Down the Aisle by Christine Bell Page A

hours some nights, until you stopped. I didn’t have the patience for it. I knew then that I’d made a mistake.”
    Shocking that after all these years of subtle—and not so subtle—jabs that they could still hurt, but damn it, they did. Lacey shifted in her seat and tried instead to picture Galen’s face when he saw her. He’d be so happy, and they would exchange their vows, and they would—
    “Not for having you. But for thinking I’d know what to do with you.” Her mother leaned forward and reached out to take her hand. Lacey pulled away instinctively. All her life, whenever she’d gone to Rowena for comfort when she was hurt or sad, her mother invariably drew back. Any contact was incidental or forced when they were in public. This time, though, Rowena held firm.
    “I want to apologize to you.”
    Lacey stared at her mother, her brain buzzing a thousand miles a minute. Apologize? Apparently it would be a day of firsts. Unless of course this was a typical backhanded insult thinly veiled by the “apology.”
    “I failed you. I made a choice to have you; you never chose me. And I failed you.” Her slim fingers crushed Lacey’s and her thin upper lip trembled. “I would do just about anything to fix it. The part that’s broken in me. But it’s too late for that. You’re grown now, and I was too stubborn to change when it would have mattered for you.”
    Lacey wanted to say something. To tell her that it still mattered. That it would always matter. If she could have some kind of relationship with her mother, it would fill a huge hole that had been present in her life for so long. But she couldn’t say the words. Maybe Rowena was right. Maybe it was too late. She stayed silent, and her mother’s sad but accepting gaze flickered away from her own.
    “I have to live with that. And frankly, that’s not why I wanted to speak with you. I just wanted to tell you on your wedding day that I’m proud of you. And that you’re nothing like me. If you decide that you want to be a mother one day, I didn’t want me to be the reason you didn’t do it. I didn’t want you to look at me, and our relationship, and promise yourself you would never…” She paused and cleared her throat before she continued. “That you would never do that to a child, you needn’t worry. You don’t have it in you. You’re loving and sweet and selfless, just like your father.” She squeezed Lacey’s hand again and then rose. “I know deep in my tiny old heart that you will be a wonderful wife and an even better mother. And if you give me half the chance, I think I could whip myself into good enough shape to be a half-way passing grandmother, as well.”
    Lacey kept her gaze locked on the gleaming pine floor, afraid if she looked up, she might burst into tears and undo two hours of makeup and hair.
    “I’ll let myself out. And you fix your rouge and maybe reconsider that garish shade of lip gloss, hmmm?”
    With that, Rowena strode from the room and closed the door behind her. Lacey stayed seated for a long time, replaying the world’s weirdest mother-daughter wedding speech of all time in her head. She’d never confided in her mother about her problems conceiving or even that she and Galen wanted to start a family right away. They didn’t have that kind of relationship, and her mother would have been horrified if she’d known that Lacey’s fertility issues meant that time was of the essence, and they’d had to start trying before they even got married. So to have her come forward now and give her blessing for a baby that Lacey might never be able to have, after being so vocal about her disapproval of…well, everything else in her life, it was bittersweet. In baseball terms, it was much more like hitting a single than a grand slam, but compared to where they’d started, she’d take it. Maybe, in the years to come, they could build on this small but seemingly heartfelt attempt at connecting and make something worth having