Dark Room (Pete 'Monty' Montgomery 2)

“I’m sorry, Morgan—truly. If I think of anything, anything at all, you know I’ll call you.”

“I know.” Morgan nodded, wishing that restless feeling in her gut would subside.

It didn’t.

So she dealt with it by switching gears, moving from the professional to the personal. “Barbara, I have tons of memories of my mother. But they’re all childhood memories. I never got the opportunity to know her as a woman—and she was obviously a remarkable one. Elyse talks about her sometimes, but not easily. They were like sisters, and the pain of losing her still obscures the joy of remembering her. So, please share some anecdotes with me. They don’t have to be life-altering, just moments that would make her come alive, make my memories of her fuller, more multidimensional.”

“With pleasure.” Another nostalgic smile. “Lara loved Milky Way bars. So did I. We used to call them our greatest weakness. One night, after a particularly stressful week, Lara showed up here with four giant-size bags. She challenged me to a Milky Way eating contest. We ate ourselves sick. I would have happily called it a draw. But Lara insisted on counting the wrappers to see who’d won. It turned out I had, by two. She had those two wrappers framed for my birthday that year.” Barbara leaned across her desk, picked up a five-by-seven frame, and handed it to Morgan. “As you can see, I still cherish it.”

Morgan looked at the delicate, filigreed gold frame, inside of which were two neatly trimmed and flattened wrappers, placed one above the other on a parchment background. A gold crown had been drawn in the upper left-hand corner of the parchment, beside which was penned: To the Queen of the Milky Way in her mother’s familiar script.

Tears burned behind Morgan’s eyes. “My dad and I were big Snickers fans. But I remember how much my mom loved Milky Ways. No matter how stuffed with food our freezer was, we always had a bag of Milky Ways crammed inside.”

“Eating them frozen was the best. It was definitely Lara’s favorite. But not for binges. We found that out the hard way. We tried it. Three candy bars later, Lara could barely move her jaw and I had chipped a tooth. So we gave in, settled for the soft, squishy version. It was a small price to pay.”

The two women’s gazes met and they laughed

—a genuine, heartfelt laugh. Morgan was amazed how good it felt.

“Most of the time we got together, we forgot to eat altogether,” Barbara admitted. “We were so immersed in our work. Without Lenny’s sandwiches, we probably would have starved.”

“I know that feeling.” Morgan gave a commiserating nod. “Sometimes I think half of Brooklyn and Manhattan would starve without Lenny. He never forgets a meal, or a customer. As for me, I’m really lucky. He sends Jonah all the way up to my office just so Jill and I won’t starve.”

“You’re family. Both of you.” Barbara studied Morgan’s face. “You do feel that way, don’t you?”

“Absolutely.” Morgan didn’t hesitate in her reply. “All the Shores are wonderful. Elyse and Arthur have treated me like their own since the day they took me in. They’re fine people.”

“But they’re not your parents,” Barbara concluded simply. She leaned forward, took Morgan’s hand. “No one ever will be. That privilege belonged to Lara and Jack.”

“I know that.” Morgan gave an unsteady nod, and handed Barbara the picture frame. “Tell me more about her.”

“Everyone thought of Lara as soft-spoken and softhearted. And she was—most of the time. But if someone pushed one of her buttons, look out.”

“What were some of her buttons?”

“You, your father, her friends—she’d defend you like a lioness. The same applied to her principles and the women she helped. Some more than others. She was the champion of the underdog. She threw herself into cases involving victims with the least strength, ability, or resources to defend themselves. Children who were abused along with their mothers. Young girls who were abandoned when they were barely more than children themselves and who fell pray to men who dominated them and stripped them of their self-worth. Situations like those infuriated her. And she instinctively took the victims under her wing. That was your mother.”

“I’m seeing that firsthand in the journal entries I’m reading,” Morgan murmured. “The situations were heartbreaking. Especially little four-year-old Hailey and her mother Olivia.”

“Those were their file names. We never used their real names, other than on their original registration forms.”

“You were protecting their confidentiality.”

Barbara nodded. “It doesn’t surprise me that Lara did the same in her journals. Like I said, she was fiercely protective of those she helped.”

“It still horrifies me to think about what Olivia’s violent, alcoholic live-in boyfriend did. Locking Hailey in a dark closet for hours, leaving that poor child in there to listen while he beat and tormented her mother. I can’t imagine how traumatized she must have been.”

“Deeply traumatized,” Barbara confirmed. “Lara wasn’t giving up until she got them out of that environment for good. She did it, too.”

“Since then—have things worked out?” Morgan asked.

“It was a long, hard road, but yes, they have. Before she died, Lara found Olivia and Hailey an affordable apartment and government funding to give them the jump start they needed. But Olivia did the real work. She had the courage and the determination to start over.”

“How wonderful.”

“Read more of Lara’s journal entries. Nothing will make you feel closer to her than those.”

“You’re right. I just started reading a new entry about a teenage girl, Janice, who ran away from home after being sexually assaulted by her stepfather.”