She’d vowed time and again that she hadn’t meant for anyone to get hurt when she’d alerted a drug addict with a debt to settle about Bree’s whereabouts eight years ago. She’d wanted to “persuade” Bree to move away from Pelion, yes, but she had never intended for someone to get shot. “I was protecting you, Travis!” she’d said, tears filling her big blue eyes. “I panicked when I thought everything would be taken from you. Again.”
Again.
Likely, she was more concerned about everything being taken from her, but I doubted I’d ever truly know. Nothing had ever been proven, and it was worthless to continue asking her. Whatever she’d say to me was what she’d convinced herself of. Tori Hale had always been a good liar, because she believed her falsehoods.
“Where’s this leak?”
“In the kitchen, under the sink,” she said, hurrying behind me as I walked to her gleaming kitchen, setting my toolbox on the table.
I knelt on the floor and opened the cabinet, peering inside. There was a small spot on the bottom where it looked like a few drips of water had dried, leaving a water spot, but other than that, nothing. I peered over my shoulder at my mother.
“Do you see the spot?” she asked.
“That’s what you were worried about? A spot? It looks old. And dry. And it might have come from anything. A bottle of cleaner, who knows.” Irritation skated down my spine. It’d taken an hour to drive here, and now I had to drive an hour home. Still, just to make sure, I stood, turning on the faucet and letting it run, and then kneeling back down to examine the pipes.
They remained dry, nary a drip in sight.
I stood slowly, turning off the faucet. “I don’t think you’ll drown in your bed tonight.”
She laughed faintly. “What a relief.”
I leaned on the sink. “How are you?” She looked as put together as she always had, but there were more lines on her face, and her mouth looked pinched. Even Tori Hale couldn’t manipulate gravity forever. She’d called me here not for a leak in her plumbing, but because she was lonely. My heart softened just a bit. She suddenly seemed very human to me when, for much of my adolescence and even beyond, she’d seemed larger than life and almost completely untouchable.
She was always working, always strategizing. She’d exhausted me since I was a kid, and especially then because I had no way of creating distance from her. I wondered if she’d exhausted herself. Maybe, in some deep corner of her mind, loneliness and boredom felt like a soothing break.
I didn’t hold out much hope of that.
“I’m okay I guess,” she said, followed by a long-suffering sigh. “I joined a pinochle club. It meets every Monday.”
My eyebrows rose. “That’s good.” She’d always enjoyed socializing.
She moved her finger idly along the edge of the counter. “And I’m seeing someone.” She waved her hand around as though dismissing the importance of her own comment. “It’s casual. He’s older. Just someone to pass the time with.”
“That’s good, Mom,” I said. “Finding people to pass the time with is good.” I’d bet anything he was quite a bit older. And rich.
Possibly hooked up to oxygen, or in hospice care.
Nasty thought, Hale.
Why did I always let my mother bring out the worst in me?
But as long as he was a mentally functional, consenting adult, I’d consider it a positive. Maybe if she got herself more of a life, she’d stop calling me for every little thing that barely needed fixed or replaced in her apartment.
“Yes, yes. Listen, Travis.” She walked from the open kitchen to a writing desk in the attached living room area. There was a stack of photo albums and file folders sitting to the side. She picked up the folder on top. “I found these albums and papers in the bottom of a box that I thought was mostly junk. I’ve been reading through the bylaws from Pelion’s founding in 1724. I think there are a couple ways you might challenge Archer’s right to the—”
“Okay, then,” I said dismissively, picking up my toolbox and walking around her toward the front door.
“Wait!”
I stopped, turning toward her. “Give it a rest, Victoria. God, please, for once in your life, just give it a rest.”
She flinched slightly at my use of her given name. “I’m only looking out for you,” she said weakly. “What happened wasn’t fair and—”
“It was fair, Mom. And more than that, Archer’s good at running the town. Pelion is thriving. The citizens are happy. I wouldn’t take it away from him—or from them—even if there was a foolproof way to do it.”
She waved the folder around, looking confused and flustered. “You can’t be happy living on a public servant’s salary alone, Travis, deprived of the things we used to have, privileges that I believe are rightfully yours.”