Fast Forward by Marion Croslydon

If anyone was already asleep, well, they were awake now. Guilt shifted away when Josh mom’s light figure stepped out from the shadows on the porch.
    I gathered all my courage and got out of the truck. The coming conversation was long overdue.
    “It’s so good to see you, sweetheart.”
    In a couple of strides I was locked in Miranda’s arms, breathing in her familiar scent of sweet tea.
    With my head snuggled in the hollow of her neck, I mumbled. “I should have come and talked to you as soon as I came back two days ago. I should have come and talked to you so long ago. I was ashamed. I was a coward—”
    Miranda hushed me with gentle taps on my back. “It’s the past. Let’s start afresh.”
    I felt my muscles loosen and the tension that had stored up in them disappear. Alfredo’s death had hit me hard and thrown my emotions all over the place. I was so very tired.
    Miranda pulled me up the steps leading to the porch. Slowly she sat me down on the bench there. She didn’t ask me anything. I didn’t say anything. I just sat there and it felt like my batteries had finally ran out of juice.
    I’d spent so much of myself trying to be a mom and at that instant, I needed one. I needed my Wonder Woman, my superhero, someone to hold me, soothe me, and tell me it’d be okay in the end.
    The next hour was a blur. Miranda gave me a cup of cocoa with a dollop of fluffy cream coating the top. She listened to me while keeping her arm around my shoulders. I rambled on and on about the last six years with no concern for chronological order. She didn’t seem upset with me for hiding her grandson from her, for breaking her son’s heart.
    When the confession and the cocoa were finished, she kissed the top of my head.
    “I’m going to say to you the same thing I told Josh. It’s time for both of you to let go of the past and stop holding it against yourselves… against each other.”
    “But what if we haven’t changed enough, what if we keep making the same mistakes?”
    She shifted on the bench so that she now stared straight at me. My spine stiffened under her gaze. “Would you give up Lucas again?”
    “No! I’m not sure I’ll be the best mother in the history of motherhood but, I’m sure gonna try hard.”
    “There’s no such thing as the best mom, darling. All of us, we just try and do our best.”
    “You don’t. I mean, I know Josh thinks you are the best.” I cleared my throat. “When I was a child, I liked to pretend you were my mom. All those Sundays I came here after church to have a slice of homemade apple pie … I pretended you baked it just for me.”
    “But I did sweetie. That apple pie was for you. God knows Josh wolfed down enough food the rest of the week.”
    Tears tingled my eyelids. “Thank you. That pie used to make me very happy.”
    “I want you to promise me something Cassie.” I nodded. I’d have promised her anything. “You and Josh must stop second-guessing each other. Be more open about your feelings. When Lucas comes and lives with you, life is going to get busy. There’ll be school. There’ll be football practice, homework, play dates. It’s so easy to forget about the person living next to you because you don’t have time anymore for each other, for yourselves.” For a second, Miranda’s gaze got lost somewhere over my shoulder. “Never forget that before being Lucas’s mom and dad, you’re a man and a woman who love and respect each other. That’s what’s at the heart of a happy fam—”
    Blazing lights tore through the night around the house. An Escalade I recognized parked behind my Chevy. Miranda sprang to her feet and mumbled a bad word I’d never heard her say before. Jack MacBride stumbled out of the SUV. The moment his eyes caught sight of me I knew the night was heading toward a different ending.
    He stood at the bottom of the steps that led to the porch, his hands on his hips, his arms akimbo. “I told you I never wanted that trash in my house