Where You Belong by Barbara Taylor Bradford Page A

being. After saying a quick good-bye, I hung up.
    Returning to the sofa, I sat down and said, “What a nerve! I can’t believe he called me!”
    â€œWho? And what did he call you about to get you so heated up?”
    I turned toward Jake and explained. “It was my brother, Donald, calling from New York. To tell me my mother’s not well. I should say his mother, because she’s never been a mother to me. He wanted me to fly to New York. What cheek!”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with her? Is she very sick?”
    I saw the frown, the baffled, almost confused look in his eyes, and I instantly realized that he’d never truly understood the relationship I’d had with my mother. But then, how could he understand when I couldn’t either. From what Jake had told me about himself during the years we’d known each other, he came from a marvelously warm, loving, close-knit Jewish family, and he had been raised with a lot of love, understanding, and tremendous support from his parents, grandparents, and sisters. Whereas I’d been an orphan within the bosom of the Denning family. If it hadn’t been for my father’s parents, and Grandfather in particular, I would have withered away and died a young death from emotional deprivation. I asked myself then why I even thought in terms of having a relationship with Mother, because there had never been a relationship between us.
    Iceberg Aggie, my grandfather had called her, and he had often wondered out loud to me what his son, my father, had ever seen in her. She had been very beautiful, of course. Still was, in all probability, although I hadn’t seen her for years, not since my Beirut days.
    Cutting into my thoughts, Jake asked me again, “Is your mother very ill, Val?”
    â€œDonald didn’t really explain. All he said was that she wasn’t well and that she had told him she wanted to see me. He was relaying the message for her. But it can’t be anything serious, or he would have told me. Donald’s her pet, Jake, and very much under her thumb. Still, he never fools around with the truth when it comes to her well-being, or anything to do with her. He’d definitely have told me if there were real problems, I’ve no doubts about that.”
    â€œMaybe she wants to make amends,” Jake suggested, and raised a brow as he added, “A rapprochement perhaps?”
    I shook my head vehemently. “No way. She hasn’t given a damn about me for thirty-one years. And I’m not going to New York.”
    â€œYou could phone her.”
    â€œThere’s nothing to say, Jake. I told you about her years ago.” I bit my lip and shook my head slowly. “I can’t feel anything for a woman who has never felt anything for me.”
    Jake did not respond, and a long silence fell between us. But at last he said quietly and with some compassion, “Jesus, Val, I’ve never been able to understand her attitude toward you. It seems so unnatural for a mother not to love her child. I mean, what could she possibly have had against a newborn baby?”
    â€œBeats me,” I answered, and lifted my shoulders in a light shrug. “My Denning grandparents could never fathom it either, and as far as my mother’s mother was concerned, I really didn’t know her very well. My grandmother Violet Scott was an enigma to me, and she avoided me.” I laughed harshly. “I used to think I was illegitimate when I was younger, and that my mother had become pregnant by another man before she married my father. But the dates were all wrong, they didn’t jell, because she’d been married to my father for over a year when I was born.”
    â€œMaybe she slept with somebody else after she married your father,” Jake suggested.
    â€œI’ve thought of that as well, but I look too much like my grandmother Cecelia Denning when she was my age. Grandfather always commented on