A Silken Thread - Brenda Jackson [79]
And she was angry. However, he understood her anger more than she did. Her mother had flaws that hadn’t been so well hidden. But her father, although not perfect, had always been her knight in shining armor. The one she’d always thought would never let her down. But he had. And he felt the same about his mother. She had let him down, too.
“I want to see you, Erica. I’m coming to Hattersville.”
“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’ll call you later and we can talk then.”
He felt like she was shutting him out, something she’d never done before. “I want to see you, baby. I need to see you.”
Something in his voice must have pulled at her heart, a heart he wanted to believe he still had. “I want to see you, but I need to take care of Mom. Her doctor said she even has a heart condition she never told us about and she can’t handle too much stress.”
She paused and then added, “I’m not sure when Mom and I will be leaving or how long we’ll be gone, Brian. I’ll call and let you know where we are.”
He didn’t like the sound of that, but now was not the time to tell her just how he felt. When he talked to her again it would be face-to-face…in a few hours. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Fine.”
She hung up the phone without telling him good-bye.
Karen smiled as she shifted positions on her bed. She loved the fact that Erica had become the doting daughter. If Karen had known staging a fainting spell would accomplish it, she would have definitely done it sooner. Now if she added her daughter’s obedience to the list she would be extremely happy. If she played her cards right, that also would happen soon.
Whatever Ralph told Erica had her daughter worried and that was a good thing. By now all intended parties should have gotten their copies of the pictures. She wished she could have been a fly on the wall in Wilson’s hotel room.
She’d known just where he was and whom he was with. The men Jaye had hired to keep tabs on Wilson and his mistress had done a fantastic job. And she had selected eight of the best photos they had taken. Seeing them would have left little doubt in anyone’s mind as to the nature of their relationship.
She closed her eyes when she heard Erica coming back up the stairs. A smile touched her lips as she thought about the performance she was about to give, one any soap opera director would be proud of.
She knew the moment Erica opened her bedroom door and slowly moved across the room on soft feet so as not to awaken her. Then she felt her daughter take her hand in hers and hold it as she sat in a chair she’d placed by the bed.
How touching.
She decided to pretend she was coming awake. She opened her eyes slowly, blinked a few times as if to bring everything before her into focus. “Erica?” And then as if she was awakening from a bad dream and couldn’t face reality, she forced tears from her eyes. She could just imagine what her daughter thought of that, since she’d probably never seen her cry.
“No, Mom, please don’t. Everything is going to be all right.”
“How can you say that, Erica? Your father was with that woman. And just to think that I had convinced myself it was unfair not to at least try to like her, to get to know her. And all this time, she’d set her sights on Wilson. How could he do this to me? To our marriage?”
“Mom, don’t think about it. Don’t get yourself upset.”
“How can I not think about it? How can I not be upset?”
She could tell by the expression on Erica’s face that she had no idea what to say. So she continued on, milking it with everything she had. “Ralph thinks I should get away—take a cruise, go to the cabin on Lake Tahoe. Maybe that’s a good idea, since I can’t handle being the laughingstock in this town when word gets out.”
Karen inwardly laughed. This was one of those rare times she didn’t care what the people were going to say. She would have the last laugh after