Reflections of Yesterday by Debbie Macomber Page A

At the sound of the retreating steps, he returned his attention to his mother. She sat across from him at the round ornate table.
    “I understand that Angela returned the money,” Georgia Canfield began, without preamble. She offered no excuse or explanation, but added two lumps of sugar to her coffee and stirred it briskly. From her outward appearance they could have been discussing the unusually mild weather instead of the gross interference in his life.
    Not for the first time, Simon marveled at his mother’s aplomb. Sometimes the sheer bravado of her actions astonished him. From his youth, Simon had been taught to look upon his mother as fragile and delicate. At all costs, she was to be protected from the cruelties of life. Now he felt as if he needed protection from her.
    “Is that all you have to say?” he demanded.
    “I did what I thought was best.”
    “You interfered in my life.”
    A nerve near Georgia’s eye twitched, and she set the china cup in the saucer. “Don’t raise your voice to me, Simon.”
    It took everything in him not to cry out at the injustice of her actions. The hurt and betrayal must have shone in his eyes.
    “I don’t expect you to understand why I acted as I did, nor do I expect your approval,” Georgia continued calmly.
    Unable to sit politely in the chair, Simon vaulted to his feet. “If you think I’ve come to applaud your wisdom, Mother, you’re wrong.”
    “No,” she replied evenly, “I don’t imagine you did.”
    “And what did Dad have to say about this?” Simon doubted his father’s involvement. Not that he was incapable of this deception, only that ten thousand dollars sounded like far more than Simon Senior would have parted with freely.
    Her slim hand shook perceptively as she sipped from the edge of the dainty cup. “He was in full agreement. Something had to be done. You were barely eighteen and on the brink of yourcollege career. Angela Robinson was ruining that.”
    “I was in love.”
    “You were too young to know about love.”
    “And when I married Carol I was mature enough to know that kind of thing. Is that what you’re saying?”
    “At twenty-one, I would say so. Yes, you were.”
    “Do you want the real reason my marriage failed, Mother? The honest-to-God reason?”
    “Simon, please, that was all a long time ago. Let’s not drag up this unpleasantness.”
    “You handpicked Carol yourself, but you made one basic mistake, Mother dear. I was still in love with Angie. I married another woman because I’d given up the hope that Angie would ever come back. I didn’t love Carol then, and, God forgive me, I didn’t love her the whole miserable year we were together.”
    Georgia Canfield went as pale as alabaster. No longer did she make the pretense of sipping her afternoon coffee. Her eyes became dull and lifeless. Simon’s divorce had devastated his mother. Carol had become the daughter Georgia had never had, the one woman Georgia could mold into a replica of herself. The two had taken delight in the pointless avocations that filled his mother’s life: bridge, the Garden Club, and numerous charities. For months following Carol and Simon’s separation and divorce, his mother had held the hope that they would get back together. Not until Carol remarried did Georgia abandon the possibility of a reconciliation.
    For Simon it had been only when Carol remarried that he was released from the guilt of having married a woman he didn’t love.
    Pulling the long white envelope from inside his jacket, Simon placed it on the table in front of his mother. “Unfortunately, the cost of sending Angie away was higher than you assumed.”
    “Simon?” A faint pleading quality entered her voice.
    “Angie’s repaid that now, but I doubt that you’ll ever regain my respect.”
    Painfully, Georgia Canfield lowered her gaze to the envelope, knowing its contents without being told. “I’ll ask only one thing of you, Simon. Your father’s health isn’t good.