The Forgotten One (The Heirs #2)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Max took Sarah’s hand as they walked up the steps of Joe and Patty Smith’s Arkansas home. Christmas lights were still draped along the eaves of the home; a pine wreath hung on the front door.

It was December thirtieth, and Max didn’t want to put off introducing himself to his grandparents in an attempt to find his birth mother. If there was any possible way to put all the unknowns behind him before the start of the new year, Max wanted to do that.

His past and the baggage that came with it nearly cost him the woman he loved. Shutting down his emotions instead of working through them was what Max Smith the orphan did. Max Smith the brother, uncle, and hopefully one day, husband needed to close the door on his past and embrace his future. To do that, he needed to close the chapter his mother left open.

“You ready?” Sarah squeezed his hand.

“No,” he said at the same time as he knocked on the door.

They heard footsteps almost immediately.

The front door opened, and a balding, gray-haired man, somewhere in his late seventies, opened the door. He smiled and greeted them behind the screen. “Hello.”

“Mr. Joseph Smith?” Max asked.

The man nodded. “Yes. Can I help you?”

“My name is Max. This is Sarah. We’re looking for your daughter, Lisa. And were hoping you could help us.”

Joseph regarded them with a tilt of the head. “Patty?” he called out into the home.

A few seconds later, a heavyset woman, just as gray and just as old, walked to stand beside her husband.

“These two people are looking for Lisa.”

Patty looked at her husband with confusion. “Then why are they standing there, Joe? Invite them in.”

Joe pushed open the screen wide enough for Max and Sarah to walk into the house.

“Thank you,” Sarah said when they were inside.

There was a three-foot-tall fake Christmas tree sitting on a table and several trinkets that said country Christmas peppered throughout the room.

The house smelled like Bengay and antiseptic. Or maybe the antiseptic cleaner had the minty smell that Bengay was known for.

“You have a lovely home,” Sarah said with a smile.

Patty nodded but didn’t comment.

“I haven’t seen you before,” Patty said. “Did you work with Lisa?”

“No. Nothing like that,” Max told them.

Patty nodded several times. It was then that Max saw the tired behind the smile and the exhaustion in every step the two of them took.

“Are either of you sick?” Joe asked.

Max found the question strange.

“No, sir. We don’t want to take a lot of your time. We just want to know if—”

Patty released a strangled sigh. “I’ll see if she’s up for visitors. What were your names again?”

Every muscle in Max’s body jolted.

Sarah laced her hand through the crook of his arm. “She’s here?”

Patty and Joe exchanged glances. “Been here for some time.”

Max let his eyes peer deeper into the small house. Behind one of these walls, the woman who abandoned him as a child breathed.

“Max. Tell her Max is here to see her. She’ll know who I am.”

Patty lumbered through the back of the house, leaving her husband to fill the silence with awkward conversation. “They say it’s going to be a cold winter. Might even get snow.”

“Is that rare for you? We’re not from around here,” Sarah told him.

“It happens from time to time. Not enough that we can count on it.”

Max heard the conversation without really listening to it. His eyes never left the direction Patty disappeared to. His pulse doubled its pace.

He had expected to face the older couple in the room, not confront his mother. The words to Joe and Patty had been rehearsed. At least in his head.

Not to Lisa.

“Where are you two from?”

“California.”

“I hear gas prices are through the roof in Cali.”

“They’re not ideal.”

Patty returned, her face void of any recollection.

Clearly these people had no idea who “Max” was, which shouldn’t surprise him, but it did.

“Lisa said she’s up for a visit. She gets tired. Don’t be offended if she falls asleep in the middle of a sentence. It happens from time to time.”

Max locked eyes with Sarah.

“Is she sick?” Sarah asked what Max was thinking.

Patty hesitated. “You don’t know?”

Sarah shook her head while Max just stood by and watched.

“Stage four breast cancer. There’s nothing more the doctors can do. It’s only a matter of time.”

The lumbering gait and tired eyes came into focus.

The storm inside of Max hit the high pressure and instantly fizzled into something he couldn’t name.

Sarah hung on to him and said nothing.

“I thought everyone knew. Sorry to tell you like this,” Patty offered.

Max found his voice. “It’s okay. I’m sorry. It must be difficult for you.”

Joe moved to his wife’s side. “It’s not the way God intended things.”

Patty waved for them to follow her.

Max’s feet moved by sheer memory alone.

She stopped at a bedroom door and encouraged them to walk in.

Sarah’s palm gripped his tightly. Her encouragement translated through her touch.

Max inhaled deeply and pushed the door open.

The smell of cleaning materials, quickly followed by despair, filled his senses.

His eyes fell on the bed, and what was left of the woman lying in it.

Her eyes were sunken. Every bone in her face was visible through the thin layer of skin that held her flesh together. She wore a wrap of some kind around her head, the dark colors standing in striking contrast to the ashen color of her body. Even through the blankets, Max could see the outline of a body that belonged to a child and not a grown woman.

Lisa Davis was a shell that might crack and break with any breath.

Max locked eyes with his mother for the first time.

She didn’t smile.

She didn’t scowl.

She just stared.

“Please close the door,” she said, just above a whisper.

Sarah let go of Max’s hand to grant Lisa her request.

“I knew you’d find me.” Her words were slow and labored.

“I was told you were dead.”

Lisa closed her eyes, and for a minute, Max thought she’d fallen asleep. Then she spoke. “That was kinder than the truth.”

“Yes, it was.” Max wanted his words to have a bite to them; instead, they were soft and matched the thin glass he felt he was walking on.

A long pause filled their conversation.

“Do you believe in God, Max?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No.”

She looked out the window, took a labored breath. “Neither do I. I’ll find out soon enough if I’m wrong.”

Max moved to the chair next to the bed and sat.

Sarah leaned against the bed frame.

“Why?” was the only question he really had for this dying woman.

She sighed and, in doing so, started to cough.

Max felt the sudden urge to help her in some way.

Lisa lifted her hand that held a crumpled handkerchief and put it to her lips.

Her fingers belonged on a hundred-year-old woman, not someone who wasn’t even sixty.

The coughing ebbed, and she looked at him again. “I don’t have enough time to give you the answer you deserve.”

“Give me something.”

She slowly nodded. It took some time for her to offer an answer. “I didn’t want to be a mother. I wanted to be a rich man’s wife.”

“Aaron was married,” Max reminded her.

“That didn’t matter. I was young, but not stupid. A baby would force him to take care of me.”

Max shook his head.

What did he expect her to say? That it was all a mistake, an accident that she regretted and couldn’t figure out a way to rectify?

No, Lisa said exactly what he’d believed of her all along.

Her dry tongue tried to wet dry lips. “I was selfish. You deserved better.”

“Do you think that’s what I got?”

She shook her head a fraction of an inch.

“And you took the money.” His words were a statement, not an accusation.

She closed her eyes and struggled to open them again. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness or your pity.”

“How can I forgive what you haven’t said you’re sorry for?”

Still, the words didn’t come out of her mouth.

Lisa turned her gaze to Sarah. “You’re the reporter.”

“You’ve watched the news.”

Lisa blinked a few times.

“I needed to know my phone call made it to the right people.”

It took a fraction longer than it should have for Max’s brain to catch up with Lisa’s words. “You’re the one that tipped off the magazine.”

One single nod. “The Times hung up on me. I couldn’t make Aaron acknowledge you in life. Maybe I could in his death.” She swallowed. “When you didn’t surface after he died, I had to do something.”

Lisa met Max’s eyes again. “I can’t apologize for what death made me do. I won’t ask for your forgiveness, because I don’t deserve it.” She shivered and used her bony fingers to pull the blanket farther up her chest. “If there is a hell ... well ... at least I won’t be cold anymore.”

Max felt the little boy in him reach out and crush his heart. It was like he was witnessing the second death of the same woman.

Sarah walked to his side and sat on the arm of the chair. She placed a hand on his shoulder, Max reached for it.

“Do your parents know anything about Max?” Sarah asked.

Lisa shook her head.

“You owe me nothing. But if you can wait until I’m gone to tell them who you are, it will only be for their benefit. Anger and bitterness will soil their last memories of me.”

Sarah said what Max couldn’t put into words. “We can do that.”

Lisa’s eyes slowly filled with tears, as if her body needed to drive to the ocean to find them. “Thank you.”

And then, like a computer shutting off for the day, Lisa closed her eyes and fell asleep.

After a few minutes, Sarah stood and reached for him.

Before he stood, Max leaned over and touched the frail hand of the woman who gave him life.

Her cold fingers curled around his, but her eyes did not open, her breathing steady in sleep.

Max stepped out of the room, holding back all the years of emotion inside of him.

He and Sarah paused to say goodbye to Patty and Joe. Sarah handed them a phone number and asked that they please notify them when Lisa passed.

Max stumbled down the stairs of the Arkansas home and made it to the sidewalk before tears started to fall.

Sarah curled into his arms, the anchor that kept him from drifting away.