Surprise Me.... Isabel Sharpe

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      TRICIA HAWTHORNE SAT in the kitchen she grew up in. Even remodeled, it retained the flavor of her parents, Edith and Edwin Hawthorne. She could remember her mother baking cookies, her father hovering around, eagerly waiting for them to cool. She could remember family dinners around the old table. And she could remember tiptoeing out at midnight on her way to getting drunk. Tiptoeing home drunk at four in the morning, praying neither of her parents would hear her. Sneaking here, sneaking there, doing this, doing that, nothing they ever approved of, behavior that had bewildered and hurt them. Yet they’d loved her, supported her, picked up after her, believing she’d grow out of her wild behavior and settle down.

      That only took her until the age of fifty. Good thing her parents were both alive to know their long wait was at an end.

      The coffeemaker sputtered out its final drops. Four in the morning… She’d slept only a few hours, finally giving in and resignedly getting up. Tricia had never been a good sleeper, but too many nights were like this now. She’d tried herbal remedies, hypnosis, hot baths, meditation, tapes, relaxation exercises, and finally decided that insomnia was her punishment for a life poorly lived, and that it was just going to be that way until she settled her emotional debts and found inner peace.

      She poured her coffee and added skim milk, wishing her waistline and cholesterol count would allow her the luxury of cream. Or one of the enormous bakery blueberry muffins in a plastic container on the counter. She and Melanie were supposed to have breakfast this morning before Melanie went to work, but she hadn’t come home last night. Now it was Tricia’s turn to worry about her daughter, as her parents and Melanie’s older sister, Alana, had been doing for far too long.

      Coffee ready, muffins successfully avoided, she sat down on a stool and leaned her elbows on the fancy cream tile counter.

      Breakfast with Melanie this morning seemed unlikely to happen now, but Tricia could visit Alana later on, maybe help her unpack boxes. Alana had moved out of this house and in with her boyfriend, Sawyer, the day after they committed to each other—which was also, not coincidentally, Tricia suspected, the day after Tricia had shown up unannounced in Milwaukee. Not that she blamed Alana for holding a grudge. The burden of Tricia’s squandered responsibility had fallen on Alana’s shoulders until age ten, when Edith and Edwin had taken the girls in, giving up on Tricia’s ability to mother them.

      Pretty much from the second Alana was born, Tricia had been overwhelmed by what she now understood was practically nonexistent self-esteem due to years of rejecting everything sensible her parents stood for, and instead embracing users and idiots. She’d also been wallowing in the gradual dissolution of her unhealthy relationship with the girls’ father, Tom, who had left for good when she was pregnant with Melanie. Reeling from the pain, Tricia had continued to drown herself in alcohol, drugs and other men, telling herself the girls were okay, or, even worse, not considering them at all. She had wanted her next fix, her next sexual high, always the next thing. Any good that had developed in either daughter was thanks to their grandparents. All Tricia had contributed was damage.

      Last year, after she’d been living in California more or less permanently with her men and her art, the death of a close friend’s daughter due to a drug overdose on the day Tricia turned fifty had shot home the obvious truth that she wasn’t going to have forever to get to know her own kids.

      Depression followed, then therapy, various withdrawals, more depression, in the process driving away the latest man she’d shacked up with. Tricia had moved in with a friend—Dahlia, who deserved sainthood for putting up with her—and slowly and surely she’d pulled herself out of the muck of clueless oblivion, limb by limb washed herself with honesty, put on clean dry clothes of self-acceptance, sold everything she couldn’t fit in a suitcase except her art supplies, and bought a one-way ticket to Milwaukee.

      Now she’d vowed, however long it took, to make amends, to be worthy of forgiveness. She was sober, drug-free, dateless, and determined for the first time in her adult life to be an adult. To live a life she and her daughters and her parents could be proud of. A huge and often terrifying goal.

      One step at a time. One day at a time.

      A key jiggled the back-door lock. The familiar sound catapulted Tricia back to memories of guilty predawn homecomings. The handle turning with a slight rattle. The door opening… Careful! The hinges squeaked if pushed too fast.

      Soft footsteps, a hand carrying shoes, door closing, shh, don’t let Mom and Dad hear….

      Except in this case, there was only Mom, no Dad; the mom was Tricia, while the child sneaking in was her twenty-six-year-old daughter. “Hi, Melanie.”

      Melanie gasped; her hand flew to her chest, luckily not the one holding her strappy black high-heeled sandals or they would have flown up and smacked her in the head. “Mom. Oh, my gosh, you scared me. What are you doing up at this hour?”

      “I could ask you the same thing.”

      “Oh.” She arranged her features into Cautious Liar Mode. Tricia nearly chuckled. Nothing Melanie could pull would be new to her. “I was out late with a girlfriend and—”

      “How about the truth?” Tricia sipped her coffee, apparently unconcerned, inside probably ten times more nervous than Melanie. She was never comfortable with authority, and it had been years since she’d had to be a parent. “Saves time for both of us.”

      Melanie blinked. Frowned. Thumped her shoes onto the floor and sidled up to the counter. “Any more coffee?’

      Tricia jerked her head back toward the machine. “Help yourself.”

      She did, this amazing beautiful woman Tricia knew so little about. Melanie had been a remarkably peaceful baby, a relief after Alana, who had screamed at anything and everything. Tricia had been living with their father for three years before he’d announced he was too young for a family. Instead of marrying her, he was going off to find himself in India.

      Lose himself, more likely. She’d never heard from him again.

      “Well.” Melanie perched on the stool opposite her mother at the counter. Her lips were swollen, chin pink from stubble burn, hair messed, eyes glowing. She could say whatever she wanted, but Tricia knew where she’d been. “Actually, I was with a guy.”

      “No kidding.”

      “What?” She touched her face. “How can you tell?”

      “A mother always knows.” She got through the words with the appropriate deadpan expression, then couldn’t help it, let out a snort of laughter.

      Melanie’s eyes grew rounder, if that were possible. “You do that just like Alana.”

      “What?”

      “That funny laugh.”

      “Yeah?” She wouldn’t let on how it touched her, tortured her, too. How many of their shared family traits had she missed out on discovering? At least it wasn’t too СКАЧАТЬ