Luck Be a Lady - Cathie Linz [84]
“Yes, but to actually say that she was the one who concocted the story that she was dead.” Faith shook her head. “I don’t know how to respond to that.”
“I didn’t know how to respond either. I apologized for bothering her and got out of there as fast as I could.”
“You must have been devastated. Here.” Faith handed her the unopened container of mac and cheese. “Have some of this. It will make you feel better. Here’s an unopened plastic-covered fork.”
“Thanks.” Megan took a bite and chewed slowly. “I think the reason she was so hard to locate was that she didn’t want me finding her.” She put a hand to her throat as emotion gripped her. She set the food on the coffee table. “That’s pretty hard to take, you know? What does it say about me that my own mother couldn’t love me?”
“That you had a rotten mother.”
“She deserted me when I was two years old.”
“Look at it this way. Would it have been better if she’d stuck around and constantly made you feel unwanted? Instead, you were raised by your dad, who loved you to bits and still does.”
“If he’d only told me that she didn’t want to see me ...”
“Would you have believed him?”
“Maybe not,” Megan admitted. “I was pretty swept up with the idea of having a mother of my own.”
“Besides, he didn’t even know you were looking for her.”
“She didn’t keep her Woodstock jeans,” Megan said abruptly.
Faith blinked. “Huh?”
“She and Fiona had promised to keep their jeans forever. The ones they wore at Woodstock. Fiona kept hers. Astrid didn’t. She said it was a stupid promise so I asked her if her promise in marrying my dad was stupid.”
“Wow. What did she say to that?”
“That it was a personal question. I told her this was allpersonal. She didn’t see it that way. She was so cold. Detached.”
“Good riddance to her. You’re better off without her. I know you don’t think that yet, but you will. Enough about her. Let’s get back to Logan.”
“I was pretty upset when he showed up.”
“I can imagine.”
“I felt numb.”
Faith grinned. “I’ll bet he cured you of that feeling.”
“He was really understanding about it all.”
“And?”
“And he was patient when I cried.”
“And?”
Megan smiled. “And we didn’t leave the hotel room until we headed back here.”
“Really. You didn’t go sightseeing?”
“Not of D.C.”
“Oh ho. So you were sightseeing and touring one Logan Doyle, eh? You’re blushing. A lot. It was that good, huh?”
Megan nodded.
“So something good came out of something bad,” Faith said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the something bad obviously was the meeting with your . . . with Astrid,” she automatically corrected herself. “That woman is no mother. And the something good is Logan.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Of course it’s not. Relationships rarely are.”
“I’m in a relationship with Logan,” Megan said with a sense of awe.
Faith laughed. “That’s only just now occurring to you?”
“I was distracted before.”
“And you claimed you didn’t want to be distracted. I told you that distraction can be wonderful. So now that you know that, what are you going to do about it?”
“Do about it?”
“Where do you see things going between you and Logan?”
“I see us going to bed a lot. I don’t know what will happen. You need to be tough to be in love with a cop.”
“We already had this discussion. You’re tough but nice.”
“Yes, but am I tough enough to handle him being in such a dangerous profession? I don’t know. Being bold and brave aren’t the first things that come to mind when I think of my strengths.”
“You don’t think it was bold and brave to take off on your own to D.C.?”
“Look how well that turned out.”
“But you survived. What doesn’t destroy you strengthens you. You’ve got the T-shirt with that Nietzsche quote.”
“You got it for me.”
“Because it’s true.”
“For you, maybe.”
“For you, for sure,” Faith said.
“I’m not the one who took off on my Italian honeymoon on my own.”
“No, you’re the one who took off on a road trip with a sexy cop in the middle of the night from Vegas.”
“I didn’t think it would turn into a road trip.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Faith said.
“The fact that Astrid