“Can I get anyone coffee, tea, water? Mr. Dosek asks when we get inside.
“Got anything stronger?” my dad grumbles.
Alex laughs. “Come on up. We could both use something.”
Dad glances back at Mom. “It’s time.”
Tears fill her eyes. “I know.”
Clearly, the two of them have been preparing for this day for a long time.
“You got this, and you’ll see I’m right.”
I watch as Dad and Alex head up the stairs as Mom and Kelsey walk into the music room. What the hell is he talking about? What does she have, besides control over my life?
Twenty-Two
“You’ve done well for yourself, Kelsey,” Mom says as she does a slow turn in what I guess is the library music room.
“It was a fluke, really. All I did was play keyboards for a couple of records. Then, the musician who wrote the songs made it big, and I’ve gotten a huge chunk of the royalties.” She shrugs. “I still do.”
It’s got to be the song she played with Christian Sucato. What else would it be?
“So, you don’t teach at the high school anymore?” Mom is frowning as if confused.
“How did you know I teach at the high school?” Kelsey asks slowly.
“I’ve kept tabs on you. You did give birth to Madison, and I knew she’d want to meet you one day, and it was important to me to know what kind of a person you are.”
Kelsey just nods. “I still teach.”
“Why?” Mom holds out her arms, as if taking in the whole room. “When you have all of this? Teaching can’t pay well.”
Leave it to Mom to be thinking about the career that feeds you.
“Because I can. The kids at that school have nothing, barely a home. I was one of them. If I hadn’t been sent to Baxter, who knows what would have become of me. I’m just giving forward.”
“Is that why you teach kids who can’t afford a teacher?” I find myself asking.
“There are a ton of excellent teachers out here, Madison, and three times as many students that can pay for those lessons. I take the talented ones who have a passion for the piano or singing but have no money to make their dreams come true.” Her eyes lock with mine. “It’s important to pay it forward. For everything you are given, you must give more going forward.”
“Isn’t that give back?” I ask. I’m pretty sure that is how the saying goes.
“That’s what I used to think and had I kept thinking that way, I would have taught at Baxter, where it all started. Halfway through my student teaching, I realized the school where I was placed needed me ten times more than Baxter ever would, so I stayed when they offered me a job, and I haven’t left.”
“Why did you keep all of this from me?” I demand of my mom, the adoptive mom.
“At first you weren’t old enough to understand.”
“I get that, when I was six.”
“I was afraid if I told you before you were 18 that I’d lose you.”
Shock hits me. Lose me? Where the hell was I going to go?
“We argue all the time. You tell me that I don’t get you or understand.” Tears fill her eyes. “There’s times I think you hate me.”
This isn’t funny, but I can’t help but smile. “I’m 17. I’m supposed to hate you, aren’t I?”
She doesn’t smile back, and I get it for the first time, my mom is really worried. Maybe even hurt. Afraid. She raised me. Loved me and took care of me. Kelsey may have given birth to me, but she’s not my mom.
“Then there is the music.”
Crap, we aren’t going to argue about this again.
“I can’t play an instrument. I can’t sing. Hell, I can’t even dance.” She glances up. “Just ask your father.” Then she’s looking at me and there is so much sadness in her eyes that I want to cry. “I don’t understand your passion for it, but Kelsey does. You both have that, and I knew that once the two of you met, you’d have something I’d never understand.”
Mom’s tears are falling now.
“She’d be able to teach you something I couldn’t. You’re going to be an adult next year, then graduate from high school. You won’t need me anymore.”
Now I’m crying. “I’ll always need you. You’re my mom.” Kelsey may not want to hear that, but she did give me up.
Kelsey wasn’t the one sitting next to me in the hospital for weeks on end while I was getting transfusions and then the bone marrow transplant. She wasn’t the one who distracted me each time someone wanted to test my blood. She didn’t sit and read with me for hours on end each night, or work on my spelling and math, just so I wouldn’t fall behind in school. She didn’t take me for ice cream when I was one of the few girls not asked to my first high school dance.
My real mom, the one who raised me, is the one who taught me that it’s a person’s actions and words that matter and not the label in their clothing, last name or size of their bank account. She did buy our piano and found a way for me to have a secondhand cello and violin, even if she doesn’t get music. And, I expect her to be there when college gets hard, or I finally do have a boyfriend, when I marry and someday when I have kids.
I can’t stand that she’s crying like this and have to hug her. Before I know it, we are both crying.
“I can’t imagine not needing you,” I finally say and sniff.
“It’s just that your brothers and sister have gone off to college, and I hardly ever see or talk to them. When you go, you’ll have those letters. Someone else to replace me. They don’t have that. I was afraid you’d have even less to do with me than they do.”
When I get
