ODDS OF LOVE - SEASON THIRTEEN

Episode 138

The drive to Manassas was a peaceful one. One that took Andrew Mason Norland back through the many years to his childhood days.

He remembered the two story colonial house he had grown up in with his mother's beloved flower gardens in the front yard and her vegetable garden in the back. He saw the American flag waving constantly and proudly in the air. He remembered his old hound dog Lester who he had begged for so long with his mother always saying no and his father finally relenting with a firm "yes but it's your responsibility, son ". He recalled his old best friend Timmy Marsh who had lived three houses down from him. He and Timmy had been inseparable. They had both wanted to be lawyers like  in the mystery books they had adored. Solving crimes and freeing the innocent and having a pretty secretary. His father had built him a treehouse in the backyard one summer when he was ten and he and Timmy had practically lived in it. Before people knew how dangerously stupid it was he and Timmy had pricked their fingers to mix the blood up together. To be blood brothers. Timmy hadn't become a lawyer though. When they were eighteen he died in a car accident a week after highschool graduation. He had wanted to name his first son after his dead best friend but Doris had said no. She liked the name Richard better than Timothy.

He sighed as he pulled to a stop in front of his mother's house. He had so many issues with his mother but he still loved her. And he still loved his father who had been everything to him. His father hadn't been a rich man. Comfortable but not rich by any means. Yet he still found the money to send him to college and law school. Mason Norland had been so proud of him. In a way he understood his wife's loyalty to her daughter. Hell. He loved her more for it really. But if she expected that woman to live with them now.......... he didn't know........ He had never truly cared for Dodie. Not like Alfred who he admired for his emotional strength and intelligence and kindness. Dodie was so selfish and down deep he sensed that she had never wanted him to marry her mother. She didn't want him filling her father's shoes.

Glory asked him where he was going to stay when he went home. To Alfred and Gerald's like Alfred wanted or back to the house. Truthfully as long as he was with his wife who was now well and healthy again it didn't matter to him where he put his head but he couldn't see himself living with Dodie in the house. They were not young anymore and he didn't want to be dragged into Dodie's neverending drama anymore. So..... where would he stay ? Wherever his stepdaughter was not. Where would Glory be ? By her daughter's side until she didn't need her anymore.

He sighed once more and got out of the car to begin the walk to the front steps of his mother's orderly house. At the front door he suddenly saw Alice Rose Norris in his mind's eye smiling so gently at him. She seemed so sweet and kind. The type of mother he had used to ask Santa for most Christmases until he got too old to believe in the fictional creature. He didn't know if Alice Rose had been telling the truth but he was about to find out.

God help him.

He knocked at the door a couple times and waited.

After a short while the large mahogany door was opened and there stood his mother in her perfectly ironed black dress , nylon stockings and low heeled pumps, her hair pulled into its usual stern bun atop her square shaped head , her eyes glinting coldly at him.

" Hello, Mother. "

Edie Norland sighed and shook her head. " That foolish woman told you, didn't she? "