The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [69]
“Oh.”
She walked to her clothes, dusted her butt off and began redressing. “I’d be a terrible mother.” She felt his eyes on her, that tingling in her nerve endings.
“Why do you think that?”
She shrugged. She yanked her thermal shirt on. Armor.
“You have never mentioned your own parents to me,” he said.
“No, I haven’t. There’s a reason for that.” Her tone made it plain that she didn’t care to share that reason. She buttoned her pants and tugged on a sock.
“I’m not allowed to ask, then?”
“You can ask, but I don’t like to talk about it.”
“Did they hurt you?”
Something in Max’s voice broke Fallon’s heart. There was such a sharp, genuine concern in his words that it made her breath catch.
“No. They didn’t hurt me. They weren’t there to hurt me.”
“You were neglected?”
“No, Max. I don’t have any parents. I grew up in foster care.”
“Oh.”
She exhaled, staring down at the floor. “I don’t like talking about it. It wasn’t the most traumatic thing ever, it just isn’t my idea of a fun conversation. I’m not like you. I don’t get off on bad memories.” She felt her cheeks heat with regret a second too late.
Max didn’t reply.
“I’m sorry. That was harsh. But I’d like to drop it, just the same. Please.”
“Your aunt, who you’ve mentioned…”
“I call her my aunt. Her name was Gloria. Gloria Engels. She was my foster mother, but not until I was fifteen. I felt like I was too old to call anybody ‘Mom’ by then.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Max…”
“Please.”
“Fine.” She sighed and leaned on the edge of the table. “She took in lots of kids. She and her late husband. They couldn’t have their own, so they fostered dozens of hard-to-place teenagers, for years and years. Her husband passed away well before I moved in there. Gloria must have been in her midsixties by then. She was amazing, like something out of a frigging Disney movie.”
He nodded. “And this woman, she has something to do with this statue, somehow.”
Fallon maintained eye contact but didn’t reply.
Max leaned the broom against the wall and crossed his arms. “Tell me. Tell me why we’re here together. Tell me now what Donald Forrester is giving you in exchange for this statue.”
She stared at the ground, feeling disembodied.
“Tell me or I won’t pick those tools up ever again.”
Her head jerked up sharply. “Don’t you threaten me.”
“Tell me about threats, Fallon.”
She glared. “Fine… Fine. He owns Gloria’s house now—her estate in Connecticut. We’ve been fighting with each other for years, since way before she passed away and he bought it.”
Max crossed his arms. “Fighting over what?”
“Environmental things. Over all these development projects of his, ones I’m always trying to get halted because they’ll ruin wetlands or pollute waterways or erode some piece of coastline. We spent so much time in courtrooms together, we were almost like friends. Friends who hated each other, I guess. We weren’t close, just…civil. Familiar. We saw each other all the time and ate lunch together in the middle of these really ugly fights.” She took a deep breath. “Then he asked me out one day, and I said no. Then again, the next day. He asked me about a hundred times, and I said no a hundred times, and I thought he was just being a pain in the ass. Then Gloria died earlier this year and I missed a bunch of hearings during my bereavement leave. He knew what she was to me. When I got back after a couple weeks, I found out he’d bought her estate. Then he made a really disgusting offer and I hit him. Then he made a slightly less disgusting offer and I accepted. Then he contacted you.”
“What does he want to do to her home?” Max asked, one eye narrowing.
“If he gets his statue, he’ll give it to me. And I don’t know what I’d do with it. If he doesn’t, the idea is that he’ll tear it down, make it into a strip mall or throw up some condos, whatever will turn a profit. He’s not picky.”
Max gaped at her, the color draining from his face.
“So that’s why I’m here. Your work is the price of preserving my aunt’s memory.”
“How on earth do you expect me to be