What Vampireslayer is saying is that Gus is not willing, I think.  But the girl, she's thirteen.  What has she been told about her mother?  She is old enough to wonder about her I would think.  If she should ask any questions, how would you, or Gus, answer her?  Was there a story that made her out to be so bad that her daughter would think of her as unforgivable, as Gus seems to do?  Or does she give you a reason to believe that she is curious about her, and might want more of an explanation than she has been given.  I think the whole thing depends on the girl, because she is the center of the story. It isn't a problem to make it possible for her to have answers to her questions unless you have inadvertently made it one.

I'd think you should just tune in to her, listen for some hint that she is curious about her mother, and how she seemed to react to whatever she had been told, which may have been either not enough or way too much. 

What isn't good is to somehow make the girl believe that Gus and/or you have not told her the truth about her mother.  Whatever she did, she did; now, years later, she's different, and she would like to see her child.  Frankly, this sounds a bit of a soap opera situation and because of that, and so I wonder if a sort of innocent meeting between them might be arranged by you, but in a way that it would be natural, and not seem as if you were playing Carly.  You say you have become friends with the mother. Perhaps you could run into her with your stepdaughter in a place where it was natural you should meet occasionally.

Not to build up anything dramatic, but if the place and the way of meeting are natural, and you are a friend of the mother, you see her and speak to her, then just say, 'This is my stepdaughter -- or this is 'Jenny.' And then to Jenny', 'Honey, this is someone you might want to meet. This is Virginia, your mother."

Do you think that could happen somewhere and not blow everything away?  It might be seen as a set up to Gus, only if he never knew that you had become a friend of hers so I am hoping that he does know it, and therefore won't see it as a set up.  If you see her now and then at the grocery, that's the place to see her. If you see her when you go bowling, or painting class, or wherever you did really see her, that would be good, as long as it was also natural for you to have your stepdaughter with you there.  A bar just won't do.  So. You take advantage of a casual meeting, make a natural introduction, and let the girl take the rest of it according to how she feels.  I'd bet that a thirteen year old girl would be curious about this never met mother, and want to talk to her, or listen to her talk to you.  Then, if she felt better about the mystery mother, she will tell you so. Or she will tell Gus. Kids don't like other people to have secrets, and if Gus is wise, if she tells him that she met her mother, he won't do anything but listen to her, too. 

Because in a very few years she will be an adult and even before that she will be of a mind to do what she wants, and speak to anyone she wants. It may be that this will come to nothing. If the woman is sincere the girl will probably feel it. If she isn't, she'll get that sense, too.  Don't push. Don't apologize. You did what needed to be done eventually. Let me tell a story here.

My daughter had a son by someone who didn't marry her because he was already married. We were at first the well known appaled parents. Then the baby was born and we helped her take care of him, but wouldn't, because we were so proper, allow her and him to live with us. We paid her rent, bought her groceries, and took care of him on weekends when she had a part time job. After about three years she married someone else and he knew the father and despised him, and was a very good stepfather to Robert.  Robert wasn't clear on the story until he was nine and somebody had said something to him that made him ask his mother about his father. She told him the truth, and he felt embarrassed to know that he was a bastard.  But he had a good stepfather and a good grandfather and seemed to not care about knowing the unknown father.  When he was sixteen his mother finally went to court to ask for child support and it was granted and still the father had nothing to do with him, after he demanded that old soap favorite, the blood test.  But Robert looked so much like his father!  When Robert was about 19 the natural father's mother died. He saw the obit, and called me to ask if it would be too bad if he just went to the funeral home to look at her? I said go. He went.  He put on his one suit, signed the book in the viewing room, thinking everybody had gone out to lunch. As he approached the casket a woman came in and greeted him.  She was an out of town sister -- his aunt, in fact!

She asked which one he was. He told her his name. She knew he wasn't the only nephew she knew to exist.  She was polite. Robert was polite.  He had only said. "I'm Robert ---.  then as he turned to go he saw his natural father coming into the parlor.  He passed him, murmured, "Sorry. I guess I messed you up."

The story naturally went all around the family and hit the unsuspecting wife very hard. She left the family for about ten days then came home and did a very wonderful thing: she found Robert where he worked and invited him to dinner.  He accepted, had butterflies, but went and met everybody.  The natural father had a second unknown child,a  daughter, who had been revealed to the poor wife a couple of years earlier. Robert and she became close. He gained a sister, but the father, although he seemed relieved that the secret was out, never really made any effort to draw Robert in closer.  Robert said he felt nothing for his father. He didn't hate him. He wasn't apt to love him.  He could meet him and have cup of coffee or not, and was okay.

That's the way it should be with your stepdaughter, don't you think. If chance can offer her the opportunity to meet her mother, they may become close, or frriends, or nothing to each other, but it should be the girl's choice, not the mother's or Gus's.  In any event, if she loves you and Gus now, she isn't likely to change her feelings.  If she loves her mother in time, it will be a positive thing for her. If she just meets her, it will be a relief to everyone to have the secret out or the suspense over, finally.

I think that we get hooked on these soaps because for all their silliness they still have many features about how people live and feel and the sorts of secrets they try to keep and what a useless things they often turn out to be. 

Maybe you, Gus, and Nancy should spend some time together.  Then maybe he can see what you see.  If the woman is indeed clean and sober, it would probably be beneficial to the little girl to know her mother. 

A child can never have too much love. 

If Gus would be willing to get to know the new Nancy, then maybe things could work out for all of you.  Is he willing to speak with and get to know her, again?  That may go a long way in getting rid of his old ideas of her.