Sterling looked at him, "A mistake? No, Nick. No child is ever a mistake. If you truly weren't meant to be here, you wouldn't be. It's that simple. Who told you otherwise?"

Nick's shoulders heaved with stifled sobs, "My mothe........the woman who gave birth to me."

Katya looked up in surprise, this is what he had been trying to get out when he had fallen asleep. How could a mother tell her son something like that?

Sterling sat beside him on the bed and wrapped a fatherly arm around the younger man, "You went to see her?"

Nick nodded, "I wanted to know why she didn't want me. Why I had been lied to my whole life. She moved away years ago, got married and has kids. Three of them, all boys. My half brothers, I guess."

Sterling nodded, "Understandable that you would want to know why. What did she say?"

Nick sighed, "She wasn't happy to see me at all. I think she could tell by the way I was looking at her that I knew. She wouldn't even let me in the house. She made me sit out on the porch until she put the boys down for their naps. When she came back out, I asked her point blank why she didn't want me. She told me she was 18 years old, had her whole life in front of her and didn't want a baby ruining it for her. I don't know what answer I was looking for, maybe that she was a baby herself and that she thought Jane and Bob could raise me better, but it was all about her and how much I would ruin her life."

Sterling nodded, "As harsh as it sounds, maybe you were better off with Jane and Bob, if that is the kind of attitude she would have had towards raising you. That attitude could have led to abuse and neglect."

Nick stared down at his fingers, "I know. As much as I hate them right now, they did raise me well. I was loved and protected and had everything I could have ever wanted. But it was all lies. That's what I can't forgive or forget, that my whole life is a lie."

Sterling squeezed the arm that was around Nick's shoulders, silently showing his understanding of Nick's emotions. "What else did you discuss with her?"

Nick's look became more pained and Katya walked over to the two of them, feeling Nick's torment as if it was her own. She knew it was painful for him to relive all of this. She sat in front of Nick and placed her hands on his, holding them. Nick looked up and his eyes held hers for a minute, almost like he was drawing strength from her gaze. He looked away but kept her hands on his, "I wanted to know who my father was."

Sterling nodded, "And did she tell you?"

Nick shuddered, "She told me everything I never wanted to know about the way I came into this world."

"What do you mean?"

"She said that she couldn't give me a name. I took that to mean that she did know, but she just wouldn't tell me. I said that he had a right to know that he had a child out in the world. She just lost it. She told me he had no right to anything. She said that the reason that she couldn't give me a name was because she was raped and became pregnant. She told me that she wanted to abort me from the minute she found out, that I was the spawn of evil and now that evil was part of her body. She wanted nothing more than to have an abortion but she couldn't. She would have to tell everyone she had been raped and she knew that her family would believe she had somehow asked for it. She said that they would believe she got knocked up more than they would believe that she was raped.

When she told the family that she wanted to give the baby up for adoption that they wouldn't hear of it and Jane and Bob basically forced her to give me to them so I would stay in the family. She told me for the next nine months she wished that she would miscarry or that she could somehow rip me out of her body. She didn't eat right, she drank whenever she managed to get by herself, she didn't take her vitamins, she even took medications that would cause birth defects to try to get rid of me. But I just stubbornly refused to die like she wanted.

She said that the sight of me when I was born made her sick. And that it still did. That I was nothing but a mistake that was around all the time and kept reminding her of the life she left behind when she left Jamestown and the Carter Family. She said she was never more happy then when Jane and Bob and I moved to Florida, because it meant she never had to see me ever again.

But then I had to go and get famous on her and now she can't even watch TV or listen to the radio without hearing or seeing me. She told me that she wished I had never been born. She told me that right to my face. That I was the biggest mistake God ever made on the face of the earth and that she never wanted to see me again, never wanted to hear from me except for the happy news that I had finally died and she could leave me as a worthless memory where I belonged. "

Sterling looked at him, stunned speechless by the words his own mother had hurled at him. "Oh Nick...."

Nick looked up at him, tears sliding down his cheeks, his eyes bloodshot and it seemed like the life had drained out of him. It had been so hard to force the words out of his mouth. Every single one of them ripped into his soul. But when they were out a kind of relief came. Now that the words where out there, now that they weren't bottled inside of him, he felt a little better. But what little relief he had been afforded was eclipsed by the pain of having to relive the memory of her, to see her face so cold and vicious as she told him she wished he would die.

Katya was stunned by everything she had heard. She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Nick, feeling him lean into her and start to cry. Harsh, heaving sobs left him as he crumpled before the eyes of Katya and Sterling.

They could do nothing but hold him. Each one not aware of the other, but both needed by Nick at this moment more than they could ever know.