A/N: You know what's weird? Writing a version of Zoe that is only just now seeing New York for the first time at the age of 19! Also, that's only just meeting her mother right now (that she recalls), at the age of 19...

(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)

Chapter 7

New York was even more spectacular than Zoe ever could have imagined. The lights and the hustle and bustle were like nothing she nor Wade had ever seen before. The hotel her father had booked them into was enormous and way more luxurious than she had been expecting too. They could have had quite the excellent vacation weekend there, so much fun just sight-seeing and living it up, but that wasn't really why they had come.

"You about ready for this?" asked Wade as he and Zoe met outside the doors of their hotel rooms.

"No," she admitted, even as she found him a half-smile, "but I guess I kind of have to be. I know it's stupid to be so nervous about meeting my own mother-"

"Hey, you are never stupid, Zoe," Wade promised her, his hand at her shoulder. "This is a big deal, just like we said. You can feel any damn way you want, okay? Nobody's judgin' here."

Zoe breathed in deeply and let it out slow. "You know, you really are the best guy in the world. Well, you and my daddy, you kind of tie for first place."

Wade smiled wide. "I can live with that."

She gave him a hug, telling him it was his benefit, knowing it was really for her own. Zoe needed all the help she could get before she did this.

It was a short walk, just a couple of blocks down the street to her mother's home, a penthouse apartment in a block higher than any Zoe had ever seen before. The elevator ride seemed to take an age and mere seconds, all at the same time. Then suddenly they were outside the apartment door and the moment had arrived.

"You sure you want me in there, Zo?" Wade asked her softly. "I mean, I'll do it, you know I will, I just don't wanna be in the way of anythin'."

She understood exactly what he meant, but if he left her now, Zoe had a feeling her last bit of strength and determination might go with him.

"I want you in there," she said definitely, glancing sideways at him. "Please?"

"Sure." Wade nodded and smiled.

It was the boost she needed. Zoe raised her fist and knocked firmly on the door. Said knock was responded to within seconds, almost as if Candice had been waiting right there on the other side for it to happen. Maybe she had. Zoe wasn't about to ask. She was too taken aback by the sight of the woman who was biologically her mother, and yet, who she had no memory of at all.

"Oh, my... Zoe!"

The second she reached out for a hug, Zoe felt herself flinch. She hadn't meant to do it exactly, it just happened, and the moment she saw Candice's hurt expression, she was sorry for it. Not that she regretted it enough to initiate a hug of her own or even apologise. After all, she didn't have anything at all to be sorry about, not after everything, not after all this time.

"Ma'am." Wade nodded politely when suddenly Candice's gaze shifted over to him. "I believe you knew my momma a while, back in the day."

There was a moment when Zoe's mother frowned at him, looking so very confused, and then, a light dawned and her hand went to her heart.

"Oh, my goodness. Wade Kinsella?"

"Yes, ma'am," he confirmed.

"You... you look so like your mother."

Zoe felt laughter escape her throat and immediately wished it hadn't. Now was so not the time for a fit of the giggles, but she just couldn't help herself. Hearing someone she had never met, saying something she knew to be so very true about Wade and Jackie, it was too bizarre. That was before she even got to the part where the someone in question was her own mother that she didn't even know.

"I'm sorry," she said, noticing she had all the attention on her again, twin looks of confusion and no small hint of concern. "I'm just... This is so crazy."

There was no arguing with that point, at least, Zoe knew. Nobody tried to counter. Instead, Candice invited them inside, Wade's hand on Zoe's back as they walked through the door, a comfort to her for as long as it lasted.

They ended up on a couch together, her and Wade, with Candice across the way in an armchair. Nobody spoke for at least five minutes, none of them really knowing where to begin. It was Wade who tried to break the awkward silence, saying Candice had a nice place, complimenting her furniture and such. She thanked him politely enough, but Zoe bristled even at that.

"This is what you wanted more," she said flatly, not even really meaning for the words to be said aloud.

"I'm sorry..." Candice shook her head, her apology only for not catching what had been said, Zoe suspected, but the irony wasn't lost on her that it ought to mean more and probably didn't.

"Are you?" she checked. "Are you sorry that you left the way you did? I mean, you got what you wanted instead, right? A flashy apartment, a high paying job with the rich and famous. It was all more important than me and Daddy."

She hadn't meant to do it. Zoe absolutely had not intended to come to New York to meet her mother just to lose her temper and yell at her for all she had done, or perhaps more accurately, all that she hadn't done. It was never the plan, and yet, now she was here, faced with this woman she didn't know and really didn't want to, she couldn't seem to keep herself in check. She wondered why she should even try.

"Zoe, it's a lot more complicated than you're making it sound," said Candice sadly. "When you were born..."

"When I was born, you were married to my father," Zoe reminded her quickly. "You weren't some poor, lonely sixteen-year-old kid, all alone in the world and afraid of how you'd cope with a baby. That I could've understood. You were older, you were married to my father, you had a home and friends and everything you could ever have wanted!"

"But I didn't!" Candice countered just as loudly, volume dropping in a second when she seemed to realise it wasn't helping. "Zoe, I... I was afraid," she explained. "You're right in what you said, I did have a home and a husband that loved me and friends, and maybe it should've been enough. It is for some people. Poor Jackie..." she said, glancing at Wade and shaking her head. "I wanted it to be enough for me, Zoe, but it just... wasn't," she admitted, helplessly.

"I wasn't enough," said Zoe, a statement not a question, because even if Candice denied it, she wouldn't believe her.

She couldn't. All evidence supported the fact that given a choice between being Zoe's mother and not, she chose the latter. Zoe wondered what magical explanation she ever expected her so-called mother to give that would make that better. She was a fool to have ever thought for a second that she could come up with anything worthy of her time.

"I never should've come here," she said, standing up fast.

She felt Wade do the same, never more glad that he was there at her side. She watched Candice rise too, flinched back when she reached for her arm.

"Zoe, please!" she said desperately. "I thought we were going to talk. I thought-"

"You thought you'd snap your fingers and I'd come running? You thought that you could tell me you're sorry and try to make me understand how hard it was for you when I was born? God, even women who struggle with post-partum depression don't abandon their children for nineteen years!" she yelled angrily.

"There has not been a day when I haven't thought about you, Zoe," said Candice sadly, tears pouring from her eyes now. "I wish you could understand. I just wasn't ready to be a mother, but... but now that you're grown up, I thought we could at least be friends?"

"I have plenty of friends." Zoe told her, fighting her own tears and barely holding on by a thread. "I have a father, plus a brother and more aunts and uncles than I can count, even if they're not my blood. And thanks to Jackie Kinsella, for ten years at least, I had a momma too. I don't need you. I never needed you. I think it's taken this moment to make me realise that."

With those words spoken, she turned on her heel and headed straight for the door. Wade was right behind her, she was sure on that, but she hadn't realised Candice was there too, not until she spoke to her, when Zoe's hand was already on the door latch.

"Whatever you say, I am still your mother. You can't change that."

"No, I can't," Zoe admitted, looking back at her, "but I don't have to ever see you again. I can walk away."

"You don't even want to keep in touch? You're making the decision to just cut me off completely, to just act like we're not even connected?" Candice asked helplessly.

Zoe held firm, swallowed hard, shook her head.

"No," she said firmly, "it's not my decision. It was yours. You made it before I was old enough to know anything about it. I'm just letting you know, there's no changing it now."

Taking one last look at her biological mother's face, Zoe turned away, opened up the door and walked out, Wade right on her heels. Slamming the door behind herself, Zoe hurried down the hallway and turned the corner before stopping. She had her back against the wall, fingers scratching for purchase on the plaster as the tears came at last, great sobs racking her body and almost bringing her to her knees.

"Zoe..." Wade tried, but he clearly had no idea what to say.

It didn't matter. He opened his arms to her and Zoe threw herself into them, clinging on as if her life depended on it as she let it all out, all the bottled-up emotions she had been hanging on to for way too long.

Time had no meaning for as long as they were stood there, wrapped in each other's arms, Zoe crying like her heart was breaking. Maybe it was, but she doubted it. At the end of the day, she hadn't really lost anything in that apartment today. She still had everything she had when she showed up - her family and friends, her intelligence and ambition, the Wilkes blood in her veins and the will to go on regardless.

"I'm sorry," she croaked when it was finally over, pulling out of Wade's arms and leaning back against the wall, exhausted.

"Don't worry about it," he told her softly, gently pushing her hair back from her face where it was doubtless stuck to her tear-stained face. "You... you gonna be okay?"

Zoe raised a smile just for him and slowly nodded her head.

"Yeah, I'm gonna be okay. This is mostly just... I don't know, stuff I've been holding in too long. Maybe even relief that it's over? I needed to do this. I needed to see her face, look her in the eye and tell her... tell her everything I told her. It's over now."

Wade's eyes dipped to his shoes and then came back up to meet her own gaze.

"You sure on that?" he checked. "I mean, I know what my momma meant to you, but Candice is still..."

"I meant what I said back there, Wade," Zoe assured him, reaching for his hand and taking hold. "I had a momma. You were sweet enough to share yours with me. I don't want or need another one."

He nodded his understanding, then pulled on her hand to bring her closer and kissed the top of her head. He asked if she wanted to go back to the hotel and she agreed. Zoe was too tired and overwrought for anything else in that moment.

In the privacy of her own room, Zoe decided to shower and change, to wash the morning off of her and start fresh again. Standing by the window, looking out at the city, she came to an easy decision about what happened next.

Knocking on Wade's door, she wasn't surprised that he looked curiously at her as soon as he saw her. After all, she had bawled like a child all over him just a little while before. Now she was wearing a smile a mile wide.

"You take some kinda pills I don't wanna know about in there?" he asked with a smirk, jerking his thumb over towards her room next-door.

Zoe rolled her eyes. "No. I just decided that we might as well make the best of this trip. Just because I have no desire to spend any more time with the woman we originally came here to see, that's not New York's fault. Why don't we go out? We'll get some lunch and then we'll see the sights. We'll hang out in Central Park and go to the top of the Empire State. Come on, Wade, let's be crazy-annoying tourists for a couple of days! What do you say, are you with me?" she asked, grabbing his hand and pulling on his arm like an impatient toddler.

Wade was soon laughing, as he usually would when she got any kind of over-exuberant about such things. Still, he didn't argue at all with her request.

"Come on now. You know, I'm always with you, Zoe Wilkes."

To Be Continued...