Luck Be a Lady - Cathie Linz [79]
“Are you okay?” Megan asked.
“No.”
“You’re surprised to see me. I get that.” Maybe a blank face was her mother’s way of expressing surprise. It could happen. Megan, ever the optimist, was frantically trying to find a silver lining. “And I’ve been babbling since I got here. Usually Faith is the one who babbles when she’s nervous. She was going to come with me to D.C. but she’s sick and I couldn’t wait to meet you. She’s the one who tracked you down. She’s a librarian, like I said, but she has a PI license too. Because her dad and mine own West Investigations. But you know that already. I’m still babbling. Sorry.” Megan looked down at the Woodstock photos she still held in her hand. “Do you still have the jeans?”
“What?”
She pointed to the group photo. “The jeans you wore to Woodstock.”
“No.”
“But you and Fiona promised you’d keep them.”
Her mother shrugged. “It was a stupid promise.”
“You’ve probably moved around a lot since then and that made keeping the jeans difficult. Or have you been in D.C. since you left Chicago?”
“No.”
“Fiona said she thought you might have been in Europe several years ago.”
“She talks too much.”
“She wasn’t gossiping or anything,” Megan defended her. “She knew I’m your daughter and she was trying to be helpful.”
“That was a stupid thing to do.”
“What was? Her talking to me or me talking to her? Why all the secrecy? Are you involved in something with national security at the think tank?”
“As if I’d tell you if I was.”
“Right. Good point.” Again Megan stared at the photo before looking back at her mother, searching for some sign of the young woman she’d once been, the one who’d flashed the peace sign at Woodstock. She found none. She only saw a blank detachment. “Fiona will be disappointed that you didn’t keep the jeans. She did.”
“Like I said, it was a stupid promise.”
Her indifference was getting to Megan, which was why she said, “Were your wedding vows a stupid promise?”
She gave Megan a haughty look. “That’s a personal question.”
“You’re my mother. This is all personal.”
“For you, maybe. Not for me.”
Her mother’s words hurt. But she wasn’t done yet.
“I have no interest in being a mother,” Astrid continued. “Then or now. I had your father tell you that I was dead because I didn’t want you trying to track me down someday.”
The words hit Megan like weapons and left gaping wounds. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t . . . know. He didn’t tell me. I shouldn’t . . . I shouldn’t have come.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
“I won’t bother you again.” Megan blindly headed for the door. She couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Astrid stood aside to let her pass, placing the final nail in the coffin of Megan’s wish for a mom of her own.
Megan was too numb to cry. She felt icy cold. As cold as her mother . . . she corrected herself. As cold as Astrid.
Even Faith’s worst-case scenario couldn’t have anticipated this situation. Megan had been so full of hope at locating her mother. The holidays were a time for family and reunions. Possibilities. Redemption. Instead, she felt a despair unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.
Megan was so lost in a blurred world of shocked pain that she had no idea how she made her way back to her hotel. How could she have been so stupid? What made her think her mother would welcome her with open arms? She’d already tried via her BlackBerry to get a flight back to Chicago tonight but nothing was available.
As the hotel room door closed behind her, Megan saw the vintage purple suitcase Pepper had given her in Las Resort sitting beside the bed. Megan had thought her mother might be able to spend the holiday weekend with her, so she’d packed enough to stay until Sunday if necessary. That certainly wasn’t the case.
Today was the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday. The name suited Megan’s experience as never before. It had turned out to be a black, utterly dismal Friday.
Megan was so cold she didn’t know if she’d ever warm up again. When someone knocked at her hotel room door a few moments later, she automatically went to open it before pausing at