JENNIE

I looked around and remembered where we were. Lisa's face fell as she glanced in the empty corridor.

"How is Mary?" I asked.

"She had a stroke when she was in the grocery store, and they rushed her here. She was stable, but when I arrived, her heart failed again." Her voice was shaking. "The doctors moved her into intensive care, and she was in this room."—Lisa gestured to the door in front of us—"They asked me to wait."

"I am so sorry." I put my arm around her, and Lisa's head nested on my shoulder.

"I need her. It's too early for her to leave. She wanted to meet you so much." Lisa was crying again.

I was rocking her in my arms when a couple rushed around the corner. They were both in their late fifties, dressed immaculately. The couple stopped in their tracks and looked at us. Lisa stiffened in my arms when she saw them. The man glanced at Lisa, then at me, and bolted back the way he came. The woman stayed, and she looked at the man saying, "Oh, Jonathan."

She stepped closer to us. And then I saw it, her beauty, the face I loved but in an older version.

Lisa stood, shielding me. Her mother had the same brown eyes, but her nose was different. A web of wrinkles cut deep around her full lips. A light bob with flicked ends hugged her tired face and a linen cream-colored suit sat perfectly on the slender body. The woman stopped right in front of Lisa; they were even the same height.

"How is she?" Lisa's mother asked. Her voice was different but pleasant.

Lisa replied, saying in a few words what she told me.

The woman's face fell, tears pooling at the corners of her eyes.

"She'll be alright," Lisa's mother said, hope shimmering in her voice. She was still watching Lisa, and then she slowly put a hand to Lisa's cheek, gently stroking it.

"I missed you," Lisa's mother said. "I missed you so much."

Lisa's face didn't change its expression.

"I wanted to be back in your life, but I …" Her voice trailed off, and she took a deep breath. "I am so ashamed of what we did to you. I was afraid to reach out."

Tears were running down the woman's face, but she looked directly into Lisa's eyes. "I am such a coward. I was afraid of your rejection. But we—I—deserved it. It was such a stupid thing. It doesn't matter who you love as long as the person treats you well. You being gay shattered our reality."

Lisa sneered, "Shattered your reality? Suddenly I did not have any family, and I was kicked out of my parents' home. How could you do that?"

"And I regret it ever since. You can't imagine how we hurt," the woman retorted sadly.

"Can you hear yourself? It's always about you, how you feel, how you hurt. Have you ever stopped to think about how I felt? The parents I loved never wanted to see me again because of who I was attracted to. I can't control it. But you,"—she pointed a finger at her mom—"you were always so focused on me being perfect. You had my life planned out, and when it appeared I was different, that I didn't match your perfect description, you threw me out! Mary was the one person who stood by my side."

Lisa's mother was pale, but she listened, every word as a whiplash on her.

"You are right. There is no excuse for what we did," she finally replied, as her lips trembled. But suddenly, a fire lit in her eyes. "Lisa, I will try for the rest of my life to fix what I have done wrong."

"Four years! You needed four years to realize it." Lisa was shaking her head. "Not four days, but years! Dad," she corrected herself, "Jonathan, can't even be in the same room with me."

Jonathan appeared from the corner of the corridor. Apparently, he had not left; he was standing there all this time. While Lisa's mother's face was pale as a sheet, Jonathan's was red, and huge, red-rimmed eyes bore into Lisa.

His face was handsome, and he was extremely tall. He clutched the hem of his dark brown jacket that was the same color of his eyes. The thinning fair hair was cropped short, and a flush crept across his cheeks. It was heartbreaking to see so much pain woven into his face.

"I can." His voice was deep. "Lisa, I want you back in our life. I want to be close to you. I missed you so much, my little girl. But I was so afraid to reach out to you. We are two proud old souls, your mom and me. Mules would be a better description. We did an awful thing, and it took us weeks to realize it. And then for years we stayed silent." He shook his head, his shoulders sagging lower. "We lost you. We missed everything. By the time we wanted to reach out, you were climbing the career ladder with such force—"

"How do you even know that?" Lisa exclaimed, her eyes going wide in shock.

"We scraped bits and pieces from the internet." Jonathan looked away. "Numerous times we picked up the phone to call you and froze. Many times I came back from work to find Eve sitting in her car, keys in the ignition, staring nowhere, crying."

"What were you so afraid of?" Lisa demanded, her voice sharp.

"This." Eve gestured around them. "You throwing us out, not wanting anything to do with us."

"Like you did to me," Lisa said quietly.

"Like we did," Jonathan echoed.

"Mom believed we would sort it out, but with each passing year she was disappointed in me. She didn't forgive me. Mary said that it was not her who needed to forgive us, it's you," Eve said.

"How could you have been so arrogant, so proud? You valued your precious friends' opinions about what they would say, and you worried they would call me a freak." Lisa gestured to herself. By leaving her, they created so many false statements within Lisa about who she was. "You needed their approval more than you needed me."

All this time I stood behind, watching this verbal sparring. But when I heard what she thought about herself, I stepped closer and took her hand in mine. She squeezed it lightly.

Jonathan and Eve looked at me, to our entwined hands.

A small smile appeared on Eve's lips.

"I am so happy you are not alone," she said.

"It's none of your business," Lisa replied, but there wasn't any venom in her words.

A nurse appeared around the corner, and she rushed to our group. When she reached Lisa, she said, "Perfect, the family is together." We all looked at each other, and Jonathan smiled. "Mary's heart is steady now. We will watch her closely for a week. Right now, she's still unconscious."

"Will she be alright?" Lisa and Eve asked simultaneously.

"We will monitor her. This was one stroke, not two. Given her age, it might happen again. She needs to take a bunch of pills now, every day; they will support her heart. So, yes, hopefully she'll be alright," nurse explained. "We will bring her back to this room in an hour and hook her up to the monitors. Meanwhile, you can go to the cafeteria."

We thanked her, and she went into the room to prepare it. "She'll be fine," Lisa murmured, hope in her voice. I smiled. "Let's go to the cafeteria," she added, looking at me.

"Lisa," Jonathan said, "can we try to win you back?" Her parents' expressions made me realize their lives depended on what they would hear next.

"Do as you wish," Lisa said, but a small smile was tugging on her lips.

I had never seen two happier faces.