The Stolen Daughter

by ReShonda Tate Billingsley

Genres: African American Women's Fiction; Family Life; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Award-winning author ReShonda Tate Billingsley delivers a poignant, pause-resisting novel about the power—and fragility—of family, personal identity, and the choices we are called on to make . . .

Raised by a widowed mother, Jill Reed has come a long way from her difficult youth. But while she may not have had money, Jill never doubted she was rich in love. Her mother, Connie, made Jill the center of her world. Now, even though she has a young family of her own, its Jills turn to care for her ailing mother.

When early dementia begins to set in, Connie starts talking about Jills other life. Jill assumes its just rambling confusion. Still, Connies stories about Jills childhood, and her fathers early death, never quite added up. And when a strange man shows up to Jills job bearing news that turns Jills life upside down, theres no denying Connies devastating secret.

As Jill sets out to learn more about her past, shes stunned by what she learns and what it will mean for her future. Now, she must decide what price shes willing to pay to claim the life thats rightfully hers.

Release date: May 26, 2020

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

I could never get tired of Luther Vandross, especially this version of the duet that he did with my mother. Or rather that she did with him. Luther’s melodic crooning mixed in with my mother’s off-key singing was the best sound I ever heard.

“Come on, sweet pea. Dance with your mother again.”

My mother had created her own personal duet with Luther, and she was belting out her favorite song, of course substituting a few words.

I set my eight-month-old daughter, Destiny, in her swing, turned on the winding button that was always the first step in putting her to sleep, then smiled as it began its slow swaying back and forth. Destiny giggled in delight—I don’t know if it was from the swing or from watching my mother dancing. Either way, both sights brought me immeasurable joy.

“How I’d love, love, love to dance with my mother again,” my mother sang as she swayed to the music.

“It’s a good thing you chose a career in nursing because we would’ve starved if you were a singer,” I said, laughing as she twirled around.

My mother pulled my arm toward her, trying to get me to join her. “It’s a good day. Come on, Jill, and dance with me before you find yourself saying, ‘I wish I could dance with my mother again.’”

It’s moments like these that made my heart smile. Moments when she could remember. When I saw glimpses of her old self.

She released my arm when she realized I wasn’t joining her, then she swayed her hips as her naturally silver curls bounced along with the beat.

My mother’s joy was contagious because I found myself saying, “I’d be honored to dance with my mother again.” I took her hand and twirled around the small living room of our two-bedroom town house. My mother was right. Today was a good day. She had awakened fully lucid, and after cleaning and preparing lunch, she just wanted to dance.

I swung around and around with her, her giggles rejuvenating me and making me forget about the hard day at work today.

Then suddenly, she stopped, darted over to the fireplace, and picked up the picture frame of my father in his military uniform that I kept over the fireplace mantle. “Here,” she said, handing me the eight-by-ten picture. “Dance with your father.”

“Mom,” I protested, only because memories of missing the father I never knew wasn’t a journey I wanted to take today.

“Fine.” She held the picture close to her chest and waltzed across the room. I’d seen that sight many times. The love my mother had for my father was unlike anything I’d ever seen. She spoke so fondly of him that I wished that I could steal some of her memories. My dad had died when I was just a baby, so I didn’t remember anything about him. But I loved hearing my mother’s stories of how he held her hand as I came into this world. How he’d taken one look at me and proclaimed that his life was complete.

They’d given me the name Jillian Jaye after my dad’s late mother, and she said that little act only made him love me even more.

“Mom, you’re going to wear yourself out,” I said as she continued twirling and waltzing. Waltzing and twirling.

She stopped and I could tell that she had gotten a little dizzy. But she caught her bearings and then continued twirling. Slow. Then fast. Then faster.

“Mom. Stop,” I said. Her dress made a swishing sound as she turned around and around.

“Mom!” I grabbed her by her arms to stop her because she was twirling uncontrollably. She swayed a bit, then her eyes met mine and my heart sank as the empty expression filled her face.

“Uh . . . uh . . .” she stuttered, then shook her head like she was trying to get clarity. “Who are you?”

“It’s me, Mom. Jill,” I said, my voice low and soft as I ran my hands up and down her arms, trying to keep her from getting worked up.

“Jill?” Her brow furrowed and I swallowed the lump in my throat.

“Yes. Your daughter.”

She bit down on her bottom lip like she was trying to remember. “I don’t have a daughter,” she finally said. “My baby died.”

“I didn’t die, Mom.” I lifted her chin, hoping if she looked into my eyes she would see what dementia was trying to snatch away.

She took two steps back. “You’re not mine.” She wagged her finger at me. “Why are you lying? The Lord took my baby.”

I smiled, even though the tears were now clouding my view. “I’m yours. I’m your daughter.”

Dementia had come into our home like a thief in the night, setting up residence as if I had laid out the welcome mat. The illness had stolen my mother’s mind and destroyed my joy as collateral damage.

My mother scooted up against the wall, her blank expression now replaced with fear. “No. Go back to where you came from before the people get me.” She shooed me away. “Go. Go!”

“This is my home, Mother,” I said, my voice cracking. “You live here with me and Malcolm, and your granddaughter, Destiny.” I pointed to the swing, where Destiny was staring at us wide-eyed, like she, too, was shocked by the unfolding scene.

“I don’t know a Malcolm or Destiny.” Her eyes bulged as she saw the highchair sitting at the kitchen table. “Why is that here?”

“It’s Destiny’s, Mama. That’s my baby. Your granddaughter. You know that,” I repeated. “You just fed her lunch in that highchair.”

“No. That’s here to haunt me.” Her eyes grew even wider as she backed up closer to the wall. “That’s why it’s here.” She stared at the highchair like it was about to come to life at any moment and snatch her into an alternate universe.

I eased toward her, my arms outstretched in an effort to calm her down. “You know what, Mama? We’ve danced enough. You’re tired. Why don’t you go lie down?”

She kept shaking her head, but she didn’t move as I wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

“Someone is torturing me,” she mumbled as I led her up the stairs and down the hallway into the tiny bedroom next to ours. I’d hoped this was going to be Destiny’s room and I’d had all these grandiose ideas of how I was going to transform the drab, gray walls into a vibrant yellow. But we’d had to transform the room when my mother came to live with us a few months ago.

“My baby died. It was so sad,” my mother muttered as I directed her over to the bed. “She just stopped breathing in my womb. I don’t know you.”

I fought off the tears. My mother was just fifty years old, but the doctors had said dementia didn’t discriminate, wasn’t limited only to those in their eighties and beyond. I was stunned when another doctor told me people could get early-onset dementia as early as their thirties. And I was even more shocked that out of billions of people in the world, only two hundred thousand in America had early-onset dementia, and my mother was one of them.

Over the last six months, it had attacked my mother with a vengeance. It had stolen her mind, her vitality, and had aged her twenty years. It hurt my heart to watch her transformation.

“No, I didn’t die, Mama.” I gently eased her down onto her bed. Thankfully, she let me help her lie down.

“One day your mother will come,” she said as I pulled the plush blanket up over her shoulders.

“You’re my mother,” I calmly replied.

“They’re going to be really mad,” she continued. “They’re going to want you back.”

I remembered how my mother’s doctor had told me that many people with dementia will have psychotic symptoms. “She might believe things that are not real. She also might see, hear, or feel things that are not real. She might argue with you if you try to reason with her,” he’d told me. That’s exactly what my mother was doing.

I sighed, then just decided to let her live in her fantasy world for a moment.

“And when she comes, I’ll tell her Connie Ann Harrison is my mother,” I said.

My mother paused as her eyebrows scrunched up again. “Wait. Is that me?”

I nodded with a smile. “All day, every day.”

“So is your last name Harrison?” my mother asked.

“It is and always will be. Though it’s also Reed, because I married my husband, Malcolm Reed three years ago,” I explained. “But you are definitely my mother.”

She hesitated, then said, “If I’m your mother . . .”

“. . . Then I’m your daughter,” I said, completing her sentence.

Her eyes darted up like she was thinking, then she relaxed. “Yes. You’re my daughter. Mine. I’ve known that from the very beginning. God meant for you to be mine.”

I didn’t understand her rambling; I just wanted to comfort her however I could. That’s what she had done for me all my life. Now it was my turn.

My mother took my hand. “And you’ll never leave me?”

“Never. Ever.” I fluffed her pillow and she snuggled into it like it had taken her into a warm embrace.

“I can sleep now. My daughter will never leave me,” she muttered.

I was thankful for her room-darkening curtains. The September sun was on full blast and I needed all her nerves to be at peace so that she could rest.

I leaned over, kissed my mother on the forehead, and assured her that I would never go anywhere. Then I turned out the lights, eased out of her room, and cried.

Caregiving was no joke. I’d finally gotten my mother settled and was grateful to walk back in the living room and find Destiny dozing off in her swing. That Goodwill find had been a blessing because my baby girl absolutely loved it.

I turned the swing off, then eased Destiny out and took her upstairs to take a nap in the crib we’d set up in our bedroom. That gave me just the break I needed to try and see if I could get dinner ready before Malcolm came home.

I had just finished cooking fettuccini alfredo when I heard the key in the door turn. As the door eased open, I immediately noticed how my husband’s six foot two frame was slumped over. The expression on his face revealed the fact that his job interview hadn’t gone well.

“Hey, babe,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied, dropping his keys on the table by the door. I took in how sexy he looked, even though he was wearing a Suit Mart suit that looked a size too big. I think it was his dimples, shining brightly even when he was upset. He looked just like a younger Rick Fox, though he hated when anyone made the comparison.

“So, when do they want you to start?” I said, hoping my optimistic smile would make him smile. It didn’t.

“I’m not going to get the job. I’m underqualified,” he snapped. “You know I might as well not have gone to college at all versus dropping out,” he moaned. “Maybe if I had spent those two years working on my app, I wouldn’t even need a job because I’d be rich.”

I suppressed the sigh that was itching to escape. My husband and this app had been the bane of my existence. He was convinced he had the next big thing. It was a travel app that used location services to tell you all the best places to dine, shop, party, and chill, no matter where you were. And it was tailored to your individual tastes and budget. He also had several other components that were way too complicated for me to understand. He’d been working on this since apps were a thing. Don’t get me wrong, I believed in him, but dreams didn’t put food into Destiny’s stomach. Dreams didn’t keep a roof over our head. Truthfully, a part of me wondered if Malcolm was self-sabotaging when it came to finding a job. He’d worked as a maintenance engineer, which wasn’t nearly as sexy as it sounded. Basically, my husband was one step above a janitor/handyman. And he hated every minute of it. I think he was secretly happy about being laid off. At the time, anyway, he had been confident that his app would have taken off by now.

Malcolm loosened the tie that I knew he hated putting on in the first place. “I’m sick of this. I don’t know how they expect a brother to get ahead when nobody will take a chance on you. I’m not asking for a handout. I’m asking for a chance. I’m twenty-nine years old, out here slumming like I’m nineteen.”

“We are not slumming, babe. Yes, we struggle. But we have a roof over our heads, so we’re blessed.”

“Yeah, a leaky roof in a dump of an apartment complex that they call townhomes, like that’s supposed to make it better,” he snapped. “The people next door sell drugs. The ones downstairs put Ike and Tina Turner to shame. And I swear the lady across the hall is running a brothel. Yeah, this is exactly the life I envisioned for us,” he added, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

I turned the fire down and let the alfredo sauce simmer, then walked over to try and hug my husband. His body remained tense. I rubbed his arm trying to soothe him. “It’s going to be okay,” I whispered. “We’re going to be okay.”

He wiggled from my grasp. “How, Jill? My wife is working as a barista at Starbucks,” he said.

“Starbucks has good benefits. Plus, I get my Grande Mocha Frappuccino at a discount. Do you know how much that saves me?” I replied, once again forcing a smile even though I’d just had this conversation with myself on the way home from work. I was thinking the same thing as Malcolm—this is not where I saw my life at twenty-seven.

“Starbucks is for college kids. The deal was, you were supposed to stay home and take care of Destiny for the first two years,” he said, exasperated. I noticed the worry lines that had begun creeping up on his smooth chocolate skin. He’d found a gray hair last week and almost lost his mind. I knew all of that was nothing but stress.

“I want more for us,” he continued. “If I could just get someone to believe in this app, I know it would be a success and I could give you the life I promised you.”

I pulled my husband close. This time, he didn’t jerk away.

“From the moment we met, I promised to make you happy,” he said, dejected.

“And you’ve done just that,” I told him, stroking his soft, naturally curly hair.

“But we shouldn’t be struggling like this. You shouldn’t be working in a coffee shop.”

“Well, life happens, baby. So, I’m doing what I have to do,” I said, standing on my tiptoes to kiss him. I would never tell Malcolm this, but I did regret quitting my job as a receptionist for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, a large healthcare company. Quitting had been something Malcolm had wanted me to do when Destiny was born. His mother had been a stay-at-home mother, and that’s what he wanted for his children. But three weeks after Destiny’s one-month birthday, Malcolm had been laid off from his job as a maintenance engineer supervisor at Houston Community College. And things had never returned to normal.

While I wanted more, I didn’t detest the Starbucks job because it was decent money and it gave me benefits for my family, but something about me working there bothered my husband to no end. It was probably because he was from a traditional family; his own mother hadn’t worked and had spent her life raising Malcolm and his three sisters. While I had agreed to stay at home for a while, that wasn’t going to be me forever. My hope was that when Destiny started kindergarten, I’d be able to go back to school and finish my degree. I didn’t know how in the world I would pay for it and with each passing day, I started to wonder if I was too old. But that was on my bucket list.

“How long before dinner is ready?” Malcolm asked, throwing up his hands like he just wanted to change the subject.

“I’m almost done, sweetie. By the time you get changed the garlic bread will be done.”

“Where’s Destiny? Asleep?”

Before I could answer, we heard our daughter’s cries. Both Malcolm and I turned our attention to the kitchen entrance.

“Oh my God!” Malcolm screamed.

My mother was standing there, holding Destiny upside down by her legs.

“Mom,” I said, racing over toward her. But Malcolm had already reached her and retrieved the baby from her arms.

“The baby was crying,” my mother said. She had a zombie-like expression that tore at my heart.

“You shouldn’t carry her,” I said, examining Destiny, who was still crying as she snuggled close to her father’s chest.

“Why not? I know how to carry a baby,” my mother replied.

Malcolm glared at me as he clutched our wailing daughter to his chest. His unspoken words belied his fury.

“Come on, Mom. Let me get you back in your room,” I said, once I saw Malcolm had settled our daughter.

“I’m hungry. Is it time for Thanksgiving dinner?” My mother had three expressions since she’d gotten sick: confused, blank, and what I called lost. Right now, she was confused. Her confusion had become a daily companion rather than an infrequent visitor.

“It’s September, Mommy. No Thanksgiving dinner yet. But regular dinner will be ready in a little bit. Why don’t you go watch Family Feud until it’s done?” I knew that I needed to get her out of my husband’s presence before he did something we all would regret. He loved my mother, but it was nothing compared to his love for our daughter.

“Oooh, I like Family Feud,” my mother said, a wide grin spreading across her face.

“I know.”

“I like that host, Richard Dawson.”

“But now it’s Steve Harvey,” I gently replied.

“Who is Steve Harvey?”

“That’s the bald black man with the bushy mustach. . .