Lauraine Snelling Page 4

  “You look terrible,” her mother said when Andy walked into the workshop.

  “Thank you. Good morning to you too, Mom.”

  “Something’s very wrong, so you might as well tell me and get it over with.” Alice turned from the bench where she’d been filling the lace sachets she’d sewn the night before.

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “Let me be the judge of that. All I know is that you’ve been sighing, and you’re walking around with the weight of something really terrible on your shoulders.” Alice leaned back against the workbench and crossed her arms over her midriff.

  Andy caught herself in another sigh. Might as well get it over with. “Martin has been offered a big promotion.”

  “I know, he told me.”

  “Did he also tell you that the job requires us to move to San Francisco?”

  “No, but the way you’ve been acting, I was afraid he’d asked for a divorce or something irreparable.”

  Andy sighed again. “It might come to that.”

  “Not if you don’t let it.”

  “Mom, he wants us to sell the house and the business.” Andy-watched her mother’s face, saw the tightening of her eyes, the jaw line.

  “I know what you’re thinking, honey, that we—your dad and me—won’t be able to get by without you, but the way things are going, we can probably hire a part-time employee to fill the gap.”

  “Maybe after the next big order, but not right now. And the problem is, we don’t know when the next big order will come.” Andy pulled out her latest business analysis and showed it to her mother. Then she launched into a full retelling of Martin’s giving her his news, ignoring her concerns, and refusing to help her find a resolution.

  “You’re risking your marriage, honey. Your dad and I would never forgive ourselves if you and Martin split up because of us. We can work the business without you, and if it’s too much for us and we still can’t afford an employee, then we’ll sell it, along with the farm. We should get a pretty penny out of the place, the way real estate prices have been soaring. Enough to last us the rest of our lives. Lots of people are looking to get into good home-based businesses these days.” She took her only child’s hand in hers. “We’ve been so fortunate to have all of you, Martin and the children, right here on the farm with us all these years. I thank God every day for—” Her voice broke.

  “No, Mom, listen to me. I don’t want to move to San Francisco.” Andy told her mother all the personal reasons why, the same ones she had told Martin, only this time she added, “I wasn’t cut out to be a corporate wife. I don’t like charity balls and women’s club lunches. I like it here, with you and Dad and the animals. And I like being a businesswoman again. I’m good at it, and I get a lot of personal satisfaction out of it. I gave all that up once for Martin, and I’m not going to do it again.”

  “Not even if it means losing him?”

  Andy fought the tears, but when she reached out to hug her mother, they collapsed in each other’s arms. “He … he never even acted pleased about the Nordstrom order,” she sobbed. “I … I have always cheered him on, but he shrugged off my good news like it didn’t mean anything.” She clung to her mother, a little girl again, a little girl whose kitten had just died.

  That night, Andy brought herself back to stare at the face in the mirror. “God, what am I going to do?”

  Are you going to trust Me?

  “Yes, I trust You, but that isn’t what I asked.” At least, I’m trying to trust You. But You have to help me out here, so I know what to do.

  Kansas City

  Julia Collins accepted the congratulations of her trial assistant with a smile. “Thanks, and thank you for finding that last witness. She was the clincher. I wouldn’t have laid money on the outcome before you brought her into the picture.”

  “Something just kept niggling at me and wouldn’t let go, so I went back through all the transcripts until I found her name.” Adam Jefferson, fresh out of law school, was also Julia’s latest hire, and she had no doubt he would be a keeper.

  “Well, anytime you feel a niggling, you follow it.” She turned to accept the grudging congratulations from the opposing lawyer, a good friend of hers outside the courtroom. “Thank you, Glen. I can’t say I’m sorry you lost this one.”

  “Luck of the Irish, I tell you.” The man shaking her hand shook his balding head at the same time. “I thought sure he was innocent.”

  Julia tucked a strand of deep brown hair with auburn highlights back behind her ear. “Pretty weak strain of luck, I’d say. Just good work on my assistant’s part here. Adam, have you met Glen Heinsmith?” She kept a smile on her face in spite of the weariness that nearly knocked her knees out from under her. If only she could fit in a massage this afternoon to work the kinks out of her neck and shoulders. Although she was known in court as the picture of calm, that image frequently came with a price.

  Dreams of her granddaughter, Cyndy, had awakened her three times last night from sleep that was already too short because she’d been fighting to bring this case to a satisfactory conclusion.

  “May I take you to lunch?” Glen asked, a hopeful note in his voice.

  She started to say no, then thought better of it. “I’d like that. Thank you. Just give me a second.” She turned to her assistant and handed him her briefcase. “Please take this back to the office and ask Joanne to cancel my appointments for the afternoon. There’s not much on the calendar anyway.” At his nod she said, “Thanks.” After handing over her briefcase, she turned to Glen and slung her black leather purse over her shoulder. “It’s been too long since we’ve done this.”

  “You’re telling me.” He tucked her arm through his and led her toward the exit.

  “We’d better not appear too friendly, or our media friends might get the wrong idea.” She took back possession of her arm and smiled. For the first time ever, she had a feeling that if she made any move to deepen their relationship, Glen would take her up on it. Her next thought was, What is wrong with that? She filed the thought away to contemplate another time. Right now, she needed to gird up to face the wolves.

  They rode the elevator to the street level in silence.

  As soon as the elevator doors opened, Glen bent his six-foot-three, former-baseball-pitcher frame to whisper so the two other occupants of the elevator wouldn’t be privy to his suggestion. “We could duck out the back, you know.”

  At five-three in sensible heels, Julia always wondered if some of their conversations didn’t give him a crick in the neck. “Thanks, but no. I’d just as soon get this over with. That poor woman deserves this moment of triumph.” Her client had suffered a stroke not two weeks before, a possible by-product of the head injury that her husband swore he didn’t inflict. This case had been fought long and hard, because no one wanted to believe that a man with the public persona of Jerry Drysome would ever beat his wife. Reverends just didn’t do that sort of thing.

  Julia blinked at the bright sunlight that greeted her outside the building. At least five reporters were there, their cameras flashing one on top of another. Julia stepped forward and said, “I’m only going to say this once, so be ready.” Her smile took the sting out of her words. As one of the leading family lawyers in the Kansas City area, she tried to be fair with the media, in the hopes that they would be fair with her, which they usually were. “We fought a hard battle, but like so many, it turned on the smallest piece of evidence. I’m grateful to the newest and youngest staffer in my firm, Adam Jefferson, for his impeccable research. This case garnered far more publicity than it was worth, but that’s what happens when someone is already in the public eye. I can only hope that a lesson has been learned and that next rime you guys let the lawyers try the case instead of you trying it in your newspapers.”

  Her comment caused a ripple of laughter, which she knew the press would turn around to their own advantage. But that’s the way things worked with the media. She shook her head at the barrage of
erupting questions and followed Glen, who’d also been asked questions but had ignored them, out to the parking lot.

  “Woman, you’ve got more nerve than sense at times.” His chuckle said he approved. “You want to ride with me or follow?”

  “I’ll take my car, thanks. Where are we going?”

  He named a restaurant known not only for its good food but also for its privacy, and slid into his silver Lexus.

  Julia walked two more parking spaces over and unlocked her plain blue Ford sedan. A blast of heat hit her when she opened the door, reminding her that she’d forgotten to crack the windows. Again. She’d arrived at the courthouse early that morning to meet with another client before the court was called into session.

  Once they were seated in the coolness of a leather booth in the back of the main dining room, Julia set her purse down next to her and reached up to disengage an earring. “Ooh, I’ve needed to do that for hours.” She massaged her ear, thought to reinsert the post, and instead shook her head, removing the other earring too, and tucked them both into her bag.

  Glen had loosened his tie and folded his suit coat and laid it on the seat. “Now that we’re comfortable … ”

  “Amen to that.” She thought of removing her suit jacket too, but the air conditioning that felt good blowing down on her now would be chilly soon. “So how’ve you been, my friend?”

  “Getting by.” He nodded.

  “It’s been how long now, more than a year, right?”

  His lips twitched. “Eighteen months, actually.” He lined his utensils up so that all the ends made a straight line before looking across the table at her. “But I’ve learned that I’m ready to live again, and while Beverly will always be part of my life, I need to make a new life.” A smile started, gently curving his lips and then wandering up to his eyes, eyes that had borne the weight of grief and now sparked with remembered joy. “She’s in that perfect place.”

  Julia felt herself start to tear up and took a deep breath. “Yes, she is.”

  “I guess I forgot to tell you this—I’ve had a lot on my mind—but before she died she made me promise her something.”

  “What?” Julia couldn’t help but smile. His fingers had rearranged the utensils again, she was sure without his realizing it.

  “She made me promise that I would take you out to lunch first and then see.”

  “See what?”

  “What happens.”

  Feeling a chuckle bubbling up, Julia leaned back against the leather seat and stared at him. “Do you mean to say … ?” How odd that not fifteen minutes ago she’d wondered about deepening their relationship. And now … this.

  “I’m not saying any more right now, but you know we’ve been friends for a long time. Good friends.”

  “Yes, we have,” she agreed. Julia and Beverly had been friends for over twenty-five years, having met at church back when Julia had been struggling at being a single mother, going to law school, and trying to cope with a daughter like Donna, who’d been determined to follow in her mother’s footsteps. The rebellious footsteps, not the “go to school and make something of yourself” footsteps.

  Glen and Beverly had been her family when Donna got pregnant in her sophomore year. Like Julia, Donna had insisted on keeping her daughter instead of giving her up for adoption. Glen and Beverly had consoled her when Donna quit high school and decided to move to Minneapolis with a man she’d just met. While it didn’t seem possible that matters could get any worse at that point, they did. Donna took baby Cyndy with her.

  Darling little Cyndy, the light of her grandmother’s life and a hope for a brighter future. Cyndy was six when Donna put her on a plane and sent her back to Julia to deal with. Though she was only in first grade, Cyndy showed signs of having some serious problems. Julia did everything she knew how to do: she hired therapists, moved Cyndy into a private school, provided her with tutors, and gave her unconditional love. Nine years later, the day of Cyndy’s fifteenth birthday, the girl borrowed Julia’s ATM card, took five hundred dollars from her checking account, and left the ATM card wrapped in a note saying that the house rules were too strict and that she was going home to her mother.

  “Have you heard from Cyndy?” Glen’s voice penetrated the bubble that had transported Julia into the past. “Where is she now?”

  Julia’s demeanor changed instantly; her smile turned into a frown. “Back in Minneapolis with Donna. I haven’t talked to her in a couple of weeks.” She mentally counted back. Maybe it had been longer than that. With her heavy caseload lately, the days had slipped away. “Perhaps that’s why she’s been on my mind and in my dreams lately.” Or else she’s in trouble. Julia changed the subject. “How are your kids?” She laughed. “Well, I know they’re not kids anymore, but … ”

  “But when do we quit calling them that?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Both families are doing fine. I’ve become a well-behaved spectator grandpa.” One eyebrow arched. “At Joe’s insistence. He said I couldn’t attend the ball games if I didn’t lay off the umps.”

  “You’d think you would—”

  “Know better?” he interrupted.

  “Something like that.”

  “That’s the problem. I know the game too well. Never could abide lousy calls.” He took a bite of his salad. “Beverly always said I either had to coach or shut up.”

  “And you shut up?”

  “Well … ” He paused, made a bit of a face, and raised both eyebrows. “Sort of.”

  Julia chuckled. “Those were the days, right?” How she wished she’d been able to go to her daughter’s games or dance recitals or plays. But Donna would have none of that.

  The waiter returned with their entrees, and Julia smiled over the fact that she’d ordered fish. A creature of habit, that was for sure. She squeezed lemon juice over the grilled filet and looked up to see Glen watching her.

  “What? Did I squirt you?”

  He shook his head and dug into his pasta, a half smile playing at the side of his mouth.

  They finished their meal with desultory conversation.

  “Can I interest you folks in one of our fine house-specialty desserts?” the waiter asked as he cleared their plates.

  Glen looked to Julia, but when she shook her head, he did too. “No thanks. Just our bill, please.”

  “So what are you doing the rest of the afternoon, if you’re not going back to the office?”

  “I’m getting a massage and buying groceries, and then I’m going to take a long very bubbly bath and be in bed by nine.”

  “I have tickets to a jazz concert for Sunday afternoon. Would you like to go?”

  Julia paused, studied his face, and nodded. “Yes, I’d like that.”

  Back in her car a few minutes later, she thought back to their conversation, then burst out laughing. So Beverly had actually told him to come find her when he was ready to go on with his life. Teeth nibbling on her lower lip, she turned up the air conditioning and wheeled out of the parking lot to get her massage, which she had been looking forward to all day. Life just might be taking an interesting turn.

  Once home and in a sublimely relaxed state of mind, she obeyed an inner prompting and dialed the last number she had for her daughter. Surprised when Donna answered the phone, she sat back, hoping for a reasonable chat. That was always her hope.

  “What do you want?”

  “Actually, I was hoping we could talk. It’s been a long time.”

  “I got nothin’ to say to you.”

  Julia tried to trap a sigh but failed. She wished just once Donna would try to have a civil conversation with her. Even if it was just a few short sentences, she would be happy. Instead, Donna acted as if she were the enemy. What had she done to warrant her daughter’s hate? Julia remembered doing everything she could to make sure Donna never felt neglected while she was young. She remembered being too tired to think after a long day of classes but still taking time to play with her little girl, read to her, help her with
her homework. When Donna turned twelve, she started to change, and by the time her daughter was in high school, Julia not only didn’t recognize Donna, but she also didn’t know her. You haven’t done anything. It’s the drugs. The drugs took Donna away from you.

  “Donna, honey, please. I don’t want to interfere in your life. I just want to know how you are.” She heard someone whispering in the background and knew Donna wasn’t alone.

  “Like I said, I ain’t got nothin’ to say to you, so—”

  “Would you tell Cyndy I called? Please?”

  “She don’t live here no more.”

  Julia sat up straight. “What? Since when?”

  “Oh, month or two ago.” Donna’s voice faded in and out, as if she were just coming down from a high or just going up.

  “Where did she go?” Oh, Cyndy, honey, why didn’t you call me? Why?

  The background whispers grew louder, urging Donna to hang up the phone, with foul language that made Julia cringe. “California,” Donna said at length. “She said she wants to get into the movies. I told her it would never happen.” The phone clicked.

  Julia waited until the dial tone buzzed in her ear. Cyndy, on her own in Los Angeles. No wonder I’ve been having bad dreams.

  “You could file a missing persons report, but since she left: on her own … ”

  Julia turned up the volume on the office speakerphone. “She’s under eighteen—that makes her a runaway. Listen, Fred, there must be something more we can do.”

  She felt like throwing the phone against the wall. Fred Smith, a PI she’d hired from a firm she knew in Los Angeles, had come up with nothing. Like too many other Hollywood hopefuls, Cyndy had fallen into the maw of the city and had yet to be burped out again. She hadn’t found employment anywhere, signed up with any talent agents, gotten any traffic tickets, or been charged with any violations. So far, she had no paper trail of any kind.

  “You’re not her guardian, Julia, and unless her mother signs papers, there’s nothing the police can do.” He paused a moment, then continued. “I showed her picture around, so someone might still get back to me. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”