‘So, you’re actually my grandmother, not my aunt,’ Merry registered shakily as she studied Sybil and struggled to disentangle the family relationships she had innocently taken for granted.
‘It wasn’t my secret to share after the adoption. I gave up my rights but when I came clean about who I really was, it sent your mother off the rails.’
‘Lies…the gift that keeps on giving,’ Natalie breathed tersely. ‘That’s part of the reason I fell pregnant with you, Merry. When I had that stupid affair with your father, I was all over the place emotionally. I had lost my adoptive mother and then discovered that the sister I loved and admired was in fact my mother…and I didn’t like her very much.’
‘Natalie couldn’t forgive me for putting my career first but it enabled me to give my parents enough money to live a very comfortable life while they raised my daughter,’ Sybil argued in her own defence. ‘I was grateful for their care of her. I wasn’t ready to be a mother.’
‘At least, not until you were born, Merry,’ Natalie slotted in with perceptible scorn. ‘Then Sybil interfered and stole you away from me.’
‘It wasn’t like that!’ Sybil protested. ‘You needed help.’
Merry’s mother settled strained eyes on Merry’s troubled face and said starkly, ‘What do you think it was like for me to see my birth mother lavishing all the love and care she had denied me on my daughter instead?’
Merry breathed in deep and slow, struggling to put her thoughts in order. In reality she was still too upset about Roula’s allegations to fully concentrate her brain on what the two women were telling her. Sybil was her grandmother, not her aunt and Merry had never been told that Natalie was an adopted child. She abhorred the fact that she had not been given the full truth about her background sooner.
‘The way Sybil treated you, the fuss she made of you, made me resent you,’ Merry’s mother confessed guiltily. ‘It wrecked our relationship. She came between us.’
‘That was never my intention,’ Sybil declared loftily.
‘But that’s how it was…’ Natalie complained stonily.
Merry lowered her head, recognising that she saw points on both sides of the argument. Sybil had only been fifteen when she gave Natalie up to her parents for adoption and she had been barred from admitting that she was Natalie’s birth mum. Merry refused to condemn Sybil for that choice but she also saw how devastating that pretence and the lies must’ve been for her own mother and how finding out that truth years afterwards had distressed her.
‘You say you want a closer relationship with me and yet you still had no interest in coming to my wedding or in meeting my daughter,’ Merry heard herself fire back at her mother.
‘I couldn’t afford the plane fare!’ Natalie snapped defensively. ‘Who do you think paid for this visit?’
‘How do you feel about this?’ Sybil pressed anxiously.
‘Confused,’ Merry admitted tightly. ‘Hurt that the two of you didn’t tell me the truth years ago. And I hate lies, Sybil, and now I discover that you’ve pretty much been lying to me my whole life.’
In actuality, Merry felt as if the solid floor under her feet had fallen away, leaving her to stage a difficult balancing act. Her grandmother and her mother were both regarding her expectantly and she didn’t know what she was supposed to say to satisfy either of them. The sad reality was that she had always had more in common with Sybil than with Natalie and that, no matter how hard she tried, she would probably never be able to replicate that close relationship with her mother.
‘All I ever wanted to do was try to help you still have a life as a single parent,’ Sybil told her daughter unhappily. ‘You were so young. I never wanted to come between you and Merry.’
‘I’d like to meet Elyssa,’ Natalie declared. ‘Sybil’s shown me photos. She is very cute.’
And Merry realised then that she had been guilty of holding her own unstable childhood against her mother right into adulthood instead of accepting that Natalie might have changed and matured. ‘I will bring her over for a visit,’ she promised stiffly. ‘How long are you staying for?’