Born to Die - Lisa Jackson [77]
The office had been a madhouse; the waiting room overflowing; tempers short. Added to the tension of the extra work, the computers had gone down for nearly two hours, and Martin had been held up at the hospital.
“I’m fine. Just tired,” she lied, because her stomach had been slightly sour all day. “Tell Mom I’ll call her back.”
Heather pulled a face. “I tried that. You know, ‘The doctor’s just finishing up with patients and will call you in an hour or two,’ but”—she shook her head, her straight blond hair catching in the light—“it didn’t fly.”
“I’ll take it,” Kacey said, wondering at the sudden interest from her mother. They’d seen each other just last night, and sometimes they didn’t speak for a week or two.
Once in her office, she slid into her desk chair, pushed the button on the phone of her antiquated system, and said, “Hey, Mom. Happy Black Friday.”
“As if I’d be in the malls with the rest of America today!” There wasn’t so much as a chuckle from the other end of the line. “Acacia, I’ve been thinking . . . ,” she said, and Kacey bit her tongue to keep from saying something snide about her mother’s thinking process. She could tell Maribelle wasn’t in the mood for a joke of any kind.
“About?”
“Our conversation last night.”
Kacey leaned back in her chair and stared out the window, where the snow, which had stopped earlier, was beginning to fall again, adding another frosty layer to the bushes surrounding the clinic. “What about it?” She was willing to bet it wasn’t about the Commander or, for once, Kacey’s love life. Last night Kacey had hit a nerve.
“Well, it bothered me that you seemed to think your father could have ... you know, fathered other children, or that some other relative had done something similar. I didn’t get the impression that you understood how preposterous that idea was.” She was dead serious. “I know you’re all worked up about these women who died and resembled you, and so I wanted to make sure that you were all right.”
Translation: That you aren’t digging any further.
“Thanks, Mom. I’m fine.”
“So . . . everything’s back to normal?”
Nope. “As normal as it is around here.”
“Good.” An audible sigh. “I’m so glad.”
Translation: I’m glad you’re going to cease and desist.
Maribelle, who didn’t seem to really believe her daughter but wasn’t going to call her on the lie, added, “Well, it was wonderful seeing you last night. I’m off to dinner soon. The Commander and I have a date. Can you believe that? At my age?”
“I think it’s great, Mom.”
“Really?”
“Really.” That much was true. If Maribelle could find a man to make her happy, all the better.
“Me, too. So I’d better run and put on my feminine armor.”
Translation: Makeup and slimming, smoothing undergarments. “You do that, Mom.”
“I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Bye.” Kacey hung up and stared out the window, feeling empty inside. Why, she wondered, when there were so many women who had close, loving relationships with their mothers, had she ended up at the very most coldly affectionate with hers? They were just such strangers, and it seemed wrong. Not that there weren’t much worse, antagonistic, even violent relationships, but that knowledge didn’t dull the ache that still lingered from her childhood. No siblings. A distant mother. A father who cared but was too busy. If it hadn’t been for her grandparents . . .
Disgusted at the turn of her thoughts, she looked to the positive. Maybe being somewhat distant from her mother wasn’t so bad. She could do all the investigating in her family’s past that she wanted. She didn’t have all those hang-ups about family name and honor, nor did she worry about tarnishing her mother’s or father’s reputation. “It is what it is,” she said aloud and wondered about how easily she had lied to her mother. The truth was, she’d already started the ball rolling. Before the first case had walked through the door this morning, she’d