"Ms. Connie! How are you doing?" Rachel yelled out as she ran to the front door to greet the older woman.

JC turned around and recognized Laura's mother immediately.

"Why look at you. You dyed your hair?" Mrs. Charles asked as she hugged Rachel tightly.

"Yeah. Just a hint of red. I had to do it for a part."

"It looks good." She said as she held the sides of Rachel's arms and got a good look at her.

JC was stunned by what he was seeing. Laura's mother seemed totally different from when he first met her. Maybe the arguments they all had months before helped with the metamorphosis. Mrs. Charles walked over to JC and hugged him lightly before whispering in his ear, "I see you found your way back to where you belong. I knew my daughter would be too much for you to handle."

'Nope. Same old Connie.' JC thought to himself. He watched the two women as the party went on and couldn't help but wonder why Mrs. Charles treated Rachel better than she treated her own flesh and blood. As the night progressed JC noticed Rachel and Rick in the corner arguing. He walked over to see if everything was ok. "I'm not doing it, Rachel. Get someone else to do your dirty work."

"Everything ok?" JC asked as he approached the siblings.

Rachel was startled. "Yeah, yeah...Everything is great." JC noticed Rick nod to him before walking away and heading towards the kitchen.

Mrs. Charles had noticed the same thing from across the room, but shrugged it off as a brother and sister not getting along as usual. A few minutes later Connie made her way into the kitchen with a few plates and glasses. She noticed Rachel's sister Janine sitting at the table drinking from a small glass.

"Hey Janine."

"Hey, Ms. Connie."

"You okay? I didn't see you much out there."

"Yeah. I'm okay." Janine decided to focus the attention away from herself momentarily. "How's Laura?"

Connie looked down at the floor thinking quietly to herself. "I honestly don't know. I haven't spoken to her in a long time."

"Busy with work huh? I saw her on tv the other day. She looks good."

"Well that's nice. I'm just glad that JC came to his senses and picked the right woman."

Janine started to laugh uncontrollably. "Geez...I didn't know you were this clueless about my sister."

Mrs. Charles watched Janine continue to laugh hysterically before finally asking her, "Are you drunk, Janine?"

"I most certainly am." she answered. "But trust me when I tell you...My sister is so conniving...That a lot of the things she has done would make even the devil himself blush."

"Why would you say something like that about your sister?"

"Because it's the truth..." Janine got up and started to pour herself another drink. "She uses people. And when she is done with them, she just throws them out as if they were garbage."

"I've never know her to do such a thing."

"That's because Laura would never let you ever see that side of my sister. Do you know how many things Laura has taken the blame for because of Rachel? How many jobs she has lost?" Janine began to give Mrs. Charles examples of what she was talking about.

Midway through the conversation, Rick came in and noticed Janine's blubbering. He walked over to her at the table and tried to help her up so he could take her to her room to sleep it off. Mrs. Charles just sat there stunned at everything Janine had told her so far. Janine hadn't even hit the surface of all of Rachel's endeavors.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Mom? You home?" Laura called out as she opened the front door. "Momma? It's Laura! You here!"

There was no answer. The car was still in the driveway, but no one was at home. She figured her mom and went out with her aunt. She placed her bag by the door and proceeded up the stairs to make sure that her mother was indeed out and not in distress.

When she finally reached her mother's bedroom she stood in the middle of the room and smelled the air. A light scent of vanilla filled the room. Her mother loved vanilla. Memories flooded back into her mind of when she was a little girl and would spend her Saturday afternoon's in her mother's room playing dress-up with her clothes and jewelry. She walked over to the large bed and sat down gently and remembered all the times when she would use it as a trampoline. She let her head fall back against the pillows and could smell her mother. She held the pillow tightly. Hoping that it would magically hug her back and tell her everything was going to be alright. She quickly came out of her daydream when the phone began to ring.

"Hello? No she isn't here right now can I take a message? Wait.  Let me get a piece of paper." Laura shuffled around in the nightstand for a pen and pad to write on.

She closed the top drawer and opened the small cabinet below to search. She found a writing tablet and pen attached to it. After she hung up she ripped the paper off and went to place it back inside the cabinet. A large album slid out and fell onto the floor along with a large stack of CD's. Laura was surprised to see music of any kind in her mother's room...Especially CD's. She knelt down on the floor beside the cabinet to put everything back and noticed a small CD player inside. She pulled it out and shook her head wondering why her mother actually had a radio in her room. She pressed play to see what her mother had been listening to. She was shocked to find out it was a Krystal Harris CD. She had written a song entitled "Angel" for her album. She lifted up the large book and looked through the CD's that had fallen. A deep smile grew on her face when she noticed that each and every CD had songs she had written on them. She grabbed the oversized album and opened it up to the first page. Her mouth dropped open in surprise when she saw herself at 8 years old holding a trophy in her hand and smiling at the camera. She leafed through the pages and found tons of newspaper articles about herself inside. She flipped to the back and found the most recent ones with news of her deal with Michael Stewart. She flipped back and decided to start from the beginning and go through each page.

About 15 minutes later Laura was startled by a voice from behind her. "Laura? What are you doing here?" her mother asked as she walked into the room. She noticed that everything in her cabinet was out scattered across the floor.

"You have almost every single clipping of me in here." Laura commented as she looked up at her mother.

Mrs. Charles noticed that Laura had tears in her eyes. "Did you think that I was that heartless?" she asked.

"I didn't want to believe you were." Laura sobbed.

Connie didn't know how to react. She hadn't held her daughter in her arms in years. She slowly walked over to her and placed her hand on her child's back. "You're my baby...No matter how badly I have treated you in the past." her mother started to break down.

Laura lifted her arms towards her mother to hug her. Connie fell to knees onto the floor and embraced her daughter for the first time in years. All either of them could do was cry. Mrs. Charles repeatedly begged for her daughter's forgiveness.

"It's ok mom...Everything is going to be alright." Laura found that their roles had somehow become reversed in those few minutes.

Connie began to wipe the tears from her eyes and then jokingly said, "I see you have been gaining a little weight there." Connie poked Laura in the stomach and noticed that it was very hard. "Laura?"

Laura looked away from her mother towards the bed. Her mother grabbed her chin and made her look her in the eyes. "Are you....?"

"Yes." she replied with tears falling down her cheeks.

"What are the two of you going to do?"

Laura looked down at her stomach and said, "Well, me and the baby are going to-"

"I meant you and JC, Laura."

"There is no me and JC anymore, momma."

Connie got up and sat on the edge of her bed. "I know."

"How?" Laura asked as she went and sat next to her mom on the bed.

"I just came back from Janine's. They're having a small get together...To celebrate their engagement."

Laura looked down at the floor. "Oh."

Connie was shocked to find out that JC would just run out on her. "He doesn't want to have anything to do with the baby?"

"He doesn't know about it. I've tried getting in touch with him, but he won't return my calls and he sent back my letter I had written asking that he call me right away. I'm just going to have to do this on my own. Which doesn't seem like a bad idea anymore...Given the circumstances...How is he?"

"He seems fine. I didn't speak to him that much. I actually came home early."

"Why?"

Connie got up and paced the floor before looking at her daughter.  "Answer me this, Laura...And be completely honest with me. When you were about 14, my favorite necklace went missing and you told me that you had accidentally worn it and lost it...Had you really done that?"

Laura was puzzled as to why her mother would ask her something that happened so many years ago, but decided to humor her. "No. Rachel had taken it. I didn't find out till after you had asked me about it. She told me she wanted to wear it for an audition for a play we had at school. I don't know what happened to it after that. She told me she lost it."

Connie reached down into her purse and took out the necklace. "I found this in her bedroom. You actually let me punish you for something she did?"

"I felt it was my fault to begin with. You really didn't give me a chance to explain either, so..."

Connie thought back and remembered that she didn't have much patience with her daughter after her father died. "I left early because Janine had told me a few things that I hadn't known before. I just didn't feel right being there, after I heard those things."

"What did she tell you?"

"Things that had happened when you guys were younger. Rick stopped her before she got a chance to get into your college years." her mother tried to joke. Laura smiled slightly. Well I hope it doesn't mess up your relationship with her. She has always thought of you as a second mother.

"I don't even know half the things she has done to you in the past and you still manage to be a friend?" her mother asked. Laura got off the bed and walked over to the rocking chair by the window and sat down.

"I just don't want my problems with her to affect your relationship with her. Those are two separate things."

"You're my daughter...What affects you, affects me. All the things that I have said about you...Things I thought you had done...How I even believed that you were capable of such things is beyond me. I've been looking for excuses to shut you out of my life more and more. Trying to erase the memory of your father from my heart and mind...What was wrong with me?" Connie was thinking out loud at this point.

All Laura could do was sit and listen to her mother ponder over all those years. She didn't want to tell her that it was ok that she had done what she did...As much as she wanted to, she couldn't. They both spent most of the night talking. Connie did her best to try and catch up on so many years that she had lost with her daughter.

The next morning Mrs. Charles woke up and found Laura curled up in a ball next to her. She smiled and kissed her daughter's forehead lightly, before heading downstairs to cook breakfast.

On her way towards the stairs with the breakfast tray there was a knock at the door. She placed the tray down on the table and went to answer it.

"JC...What are you doing here?"