“That’s me. Always the one to surprise you.” The bitterness in her voice hung in the air, such a quick change of mood but that was how it went between them.
“Billie, darling, I thought we’d put the past behind us.”
“I thought so too but you know, the way you look at me as if you’re waiting for me to do something to embarrass you makes that thought null and void. Let’s face it, you’ll never forgive me for what I got up to when I was a teenager. Even when I do my best to make it up to you, all you cared about was what everyone thought of us. Bugger my feelings. The best thing I did was to run away to America.” She shrugged out of her coat and tossed it over the stair rail. Lucy bit her tongue, tempted to ask that it be put on the coat rack where it belonged. “To think I came back.”
The pain of those lost years would never be forgotten but it was up to her as the parent to try and move forward. Her daughter’s mental stability depended on it. “Darling, let’s not rehash that again and again. We need to let it go and start being kinder to each other. What do you say?”
Billie lifted her hand, ran a fingertip over the old timepiece. “Who’s was it?”
Lucy swallowed. Typical Billie. Dig in and try to unravel more mystery than was necessary. “Um, I’m not exactly sure. I can’t remember if it was given to me or I brought it. You know I have far too much jewelry to keep track of it all and its thoroughly outdated. Out of sight, out of mind so they say.” She patted her hair, almost too scared to ask the next question. “Was there anything with it?”
Billie blinked and glanced away. “No, nothing.”
Lucy sighed out a breath and let her shoulders slump in relief.
Bringing her mind back to the present, she headed into the kitchen, filled the kettle and switched it on. Mechanically she went about preparing a tray for herself before taking it upstairs to the sitting room. Nothing in this house reminded her of the past. She’d left all of that behind, or at least she thought she had. All she’d wanted was memories she could take out, flick through and put away again when she’d had enough. Material tokens would be too hard to explain. She’d made that do for her until now. Trust Billie to bring back things better left undisturbed.
The box Billie had uncovered must have been overlooked when they moved from the house Frederick had taken her to as a bride. She’d tucked it away after it had been delivered and had totally forgotten about it. How had it been included in their move and could she believe her daughter when she said there was nothing else?
That day she returned home from the war rushed back to meet her. Buried for so long, the pain resurfaced at the sight of the watch dangling on Billie’s wrist. The meeting with her supervisor who informed her of the news and then the delivery of the box containing Wilz’s watch and the letters she’d written to her sister over the past year while she’d been deployed. It was only then that she understood the real reason she never received mail from her sister after the first couple of months. Dead people don’t write letters and nobody had thought to inform her of the accident until she put foot on home soil once again.
It had taken years to get over her sister’s death but the guilt never truly left her, nor did the need to remain hidden from her father for fear of her life. Buried beneath day to day life, she had managed to function until Billie had found the watch and brought it all back to haunt her. How on earth was she going to manage to bury it again when it was thrust under her nose on a daily basis?
A flash of color caught her attention. Dear Hamish. The slightly addled minded professor ran down the street toward Billie and Alex, his red beanie a bright beacon against the dullness of the day. Frederick had hoped he might strike up a friendship with their daughter and it appeared as though he would get his wish.
She only hoped that Billie wouldn’t do anything to embarrass her and make the relationship her and Frederick had nurtured over the years, strained. But in all reality, Billie was responsible for her own actions. Lucy could do nothing but sit back and watch the train wreck hurtling towards them, hoping it wouldn’t create too much of a disaster.
Lucy bit her lip. She’d tried so hard to forgive Billie for the pain she’d caused when she was a teenager and had almost succeeded. Then Stephen had died and Billie had gone spiraling off the deep end, her emotions tumbling along with her self-respect and sense of responsibilities. Poor Alex had been the one to pay for that lapse in her daughter’s parenting skills. Hopefully now they were here, they would all settle down and time would heal the rift between mother and daughter.
But why was it so hard to be kind to Billie? She asked herself that question and could come up with no reasonable answer. Could it be a product of her own dysfunctional childhood? She often thought so and tried to overcompensate but came up lacking more often than not.
Memories of her own mother generally brought more sadness than she thought possible after so many years. No matter how often she tried to emulate her, Lucy knew she came
