Merlin did.

“I wouldn’t be so presumptuous. I’ve only met the little scamp for five minutes.”

Gina chuckled. “You wouldn’t be wrong. She can get herself dirty in a clean bath and I never, ever know what a letter brought home from school could be. A report card full of A’s or expulsion. Either’s possible.”

Alison chuckled. “Then, yes. It’s your own fault.”

“I was never that bad.”

Alison shrugged. “You had more to be fearful of than she does.”

Gina mulled it over for a minute. Would she have been as mischievous as Sammy if she hadn’t been terrified of going home to tell her mother and father what she’d done? Yes. Without a doubt. Suddenly she was more grateful than she ever imagined she could be for Sammy’s naughtiness. As much as people would tell her it meant she was getting it all wrong, in her eyes she could see now she was getting something right. Her daughter didn’t live in fear of her. To Gina, that suddenly meant more than anything else.

Fear had caused Gina to suffer panic attacks on and off since she was a teen. Had made her too scared to have a relationship, to have friends, to open up to people. Because she was always afraid of being rejected by them, just as she’d been rejected by her parents before she even understood what rejection was. So many tiny pieces of her own psyche and behaviour suddenly made sense. “I don’t want to be scared anymore.”

Alison shook her head. “You don’t need to be. He can’t hurt you.”

“I wasn’t afraid he’d hurt me.”

Alison watched her. “Then what were you afraid of?”

“What had already happened.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I told you I needed to know the truth, that knowing it was going to be painful. And it has been. Believe me. It truly has been. If words could inflict actual wounds, there’d be blood everywhere—”

“I’m sorry.” Alison whispered, tears welling in her eyes again.

Gina waved the words away. “I asked for the truth. I can’t and don’t blame you for giving me what I asked for. But I guess I’m asking now if that’s what you want. Do you want the truth? Even if it will hurt?”

Alison took a deep breath, clearly steeling herself for whatever Gina had to say. “Yes. I think we both deserve the truth.”

Gina nodded, reached for her glass before she realised it was empty, and leant back in her chair again. “I was afraid of being rejected even further. I felt I was hanging on to my family by my fingernails. I knew neither of you wanted me there, but I had no idea why.” She laughed bitterly. “At one stage, I thought you could see all the naughty thoughts in my head, and that was why you hated me.” She swiped angrily at the tears running down her cheeks. “I was just a little kid, and I didn’t know anything except I wasn’t good enough to love. Not even for her own parents to love her. And that affects a child. Deeply.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Gina shook her head. “I understand why now. You were ill. I get that. But that doesn’t change the effect it’s had on me all these years. Until Kate, I never found anyone to love, because I didn’t think anyone would stick around. I have panic attacks. I’m terrified still that Kate will find someone better and ditch me. And I’m most scared that one day my daughter will grow up and realise that she doesn’t love me either. That I was a bad mum.”

Alison shook her head. “No. I saw the way she looked at you. She adores you.”

“She’s nine. She adores anyone who feeds her.”

“That’s not true.” Alison reached forward to take Gina’s hand but stopped before she made contact. “You will have your ups and downs with her. She’s your daughter, and there will be times when you’d gladly strangle her and times when she’ll tell you venomously that she hates you. But you’ll come through those because she loves you and you love her more than anything else in the world. And you will always, always, put her first. I can see that. And as much as I love you, and I truly do love you, I know that I can’t say the same thing. I put myself first too many times.”

“You were protecting yourself from being abused, Mum. I don’t think—” Gina frowned as Alison’s face paled and her eyes widened again. “What? What’s wrong?”

“You called me ‘Mum’.”

Gina realised what she’d said, but she didn’t know what had changed in her head to make the switch. “Sorry.” Suddenly she wasn’t looking at Alison Temple any more. She was looking at her mum, the woman who had brought her into the world, nurtured and loved her as best as she was able, despite being about as broken and downtrodden as a woman could be and still function. Hearing her admit how she’d failed Gina had softened her resolve to see her as a different woman, as Alison Temple. While the reasoning behind her silence was flawed logic, Gina could see that it was an extension of Alison’s own pain, rather than a manifestation of Gina’s predicament. When Alison—her mum—had spoken of Sammy, there had been nothing but warmth in her voice.

Was it enough for them to build a relationship on? Gina had no idea. But clearly her overwhelmed brain was telling her something. That it was ready to take a chance? She was too tired and too emotionally wrung out after everything she’d just learnt to make a decision tonight. It could wait. One thing she was sure of was that they had time now. And a chance, if she was ready.

Alison shook her head quickly. “No, please don’t be sorry. I just never really expected you to call me that again.”

Gina smiled sadly. “What did you think I’d call you?”

Alison chuckled. “Maybe bitch.”

“It crossed my mind when I first opened the door.” Gina laughed.

“Good to know.” She joined Gina in laughing, slowly at first, just a few chuckles, then more. Until they were both laughing loudly.

Gina pulled her into a tight hug, and the laughter turned to tears.

“You’re keeping me awake.” Sammy said from the doorway, her hands planted firmly on her hips, and a look of confusion on her face. “Why are you laughing and crying?”

“Because grown-ups are crazy, kiddo.” Gina reached her hand out, and when Sammy stepped forward and took it, she pulled her into a hug too. “Didn’t I tell you that?”

Sammy shook her head. “No. Kate told me that women are crazy. She didn’t mention that it was all grown-ups.”

Alison and Gina laughed again. It felt so good to laugh away the hurts and the truths she’d learnt in the last hour. She glanced up to the ceiling. She didn’t know if she believed in God or in heaven; she’d never really formed a definitive answer. But she smiled up at the sky and offered a silent thank you to Pat. If not for meeting her, she wasn’t sure she’d have been ready to listen to her mother. Not yet, anyway.

Now they had time. Time to heal and get to know each other.

Maybe even time to be a family.