The President's Daughter - Mariah Stewart [103]
“And then she went to the Shipley School?” Dina held up her right hand, where Blythe’s school ring sat on the middle finger.
“I noticed that you were wearing that.” Betsy smiled. She hadn’t wanted to comment on the ring, thinking that if Dina wanted to ask, she would. “Yes, we both enrolled at Shipley when we returned home. It’s a bit of a drive—it’s in Bryn Mawr, some miles from here, you see—and it could be most unpleasant traveling in the winter. The school is still there, still thriving, though I understand it’s co-ed now. Unimaginable back in my day, though I suppose it represents progress of a sort. . . .” Betsy sipped at her tea, which Mrs. Brady had served from the silver tea service. “Over the years, I sometimes wondered what you thought, when you looked at that ring. Assuming, that is, that you kept it.”
“I never knew who ‘BDP’ was, but for a long time something told me not to show the ring to you.” Dina glanced up at Jude. “When I finally got up the nerve to ask about it, you said it belonged to a cousin of yours.”
“Is that what you told her, Jude?” A frown creased Betsy’s forehead.
“Well, you could have told me that you’d given it to her; it caught me completely off guard when she came downstairs one night with that ring on her hand and asked me who it had belonged to.” Jude’s voice rose in remembered anger. “It was the first thing that came out of my mouth. What did you expect me to say?”
“You could have tried the truth.”
“It didn’t seem like the appropriate time.”
“It obviously never was the appropriate time,” Betsy grumbled.
“I didn’t care for the fact that you went behind my back.”
“Well, I didn’t see where you were doing anything to keep her mother’s memory alive.”
“I was her mother,” Jude said emphatically. “I still am.”
“Mom, Betsy, please. Could we please not do this?” Dina pleaded, the color draining from her face.
“Dina’s right. Now’s not the time for us to be arguing,” Betsy said.
“You started this years ago when you insisted on slipping Dina little things that had belonged to Blythe and not telling me you were doing it,” Jude snapped.
“I wanted her to know where she came from. I suspected—rightly so—that you would do whatever you could to keep her from us.”
“I did what I felt was best for Dina. . . .”
“Which obviously wasn’t or we wouldn’t all be here now, would we?”
“Let me know when you’ve finished beating each other up.” Dina rose. “I’m not going to sit and listen to this again. You have issues to resolve, resolve them. You’re adults. Please start acting like it. I’ll be outside. . . .”
For the second time that day, Dina retreated back outside, leaving the two women to air their grievances— sometimes loudly, as their voices drifted through an open window.
Jude, mild-mannered, soft-spoken Jude, could really rip when she wanted to, Dina thought as she pruned a shrub. And maybe it’s good for her, maybe it’s good for both of them, to finally get out so many years of words unspoken. It must have been so hard for Mom, harder still in some ways for Betsy, this silence between them all this time. Maybe it’s time for them to deal with each other, once and for all and however loudly they choose; then maybe they can move on.
Maybe they could even be friends. . . .
And maybe, Dina thought wryly, the deaf would hear and the blind would see. . . .
This was all wrong. All wrong.
Where was Jude McDermott? Where was the girl?
Too clever to return to Henderson in the van, the driver had borrowed wheels that were newer—and, most important, unrecognizable, should Jude arrive home and notice a strange car in the parking lot. Though that might be difficult, parked as it was, for the second night in a row, behind a veil of shrubs. The car was too low to the ground to give a clear overview of the surroundings, that sense of omnipresence one got from driving a vehicle that sat so high up over the road, but at the same time it was low enough to conceal behind foliage, and there was something to be said for that. And after all, tonight was merely