7

Tony paced through the kitchen.

"I can't believe she showed up in your agency. Unbelievable! And she told you not to marry me, otherwise she would take Lynnie away from us? Who does she think she is?"

Angela was sitting at the kitchen table, her hair, which had been pinned up in a nice do this morning, loose and a little rumpled. She had taken off her jacket, had hung it over one of the chairbacks and had undone the upper buttons of her blouse. After Kathleen had left the office yelling bloody murder and the emotional talk to her mother, Angela had taken the train home and Tony had picked her up at the train station. He had noticed instantly that something had happened, but Angela hadn't said a word until they had reached their house on Oak Hills Drive. She had been afraid Tony might drive them both into the ditch if she told him about Kathleen's threat to take Lynnie away from them while he had his hands on the steering wheel.

"I was completely flabbergasted, Tony! And the worst thing was that Lynnie's heard it all! You should've seen her face! She was shocked. She ran away so fast, there was no way of holding her back. I wanted to go after her but Mother said she probably wouldn't want anyone of us around, and since Emma was with her I assumed she would be okay. But where is she now? It's almost 9 and she isn't home yet. I'm worried, Tony!"

Tony looked at his watch. 8:48 pm. Normally his daughter called when she stayed away longer. It was far past dinner time, and dinner was when they usually gathered around the dinner table - all three of them; plus Mona once in a while.

"She's not a baby anymore, Angela, and she knows the City well," Tony tried to calm himself. "Maybe she went with Emma to her place, or they are sitting in a café somewhere downtown, or-"

Tony was interrupted by the ringing phone. He jumped up and pulled the receiver off the hook of the extension in the kitchen.

"Hello? Lynnie, is this you?" he shouted into the phone.

"No, Dad, it's me, Sam, but Lynnie's here with me."

"Thank God!" Tony collapsed into one of the wooden chairs and mouthed to Angela that Lynnie was with Sam. "Let me talk to her."

"Uh, Dad, listen ... I don't think she wants to talk to you right now. She's very confused."

"Okay, if you say so. I come and pick her up."

"Dad, I thought she could sleep over. There's no school tomorrow. We'll have dinner together, watch a movie, stay up until late, ... talk. And tomorrow we'll sleep in, go and have brunch somewhere in the City, and then I'll drop her off. What do you say?"

Tony thought for a moment, then said, "Alright. Fine with me. Thanks, Sam! Tell her goodnight from me, will ya?"

"Yes, sure. Say hello to Angela! See you tomorrow."

She hung up and Tony listened to the beep for a moment. Then he put the receiver back.

"What did Sam say? Is Lynnie alright?" Angela asked.

"Sam said that she's very confused."

"Nobody can blame her! Oh Tony, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have let Kathleen pull me into a fight, I shouldn't have said the things I said, I should've noticed Lynnie standing in the hallway overhearing every word."

"Stop blaming yourself, Angela. None of this is your fault. It's Kathleen's and hers only! When will she stop this? I thought that I've made myself clear yesterday in telling her it's over, once and for all."

"Maybe that's why she's going after Lynnie now. Because she understands that she doesn't have a chance to pull us apart again, she's trying to put Lynnie at odds with us."

"Yeah, and she's already succeeded. Lynnie didn't want to talk to me. She's staying for the night at Sam's."

"Oh, but that's good! We know that she's safe and sound and she has someone to talk to. Someone other than us or Kathleen."

Tony sighed heavily. "I understand that she doesn't want to be around her mother at the moment, but that she doesn't want me around, ..." he pouted.

"Come on! She doesn't know what or whom to believe. I can understand that she turned to her big sister. Let her be. And you know Sam, she'll lend Lynnie her ear, and I bet that tomorrow we can have a talk with her, too."

"Maybe you're right." Tony looked at Angela. "So, what are we two up to tonight?"

"A movie?"

"How about 'Rambo'?" Tony grunted, "I'm in the mood for some fighting action, and I won't mind seeing blood either!"

Angela smiled. "I watch an action movie with you tonight, Honey, although I don't really like them. But only if you promise to make a huge bowl of buttered popcorn."

"May I have a beer?"

"You may have even two if you want." She gifted him a compassionate smile. "Deal?"

"Deal!" He held out his hand to shake on it, and when Angela had put hers in his, he pulled her close and leaned in for a kiss.

"Dad agrees, you can stay here for the night, little sister!" Sam said while putting the receiver down.

"Great! Thanks so much, Sam!"

After Lynnie had run from the Bower Agency she had strolled through the City for a while with Emma, but she hadn't been willing to talk to her long-term friend. How could she explain to someone wo had grown up in a picture-perfect family with a mother, a father and three siblings what her weird situation was all about? She hadn't had the energy to even try, and Emma had understood. So they had just walked side by side through the streets until it started getting dark and Emma had to go home. She had offered Lynnie to come with her and have dinner with her family, but Lynnie had refused. She hadn't been in the mood for a picture-perfect family. She had promised Emma she would take the next train to Fairfield, but the closer she had approached the train station, the less she had wanted to climb that train.

Because Lynnie hadn't known what else to do, she had taken the bus to visit the only person she could think of talking to - Samantha. Being so confused and also disappointed in the adults in her life, she had been the only person Lynnie could think of confiding in. She had often felt like they had a lot in common, and that was not only their father. There had always been so much she wanted to ask Samantha, and it had seemed to be the perfect time to get all these questions off her chest. The two half-sisters had been close from the start despite the great age difference between them. Samantha had babysat Lynnie on a regular basis when she had been little, and the two girls had spent a lot time together with their Dad. Lynnie had always looked up to her big sister, had adored and tried to emulate her.

Now, she was chopping some onions into little dices for the sauce carbonara Sam wanted to prepare; Tony had taught both daughters the basics of Italian cooking. The younger couldn't hold back the questions any longer.

"What was is like to grow up without a mother, Sammy?"

"Oh, it was very difficult in the beginning. I was only 8 years old when my Mom died. Seeing her suffer, getting weaker every day, saying goodbye to her eventually, ... that's tough for a little girl. And the way Dad was struggling also made me very sad. It was frightening to see him so lost."

"How did you cope with all this?"

"Time helped, and Dad did everything to replace my Mom. He tried to be mother and father. He only lived for the me at the time, I guess. We became very close after she had left us. And then, some day, Angela came into our lives, ..."

"She became your surrogate mother?"

"Well, not that we have ever called her that. And I guess we have also never really worked on it in particular. It just happened."

"Was she really like a mother for you?"

"Sure. If it hadn't been for her, Dad and I would've never come through my puberty. You know him," Sam chuckled, "imagine talking to him about your first menstrual period, your current boyfriend, or even only about your senior prom, ... I remember how exhausted he was when he came back from shopping my first bra. And he had come up with a sports bra on top, instead of the fancy pink one with a ribbon I liked so much. He was just unable to cope with these 'female matters'. Angela took me shopping from then on. And I could always talk to her about everything. She was the first person I told that I was going steady with my boyfriend Jesse, and she cautiously broke the news to Dad afterwards. She was my confidante in so many things."

"Did you ever call her Mother?"

"Only once," Sam thought for a moment, then corrected herself, "no, wait, twice!" She smiled. "The first time was very shortly after we had moved in. I had made new friends, and because we lived in their neighborhood they assumed we would be as loaded as they were. They thought Dad and Angela were married because they lived in the same house, and I let them believe it. I was embarrassed that Dad was only keeping the house and not owning it, so I lied to them."

"Oh my, I bet Dad didn't like it."

"Not at all! He lectured me about honesty and self-respect, and that I could be proud of my decent. I had my friends over for a slumber party and he wanted me to tell them everything right away."

"Oh boy!"

"Yeah, I was afraid it might ruin not only my party but also the relationship to my new friends."

"What did you do?" Lynnie was curious.

"I begged Dad to pretend, just for one single evening, and believe it or not, finally he agreed. But what was even more important, he convinced Angela to play along."

"They told your friends that they were married?" Lynnie was bewildered.

"It was my 13th birthday, the first in Fairfield, and they wanted to make it special and not ruin it with alienating my new friends. So they let them believe they were husband and wife. Angela even let Dad tell them that he was president of the company she was president of, and she called me Daughter in front of them. But then I told them. And my friends forgave me, and with some I'm still friends today. Bonnie for example, you know her."

"So that was the first time you called Angela Mother, when was the second?"

"That was years later, and that time I wasn't playing a charade, I really meant it." Sam told Lynnie everything about the school program and how Bonnie and she had switched back and forth to work with Angela one day and with Tony the other. "I behaved like an idiot, because I was so jealous. I thought that Angela liked Bonnie better than me, and when I told Angela, she said something beautiful."

"What?"

"She said that she liked Bonnie, but that she loved me!" It still gave Sam goosebumps thinking about that moment. She had felt very close to Angela and had realized how much she had relied on her as a mother figure all along. "Then she admitted that she felt insecure about my feelings for her, and so I explained that I just had the same feelings like every teenage girl has for her mother."

"What did she say to this?"

"She cried," Sam smiled. "and Dad cried too! We hugged and since then I knew that she had indeed become my surrogate mother. Although I don't like the word, because mothers can't be replaced. So I rather see her as my motherly friend. Someone I can always turn to if I need advice. Someone who will always be there for me and love me no matter what I do."

"Have you ever wished that she had really been your mother?"

"No, I had a mother, and I loved her very much. Even if she's not with me anymore, she's still my mother. But I often thought that if I still had her, I would've wanted to have a relationship to her just like the one I had to Angela, and still have today." She looked earnestly at her younger sister. "What is this all about, Lynnie? You have a mother?"

"I hate my mother! ... Ouch!" Lynnie hadn't really paid attention to the sharp knife in her hand while listening to Sam's stories, so now she had cut herself deeply into her left index finger.

"Hold it over the sink and let cold water run over it. I get you a band-aid."

When Sam returned into the kitchen with a small box of various band-aids in different sizes, she found her sister sitting on one of the kitchen chairs with sagging shoulders and a very sad expression on her face, her finger wrapped in a paper towel. Her distress was almost palpable. Sam knelt in front of her, took the towel away, and as the wound had stopped bleeding she put one of the band-aids on and gently stroked the tape to make it stick. Then she squeezed Lynnie's hand.

"Has something happened today? Or are you still so upset about last night? Talk to me, Gwendolyn!"

Lynnie hated to be called by that name, Sam knew, but it was her way of telling her little sister that she was willing to talk to her on eye level, from one adult to another. Her father calling her Samantha instead of Sam always had the same effect. And Lynnie got the message, so she told her sister about what she had seen in Angela's office earlier that day, and even more important what she had heard. That she knew for sure now that she had always been nothing but a small wheel in her mother's perfidious plan to outdo Angela. She told Sam that Kathleen had literally prohibited Angela to marry Tony, if they wanted to keep her living in their house. That she felt she had never been more than a means of blackmail for her mother.

"She doesn't want me to live with her because she loves me, but only to hurt Dad and Angela. She never wanted me to live with her!"

"I must say that your mother's behavior yesterday at your birthday party had really been beneath contempt, but I just can't imagine that you're nothing but a leverage on Dad for her."

"How do you know?"

"I didn't say I knew, I said I could imagine. No mother is that numb and stony when it comes to her own daughter. Isn't it possible that she let you live with Dad and Angela all these years not because she didn't want you to live with her, but because she knew deep down that you would be better-off with them?"

Lynnie shrugged, "Maybe." It was a nice, soothing notion. It would mean that her mother had valued her daughter's needs higher than her very own at least once in her life. Lynnie sighed, and popped another question after a short moment of silence. "What was is like to live with Angela and Dad at the time?"

"Weird somehow, then again just usual. It wasn't anything like she was the boss and he her employee. She never bossed him around. Well, let's say she only very rarely bossed him around. And when she did, she always apologized for it later. We were like a family, ... Angela, Dad, Jonathan and I. We were the Bower-Micelli-family. Sometimes I even forgot that we were not related. I ordered Jonathan around just as if we had really been siblings."

"You never ordered me around, and I am your sibling." Lynnie was almost a bit disappointed. Did she have a closer relationship to Jonathan than to her? They had both grown up as only children due to the age difference. Sam had already been a young adult when Lynnie had been born.

"Yeah, but we never lived together in a house, Lynnie. That's a difference. But it doesn't mean that I don't love you, sis!"

"Did you know they were in love? Dad and Angela, I mean," Lynnie jumped to another topic which was floating in her mind.

"When I was little, I didn't really care. When I was older, it bothered me that the neighbors were gossiping. I once beat up a guy who said that Angela's and Dad's relationship was indecent." She chuckled again, "Hadn't completely gotten rid of my Brooklyn soul at the time yet!"

"When did you realize they were in love?"

"I don't know. Some day it was just obvious. The way they cared for each other. They way they looked into each other's eyes. When you saw them dancing you could almost see the sparks emerging above them. And I saw them kiss once! Well, kiss isn't the right word, they were rather making out! Actually, that was only a few weeks before Dad started dating your Mom."

Sam was thinking about their family trip to Jamaica, when she had almost run into them kissing passionately on a bench close to the beach. First she had been shocked to see her father kissing another woman, until she had realized it had been Angela in his arms. She had been amazed by the lust in the way they had embraced and exchanged fervent French kisses. Like every child, she had difficulties picturing her father as a sensual person, but she had been old enough to understand that he was the one stepping on the brakes. Angela had touched her heart saying that she wouldn't mind if Tony mowed lawn in Central Park, for it had shown that she truly cherished him. The more Sam had been surprised when Tony had started getting involved with Kathleen shortly after their return.

"What I don't understand is why they chastised themselves so long. If they loved each other so much, why didn't they just become a couple? If the neighbors were gossiping anyway and everybody knew, there was no reason to stay apart."

"I guess they were afraid that it might not work and they would destroy our unique family construction in the end. Angela in particular. She was divorced and had already gone through one failed marriage. And Dad still thought of my Mom. The way he had lost her had been very painful, too."

"They lived bedroom door to bedroom door and never shared a bed?"

"Oh no! Our Dad is very conservative when it comes to sex before marriage. I'm sure you know! Plus he wanted to set a good example for Jonathan and me. If they ever had sex while we lived in that house, which I doubt, they would've gotten to a motel or some place else."

"Then how come he had sex with my Mom? They weren't married either."

Sam thought for a moment. She had contemplated about that a lot after Tony had told her that Kathleen was pregnant and that he would marry her. Tony had exercised restraint with her mother Marie and had waited with sex until their wedding night, she knew, and he had abstained from pre-marital sex with Angela, but he had been together with other women - the Bettys and Tanyas on this planet - and undeniably with Kathleen. Finally she had come up with an explanation, and she decided to share her thoughts with her sister.

"I think it shows that his relationship to your mother was different from the one to Angela. He wasn't as ... uhm, serious about her."

"You mean she never was meant to be more than an affair?"

"No, that's not exactly what I mean. Our Dad didn't live like a monk, but when it came to the holy state of matrimony he was very conservative and uptight. It was very important to him to honor the woman he led to the altar and to treat her according religious morality. With waiting for her until they were married he tried to pay her his respect and show her his complete devotion, I guess. I know it sounds a bit old-fashioned in our times, abstinence isn't really in-style right now. But hey, our Dad is an old-fashioned guy! I just believe that he never really thought he would marry your Mom, whereas marrying Angela one day had always been somewhere in the back of his mind," Sam concluded her explanation. Had Tony been able to hear what she had just said, he would've been aghast about the fact that his daughter had thought so much about his sex life, but also touched by the profound insight she got on his psyche.

"And then the exact opposite happened," Lynnie noted tonelessly.

"Well, life doesn't always run the way you've planned it."

"But they share a bedroom now, I mean Dad and Angela, without being married. How come they don't want to set an example for me?"

"I'm sure they want to set an example for you, Lynnie. I mean, they live together like a married couple, only that they aren't married. It's not so unusual nowadays for couples to live together without a wedding certificate as it had been two decades ago. And they are together longer than most couples are. And you mustn't forget that their history does not only consist of these last ten years after he got divorced from your Mom. They are friends for almost 25 years now! I think that's a pretty good example of human kindness and loyalty."

"That's true."

Sam's words were able to ease Lynnie's mind a bit. It had really been the right decision to come to her sister after the surprising incident in Angela's office. But there was another topic bothering her. One she didn't know whom to discuss it with. She had read a bit about it on the internet even before all of this had happened, because she had been tired for some time about being pushed back and forth between her parents.

"Now that I'm 16 I could file a Petition for Emancipation to become independent of my mother. I don't want her to make decisions for me, like that I have to live with her against my will."

"I don't think you'll need a Petition for Emancipation for it, Lynnie. You're old enough to decide where you want to live. No family court would take you away from your father if you'll tell them you want to live with him. Regardless of what your mother tells the court. A petition like this is a very serious thing, don't rush into something like this. You mustn't underestimate its effects on the entire family. Your mother will be very hurt and feel offended, and she might hold Dad and Angela responsible for it."

Sam knew that many teenagers in Lynnie's age toyed with the idea of filing a petition like this. The process of growing up and becoming independent was difficult for both parents and children. It evoked frictions between people who actually loved each other. Sometimes parents had problems with giving their teenage kids the free space they needed, her father had been no exception. She remembered that even she had once read a leaflet about it, but had thrown it into the garbage right away, because she had known deep down that her father had always only wanted to do it right, even if he had done it wrong. There had been this feeling of safety and unconditional love, and she had known that no matter what she did, her father would always back her up. It seemed to be that her younger sister was lacking exactly this kind of certainty with respect to her mother.

"Maybe, but I just don't want my mother to interfere with my life anymore."

"I understand you! Maybe I would've reacted the same way. What you found out about your mother is awful and you need some time to process it," Sam tried to calm the girl, "may I give you some advice though?"

"Sure."

"Let your mother know how disappointed you are. Tell her to keep her distance until you decide to talk to her again. Yell at her, blame her, send her to hell, but don't cut her off completely, Lynnie! She's your mother after all. She might have had her reasons to act the way she did, reasons we do not have the slightest idea about." Sam grabbed Lynnie at her shoulders and looked at her earnestly. "You only have one mother, and it's not easy to get along without one. Not even at the age of 16. I wished I still had a mother, ..." Eventually Sam's voice broke. Even in her mid-thirties she still needed her mother and badly missed having her near and being able to ask her for advice once in a while. She didn't want her sister to push her mother out of her life, because she was afraid she might regret it one day.

"But your mother never treated you the way mine treated me! Jonathan once told me that he has a closer relationship to Dad than to his real father. So why can't I have a closer relationship to Angela than to my mother?"

"You can! Motherhood is not only about carrying a child and giving birth, it's mostly about nurturing and caring, about protecting the child and raising it to an independent person. So of course you can have a motherly relationship to Angela, like Jonathan has this strong fatherly connection to Dad. But your biological parents are your roots. You carry their genes, so no matter how much you try to get rid off them, they will always be a part of you. Ask Jonathan about Michael, Lynnie! He'll tell you that although his relationship to his biological father isn't very close, it's still important to him to have him as a sounding board. Only when you know where you come from, you're able to decide where you want to go."

"How were you able to do that without your Mom?"

"I had a lot of people telling me about who she was - Dad, my grandfather Nick, Mrs. Rossini, the whole Brooklyn gang, ... I know her quite well. And sometimes, she gives me advice in my dreams."

Sam had never told anyone before that even today she still dreamed of her mother once in a while. Especially when she badly needed female advice. Dreaming of her had always eased her mind, for it had showed her that Marie hadn't fallen into oblivion. When Sam had first come to Fairfield and had realized that Angela had been becoming evermore dearer to her, it had been her mother who had told her in her dreams that it was okay, that she was glad for her daughter to have found another woman caring for her.

"What am I to do, Sam? I don't know what to do!" Lynnie buried her face in her hands. She sounded so desperate that it broke Sam's heart. She pulled the girl into an embrace and gently stroked her back.

"Why don't you talk to Dad? He loves you, and he will listen to you. He will help you to make a decision. I can imagine that he's brooding about what made you come to me and what we're talking about right now out there. I'm pretty sure he'll be there for you tomorrow. And talk to Angela about your feelings, she's a great listener."

Lynnie didn't reply anything, she just sighed and let Sam rock her as if she was a toddler who had to be comforted because of a broken toy. Growing up wasn't easy, she had learned that the hard way. During the last few weeks, the ground had fallen out from underneath her feet. She felt uprooted and didn't know where or to whom she belonged. Her interpersonal relations were all so complicated. There were her biological parents, who had never really been in love with each other. There was her father who had never wanted to have children with her mother, and her mother who had cheated to conceive her. There was Angela who seemed to love her, but then again couldn't possibly love her because she, Lynnie, had been the reason that Tony had broken off with her. There was Jonathan, her ... what was he anyway? Her father's girlfriend's son, nothing else. How did he think about another one of Tony's daughters claiming a part of his mother's heart? Sam was the only person she didn't have an ambivalent relationship to. She was her half-sister, that was something she could be sure about, and it gave her a great deal of reassurance.

"I love you, Sammy," Lynnie whispered between sobs, "thank you so much!"

"You're welcome, sis! And I love you, too!"