Back then, she had laughed all the time.
Back then. Before he’d walked out on her.
The last time he’d seen Madelaine, she sat hunched on the end of the tattered sofa, looking so out of place in his family trailer, her cashmere sweater drooping sadly across one shoulder, her cheeks stained with tears.
He allowed himself to remember it all again, and with remembrance came the burning shame. The lies he’d told her, the words that fell like poison from his lips, the feel of the blood money in his hand, the lingering memory of her perfume—baby powder and Ivory soap.
And now the ultimate revenge was hers.
His life depended on the woman he’d betrayed.
Chapter Five
Madelaine sat on the edge of Lina’s bed. Here and there she could see patches of the pale blue Laura Ashley striped wallpaper she’d put up so many years ago, but most of the walls were covered with posters of rock groups Madelaine had never heard of. Thousands of tiny tack holes in the expensive paper, each one an imprint of Lina’s emerging personality.
Madelaine lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, thinking of her daughter. For a second all she could bring forth in her mind were long-gone images—puffy baby cheeks and laughing blue eyes, a pair of fat legs waddling across the dining room floor. A toothless first-grade grin.
Did all mothers feel this way? Did all mothers keep a portrait of their babies inside their hearts, expecting grown girls to still smell like talcum powder and baby shampoo?
Ah, she’d made so many mistakes. She should have told Lina the truth about her father years and years ago. Even last year, when she’d seen Lina sliding downward, she should have guessed at the cause and come clean. But she’d been so damn afraid of Lina not loving her anymore. So afraid of her baby leaving home …
It had been wonderful when it was just the two of them, the baby and the mother in the quiet house, making cookies and reading bedtime stories.
Long-forgotten memories crept into her mind of the days when she’d been a teenager going to college and raising a baby alone. Images of that horrible apartment of theirs on University Avenue, with the windows that didn’t open and the radiator that never worked … the rickety steps to the purple front door … the car that stalled on the corner of Fifteenth and University every morning … the nights when they both ate Raisin Bran for dinner and she hoped the milk was still fresh. Yet, even in the worst of times—during the eighteen-hour workdays and nighttime study sessions—Madelaine had always had Lina right there with her. A curious-minded toddler slung on an exhausted resident’s hip. Back then, it was just the two of them against everyone….
But the world had intruded, had come forth with its sticky fingers and demanded Lina’s presence. That was the beginning of the end—when Lina had begun to grow up and ask questions and see Madelaine’s faults. Maybe if Madelaine had attended public schools, had grown up with girlfriends around her, she would have known how to handle the daily traumas. But her father would never have allowed such a thing. Would never have allowed Madelaine to mix with what he called the riffraff. Every day of her childhood had been spent alone, dreaming about friends who would never visit and excursions that would never take place. She didn’t know anything about proms or mixers, and less about rebellion.
She didn’t know anything about teenagers who were scared and belligerent and confused.
All Madelaine knew about was hiding, pretending, smiling when the ache was so strong and deep that sometimes you couldn’t breathe. And she didn’t want her baby to learn that skill.
Sighing, she got to her feet and stood there, uncertain. What was she going to do when Lina finally came home?
If she came home.
Madelaine shivered. She wouldn’t think that way, wouldn’t keep listening for the phone or the doorbell, waiting for the worst to happen. Wouldn’t keep worrying that Lina would do what Madelaine had done so many years ago.
She moved toward the tape player that sat on Lina’s desk and thumbed idly through the tapes and compact disks stacked beside it. At the bottom of the pile was the old Helen Reddy tape they used to listen to.
She picked it up, dusted off the clear plastic cover, and snapped it open. Then she put it on the machine and hit Play.
The music slid through the room on a tide of bittersweet memories.
“No fair, Mom,” said a shaky voice.
Madelaine spun toward the door. Lina looked incredibly young and vulnerable, a child in grown-up clothes, her makeup smeared down her pale cheeks. She was so petite, her bones as fine as a baby bird’s, her face small and heart-shaped. The jet black of her unruly hair contrasted sharply with the pale, pale cream of her skin. Skin that offset her electric, cornflower-blue eyes.
Madelaine gave her a tentative smile. “Hi, ba … Lina. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Lina shoved a hand through her spiky black hair. “Yeah, right. Wanted to say happy birthday again, huh?”
Madelaine moved slowly toward her daughter, but halfway there, she stopped and instead sat on the bed, gazing up at her sixteen-year-old daughter.
“I have some explaining to do,” she said at last.
“Yeah.” Lina yanked a chair from beside her desk and sat down. Hunching forward, she rested her elbows on her knees and drilled her mother with an angry look. Four silver earrings sparkled in a ladderlike curl up her left ear. “So explain. Tell me about my dad.”
Dad. The word was the nick of a razor. Madelaine flinched. He wasn’t a dad; a dad stuck around, protected his family and helped when the baby had a fever or a nightmare. A dad didn’t walk out on everyone.