Home Again

“Well … you can eat the toast.”

Lina tossed her backpack on the couch and shrugged. “Whatever.” She started to head back into her bedroom.

Madelaine wanted to breathe a sigh of relief and let Lina go, but she refused to give in so easily. It was exactly that kind of cowardice that had broken their relationship—it would take a little bravery to bring it back.

Rules. She reacts well to discipline.

“I’d like you to set the table,” she called out to her daughter’s back.

Lina slowly turned around. “You want me to what?”

Madelaine wet her lips. “Set the table.”

Lina eyed her. Ramming her hands in her baggy pockets, she crossed the room. “Mom?”

Madelaine forced herself to stand still for the scrutiny. “Yes?”

“Did we move to Stepford?”

Madelaine burst out laughing. “Go on, set the table.”

Lina didn’t move, just stood there, staring. Finally Madelaine couldn’t help herself, she started to squirm. It was a mistake to try to pretend to be a family, to pretend that a little thing like Saturday brunch could fix what was wrong between her and Lina.

“Did you call my dad yesterday?”

Madelaine flinched. There it was, the question she’d wanted to avoid, thrown down on the table like a gauntlet. “Father,” she snapped. She cleared her throat and tried to sound more rational. “He’s your father. A dad is … different.”

“Yeah, whatever. Did you call him?”

Madelaine’s gaze fell. She stared down at the carrots, little bits of orange against the jade-green tile counter.

“Mom?”

Madelaine forced herself to meet her daughter’s suspicious eyes. She tried to smile, tried and failed. A tiny headache pricked behind her eyes. “What?”

“Did you call him?”

“Did I call him?”

Lina bit nervously on her lower lip. “Don’t do this to me, Mom.” Her voice broke, and for a second Madelaine saw her daughter’s stark, painful desperation.

It was more than who is he? It was who am I?

She set the knife down and walked around the edge of the counter. Looking steadily at Lina, she forced herself to reach out. Lina stared at her mother’s hand, then her gaze lifted and their eyes locked.

Madelaine felt a rush of emotion in that single heartbeat. It had been so long since they’d looked at each other, really looked at each other. They’d spent months looking past, around, beyond.

Her eyes pleaded with Lina for a chance. She tried to answer, but found that she couldn’t.

“You didn’t contact him,” Lina said dully. “Why?”

Madelaine maintained eye contact for as long as she could, until her guilt became a strangling hand around her throat. “I had such a busy day. This new patient is really—”

Lina lurched to her feet. She started laughing—or was it crying? Madelaine couldn’t tell until Lina turned around, and she saw that her daughter was laughing through her tears. “Priceless, Mom. You were too busy to call my dad.” She grabbed her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. Sniffing hard, she ran for the front door and wrenched it open. At the last second she stopped and turned back around, giving Madelaine a look that was drenched in hurt. “I don’t know why I believed you.”

Then she ran.

Francis leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Later, he had to go see Ilya Fiorelli, but he didn’t want to think about that yet. And so he sat quietly, listening to Phantom of the Opera,