The Reckoning by Christie Ridgway Page A

a wealth of long, wheat-colored hair.
    â€œIs this me?” she asked, hazarding a guess as she pointed.
    â€œYou are pretty skinny,” Ricky said, glancing over at the collection of twiglike arms and legs that made up his rendition.
    â€œBut this breakfast is going to help with that,” Linda said. Glancing up, she caught the glint of laughter in Emmett’s eyes and had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep her own giggle back. The sad news was, the stick figure did bear a striking resemblance to her thin body.
    She set the card on the bedside table beside her journal and sipped the juice and coffee, then took appreciative bites of the bacon and pancakes. Ricky watched her from the corner of his eyes, even as the toe of his left shoe was trying to dig a hole to China.
    â€œThis is all very good,” she assured him. “I don’t think I’ve ever had breakfast in bed before.”
    â€œYeah?” He looked up, his expression pleased, then glanced away. “It was just some dumb idea that Nan had.”
    â€œI’ll have to thank her,” Linda said. Just another in the long list of things she was grateful to the other woman for. “You had to get up early, too.”
    â€œIt’s better than the other years,” he blurted out, then bent down to take up an extensive investigation of the broken shoelace on his sneaker.
    Linda swallowed the bite of bacon. “Other years?”
    â€œThe other years I visited you on Mother’s Day,” he mumbled, head still bent over his shoe.
    Linda’s heart tightened, squeezing out tears that she struggled to hold inside. “You came to see me on other Mother’s Days?”
    â€œAll of ’em, I guess,” the boy said, straightening. “I made you lots of other cards, too. But you didn’t know me…or you didn’t care.”
    â€œRicky.” Emmett put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You know—”
    â€œIt’s all right,” Linda said quickly. “I’m sure it felt that way to you, Ricky, that I didn’t care about waking up and getting to know you. I wish I remembered all those other Mother’s Day visits, too.”
    His face flushed, the color a bright pink against the golden gleam of his hair. “It was a dumb thing to say. I know you couldn’t wake up.”
    â€œI couldn’t. I don’t know why not, or why I finally did wake up, but I’m certainly happy about it, even though it means getting to know you when you’re practically all grown up.”
    He smiled at that, just a quick flash of white. “I’m not all grown up.”
    â€œPractically.” Though it hurt to say it. It might be a slight exaggeration, but sometimes she thought he was at least too grown up for them to establish a true parent-child relationship. She was afraid that he was too grown up for her to ever feel as if he were truly her child. And that she was truly his mother.
    â€œPractically all grown up,” he repeated, as if he was trying out the sound of it. “Practically all grown up.”
    â€œAnd I have souvenirs of those other Mother’s Days, even though I don’t remember your actual visits.”
    Ricky frowned. “What kind of souvenirs?”
    She opened the drawer of the bedside table and rummaged through the items placed inside. Nan was continually handing over things she thought Linda would like: photos, class-work of Ricky’s, art projects. Linda’s first instinct had been to refuse them, because they reminded her of how much she’d lost and how much she might never gain, but she was glad now that she’d been too polite to ever say no.
    â€œHere they are,” she said, pulling out a stack of construction paper. “I have every Mother’s Day card you ever made. I just didn’t realize you’d delivered them to me in person.”
    The surprise got Ricky to take a step closer and then to take