First Daughter - Eric van Lustbader [132]
Wrenching herself away from her pain, she smiled through her tears. "Anyway, never mind me." She patted Alli's knee, and there it was again, that astonishing electric sensation that had made her weep. She managed to hold back the tears this time, but it wasn't easy. "It's you we were speaking of. You live a life of such privilege, Alli. You're admired and envied by so many young women, sought after by so many young men."
"So what?" Alli said. "I hate that privilege means the world to my parents. It means nothing to me, but they don't get it, they don't get me at all."
Sharon regarded her sadly. "I never got Emma, you know. All that anger, all that rebellion." She shook her head. "There were times when I thought she'd surely burst from keeping so much from us."
"The secrets we keep."
Sharon clasped her hands together. "I think secrets deaden us in the end. It's like having gangrene. If you keep them long enough, they begin to kill parts of you, starting with your heart."
"Your heart is still beating," Alli said.
Sharon looked away, at the photo of Emma on a horse. She could ride, that girl. "Only in a medical sense, I'm afraid."
Alli moved closer to her. "You still have Jack."
"Seeing you here . . ." Sharon bit her lip. "Oh, I want my daughter back!"
Alli took her hand again. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
Sharon looked into Alli's eyes. How young she looks, she thought. How vulnerable, how angelic. She felt all of a sudden a great, an overwhelming desire for solace, for a peace inside her churning self. She wondered whether she possessed the strength to find it. The Church couldn't provide it, nor all the prayers spoken by all the faithful in the universe. In the end, there was only what she could summon up from inside herself.
"Yes, please," she said. "Tell me about Emma."
SHARON CONFOUNDED Jack utterly when he returned to the house.
"I have an idea," she said brightly, "why don't you and Alli spend the night here? Alli can have the spare bedroom, and this sofa is very comfortable. I can't tell you how many nights I've fallen asleep on it."
Jack, mindful of the Secret Service detail he'd left behind, his brain turning over the problem of how once and for all to track down Ronnie Kray, heedlessly said, "I don't think that would be a good idea."
Sharon's face fell. "But why not?"
Seeing her stricken face gave him pause. He saw her on the sofa next to Alli, both women, torsos twisted, turned toward him. It was their proximity to each other, as if they were intimates, as if they had been talking of intimate things when he walked in. There was something about Sharon's face, an expression he felt certain he'd never see again.
"It would be so nice," Sharon said, "all of us together."
Jack, his mind changing gears, thought she might be right. "Why don't we all go to my house? It's larger and—"
Seeing the change come over Sharon's face, he stopped in midsentence.
"Jack, come on. You know that house gives me the creeps."
What was the use? he thought. No matter what he said, she'd never agree to go there, let alone spend the night.
"Alli and I have to go," he said.
Sharon stood up. "Why, Jack? I know you're not comfortable here, but just this once, stay here with me."
Jack shook his head. "It's impossible, Shar. Alli's Secret Service detail is expecting her to be at the house."
"You mean you deliberately ditched them to bring her here?" The sabers were rattling again, the warhorse stamping its huge hooves.
"It was necessary," Jack said.
"As far as you're concerned, it's always necessary to break the rules."
"Not always." How easy it was to fall back into the old patterns. "Sometimes I bend them."
"Stop, please!" Alli cried.
They both turned in her direction.
"This isn't anything to fight about," she said. "You're just fighting for the sake of fighting."
"Alli's right," Sharon said. "Half the time I don't even remember what we're fighting