Robards, Karen (10 page)

“I didn’t hear you come in.”

“It’s all the noise.” It was a dry reference to the now slightly muffled sounds of the ongoing game.

11 Is Jessica okay out there?” Pat sounded slightly anxious. As always, she looked worried. “A couple of her friends came by, but I told them she was grounded so they left. Then she went out on the porch to do her homework on the swing. I thought that would be all right, since it’s such a beautiful daybut the next thing I knew that man was here, and they were playing basketball. I didn’t know whether to call her inside or not. I stayed out on the porch for a while and watched them, but she seemed okay with him. If he’d been a kid I would have called her in or sent him away, but …”

“That’s fine, Pat. He’s a … friend.” Busy writing out Pat’s check, Grace hesitated only slightly over the he. What could-she say, that he was a cop who had fortunately chosen not to bust Jessica for drug possession? Not possibly. Pat also worked for several other local families, and that story would flash around Bexley with the speed of a grass fire.

“You’ve got some messages,” Pat said, accepting the check that Grace passed over. She pulled a piece of paper from beneath the magnet that held it to the refrigerator and looked down at it. “Let’s see, there were

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

93

three. Mrs. Gillespie called to tell you that basketball tryouts have been moved to next Saturday at nine. Ruth Ann called to see if you want to start walking in the evenings again. And your ex-husband called. He didn’t say what he wanted, but he talked to Jessica. All the numbers are written down here. And there were a couple of hang-ups.”

“Thanks, Pat.” Grace took the paper, glanced down at it, and set it on the counter. So Craig had called to talk to Jessica, had he? She wondered what about. Jessica wasn’t scheduled to visit him again until Thanksgiving break. “Did you think of anyone for me?”

Not wanting to leave Jessica home alone after school in future, Grace had asked Pat if she knew of anyone who might be available to work from three until six or six-thirty on weekdays.

Pat shook her head. “But I’ll keep thinking.” “Thanks.” Grace smiled. “And thanks for coming. I’m just going to run upstairs and change clothes.”

“Have a good night.” Pat waved and started for the back door as Grace headed for the stairs. Seeing which way the woman was going, Grace called over her shoulder: “I’d go out the front if I were you. Otherwise you’re liable to get beaned by a stray basketball.”

“Good advice.” Pat changed directions with a chuckle. Grace headed up the stairs. Her room was directly opposite Jessica Is, overlooking the spacious backyard. It was decorated in restful shades of green, with a rose-and-green bedspread covering the queensize bed and celery-striped curtains with sheers beneath shading the windows. A white-tiled bathroom and a walk-in closet completed the bedroom suite. The first

94

KAREN ROBARDS

thing Grace had done upon buying the house six years before was reconfigure the upstairs, reducing four bedrooms to three, one of which now served as Grace’s study, and providing herself and Jessica with abundant closet space and a private bathroom each.

That was when she had still been making pots of money as a hotshot young attorney with Madison, Graham and Loew, the city’s premier law firm. She’d had the world by the tail then, or thought she’d had, she reflected with a wry smile as she took off her work clothes and hung them in her closet. Jessica had been an adorable nine-year-old who still thought her mommy was perfect. She herself had been well over the trauma of her divorce, and Jessica seemed to be handling it just fine. She’d been so proud of herself, then, for making it through law school and getting hired by such a great law firm and doing so well in her chosen profession and being able to provide such a good life for Jessica.

At the time, she’d been sure that, if she was only prepared to work hard enough, she could have it all. Now she knew better. Now she knew that life was a

series of trade-offs. At the law firm, she had been expected to work all the hours God sent. After school, Jessica had gone to day care until Grace could pick her up. There had been babysitters at home at night. There had been plays Grace had missed, field trips she hadn’t gone on, homework supervised by someone other than herself She loved her daughter, always, and she knew Jess knew it, but she hadn’t been there lots of times when Jessica had needed her. Little by little, they’d become, not distant, exactly, but separate people. Jes-THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

95

sica stopped confiding everything in her inother, stopped expecting her to be there, stopped even wanting her to be. And that was the worst thing of all. By the time Grace realized the enormity of what was happening to them, Jessica was twelve. The catalyst for change had been the afternoon thatJess and a group of friends were caught, during school hours, shoplifting at Eastland Mall.

Grace hadn’t known Jessica wasn’t at school that day. She hadn’t known Jessica had started hanging out at the mall every chance she got. She hadn’t even known the names of the friends Jessica was with when she was caught.

And she realized that she should have known. All those things.

After that wake-up call, she started looking around for a ‘ob where the hours were sane. A job where she J

could come home every night at the same time, and fix supper, and supervise homework, and in general be there for her daughter. A job that was more family friendly than the one she had.

Then Thomas Pierce died unexpectedly, and his position as a juvenile and Domestic Court judge was left vacant. With the help of her boss and mentor at the law firm, George Loew, she had been appointed to fill the remaining five years of Pierce’s term. That had been three years ago. The position had seemed ideal at the time, from Grace’s perspective. She wouldn’t even need to run for reelection when her term was up, she’d thought, because Jessica would be seventeen then. Grace could, if she chose, return to Madison, Graham

96

KAREN ROBARDS

and Loew, and her lucrative career, her duty to her daughter largely done.

Only nothing had worked out as she had imagined it would.

Pulling on a pair of slim khaki trousers, Grace sighed. When did life ever work out the way it was supposed to? She yanked a white T-shirt over her head, tucked it in, and slipped on a navy cotton cardigan sweater, which she left unbuttoned. Thrusting her bare feet into a pair of loafers, she headed back downstairs.

Thanks to her reduced work schedule, she and Jessica had regained some of that wonderful closeness they’d shared when Jess had been little. Then everything had happened at once: Jessica had become a teenager, she had been diagnosed with diabetes, and her father and his new wife had had twins down in New Mexico. Any of those events by itself would have been enough to send a sensitive child careering out of control. All three together were practically guaranteed to. Grace had tried reasoning with Jessica, talking to her, pleading with her, bribing her. Now, in the face of this latest catastrophe, she was applying tough love. If that didn’t work, she didn’t know what she would do.

Sometimes it seemed to Grace that she was living with a hormone-driven, teenage version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One rulinute Jessica was her familiar sweet self, and the next she was a monster. Over the last few weeks, since Jessica had started high school, Grace had felt as if they were more adversaries than anything else. Basically, Jess told her nothing and blamed her for everything.

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

97

Grace sighed again. Motherhood was the hardestjob in the world.

Jess and Tony Marino were in the kitchen. They glanced up in unison as she entered. He at least had the grace to look faintly guilty for being there.

“Your daughter was kind enough to offer me a glass of water.” Standing by the sink, one hip restig against the counter, he held up the glass he’d been drinking from as proof He was sweaty, his hair curling slightly, his skin shiny with a faint moist sheen.

“I’m going up to take a shower,” Jessica announced, swallowing the last drops in her own glass and setting it down on the counter. She looked at her mother. “Have you see Mr. Bear, by the way? He’s not on my nightstand.”

“I took him to the cleaners. There was something yucky on his fur,” Grace lied. She didn’t want to admit the truth-that Mr. Bear was hidden away in her closet because she felt he had somehow become tainted with evil. For one thing, it sounded ridiculous. Besides, there was no point in frightening Jessica.

“Oh.” Jessica accepted that without difficulty and smiled saucily at Marino.

“You’re pretty good, for an old man.”

“So are you,” he said, “for a little girl. Maybe next time you’ll beat me.”

“Maybe nothing. I will.”

Grace thought with pride, there’s my confident girl. Then Jessica’s gaze switched to her mother again. “We need to eat soon. I have to be over at Maddie’s at seven.”

“Darling, you’re grounded, remember?”

98

KAREN ROBARDS

Jessica was already heading for the door. She stopped, turning, her eyes widening on her mother’s face.

“But I have to go! Talent show tryouts are Friday after school, and we have to practice our act! We’re going to do a dance routine!”

” Traid not, sweetie pie.”

“I have to go!” Jessica’s voice grew shrill. Her eyes were as big as quarters in her whitening face. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “I promised Madlie and Becca and Allison and Jenna I’d be there. We’re going to be the Spice Girls! If I’m not there, it’ll rui

n in it! We needfive!”

“I’m sorry about that, but you can’t go.”

“I have to. I promised them. They’ll get somebody Rise if I don’t show! Mom, please!”

“No.” “Mom! It was a wail.

“We’ll talk about this later, Jessica,” Grace said in a ow, even voice, acutely conscious of Marino leaning igainst the counter watching every gesture and listenng to every word.

“No! There’s nothing to talk about! I’m going over :o Maddie’s at seven! I don’t care if I’m grounded!

3eing grounded is stupid! What good does it do? Do rou think it will keep me from doing anything I feel ike doing? I’ll drink beer if I want, and I’ll smoke pot f I want, and I’ll go out with my friends in the middle )f the night if I want! And you can’t stop me!”

“Jessica Lee Hart, that’s enough!” “You can’t! You can’t!”

“Watch me,” Grace said through her teeth, patience

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

99

lost, her eyes snapping as they met Jessica’s turbulent gaze. “For starters, young lady, you can go to your room. Right now.”

“I hate you!” With a sob, Jessica whirled and fled. Eyes closing, Grace listened to her feet pounding up the stairs and then running along the hall. Seconds later the slam of a door reverberated in the air.

it was a moment before Grace had recovered enough to turn and look at Marino. He was studiously watching something through the window over the stove, his face in profile to her, his expression as innocent as if he hadn’t witnessed anything so agonizingly

1

personal as a quarrel between mother and daughter. He must have felt her gaze, because he turned to meet it. “Grounded her, did you?” he asked. “Think that’s going to work?”

“That’s my problem, and my business,” she said bitingly, walking toward the front hall. In the few minutes she was out of his sight, she retrieved his jacket from the closet.

“Here,” she said, returning to the kitchen and thrusting it at him. She knew she was being ungracious, knew this latest upset was not his fault, knew that nothing that had happened was his fault, but still she was fiirious at him. Because of the way he looked at her-as if he judged her mothering skills and found them wanting. Again.

Because maybe the truth was that they were wanting.

“Thanks,” he said, accepting his jacket.

“So why did you really come?” she asked, striving for a measure of calm. Her gaze challenged him.

100

KAREN ROBARDS

“I told you. For this.” His glance indicated his jacket, which was now draped over his left forearm, “Bullshit. “

He smiled a little, as if amused by her bluntness, and shrugged. “AN right. To check on your daughter, to see if she was doing okay. And to see if you’d changed your mind. About her helping us.”

“The truth comes out.” Grace had known it. “No, Detective Marino, I have not. I will not. It’s too dangerous. I’d appreciate it if you would just leave her alone, please.”

“You’re not going to be able to keep her away from her friends forever, you know.”

“Like I said before, that’s my problem.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.” Reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, he came up with his wallet, which he opened. Extracting a business card from it, he handed it to her.

“What’s this for?” she asked, accepting it and looking at it with suspicion.

“If you change your mind, my pager number’s on this. All you-or she have to do is call.”

“I won’t change my mind.”

For a moment their gazes locked.

“That’s up to you,” he said, heading for the front hall. just before he walked out of the kitchen, he looked over his shoulder at her.

“Good luck with the grounding. For your daughter’s sake, I hope it works.”

His tone told her he doubted it would. Grace was left to grit her teeth and glare after him as he disap—

THF MIDNIGHT’ HOUR

I () 1

peared iiito cht-h iont hall. A moment later, the sound of the door opening and closing told her he had left.

Grace stood where she was for a moment, taking a deep breath, trying to get her emotions under control. For a moment she thought about heading upstairs to confront Jessica. But then sanity reasserted The necessary discussion was far better postponed until she was calmer. Until they were both calmer.

She went to lock the front door. Then she returned to the kitchen, stuck Marino’s card in her purse, and headed toward the coffeemaker.

What she needed before she did anything else was a strong cup of coffee. Her body cried out for a jolt of caffeine.