1988 (#20) - Jessica's return and reconciliation with Christine

The reason Christine decided to leave Phillip Jr. behind sinks into her past; having been abandoned by her parents, she doesn't want little Chance to suffer her own sad childhood and so she asks Nina and Phillip Jr to raise their son with love. After many years of separation from her daughter, Jessica Blair, Christine's mother, returns to the city. For Christine, still hurt by the painful separation with Phillip Jr, this is probably the last thing she would have wanted. Christine, in fact, never had a good relationship with her mother, who after all never took care of her daughter, who grew up with her cousin Joe and their grandmother, Clara Herbert, until her death. Christine blames Jessica for abandoning her and never taking care of her; Jessica asks her daughter for forgiveness and hopes that they will reconcile so that she can make up for all her mistakes. Katherine, a long-time friend of Jessica's, offers a place to stay to Jessica, who gladly accepts the hospitality of the woman to whom she confesses to be seriously ill and who probably has only a few months left to live with AIDS, which is why she intends to have the affection of her daughter by her side, knowing that she cannot leave without having received her forgiveness. In one of the countless discussions between Christine and Jessica, the latter reveals to her daughter that her father died in Vietnam before she was born, but Christine, after her mother's countless lies, appears skeptical in believing this story; helped by Paul in comparing Jessica's version with her birth certificate, Christine understands that Jessica's story does not stand up and in the end Jessica admits that the girl was conceived in a night of passion with a boy whose name she does not even know. Christine is not surprised by this, and resigns herself to not even knowing who her father is, finally trying to empathize with her mother, who became pregnant when she was young with no prospects for the future and no one to lean on to raise her. Jessica is very happy when Christine agrees to try to forgive her, even though she knows that no one will give her back the years she lived without the support of a mother.