A Justified Murder (Medlar Mystery #2)(89)

In the next second she and Kate were running to her suite. Sara was older but she was small and lithe. She got there first and flung the door open so hard it almost hit Kate in the head.

Jack and Lisa were sitting across from each other. Sara sat beside him, and Kate by Lisa.

For a moment they stared in silence at one another. Now that they knew who she was, they saw that she looked like the photos they’d seen of Sylvia Alden. Tall, slim, naturally blond hair. And she had a kind of gracefulness about her that was like what they’d heard about Sylvia. At the same time, there was a light in her eyes that said she’d fit in well with a bunch of guys at the Brigade. She was a combination of beer and champagne.

“I don’t know how much Carl has told you,” Lisa said.

“We haven’t met him.” Kate found the photo on her phone. “Is this him?”

“Yes, that’s Carl. He—” She stopped herself from finishing the sentence. “My mother wrote some good books.”

“I’ve read them,” Sara said. “They’re autobiographical, aren’t they?”

“One hundred percent. Mother said she had no imagination at all, but she had been blessed with such a colorful life that she didn’t need one. It sounds good but it caused a lot of problems.”

“With her father and brother,” Sara said.

“Exactly. They are...” Lisa didn’t seem to know how to describe them.

“Couldn’t be worse than my family,” Kate said. “Religious zealots. Think they know everything.”

“My grandfather was the same and my uncle still is. But their religion is money. My mother’s problem was that she could organize the earth. She was brilliant at it and they needed her.”

“Like my mother needed me to manage my little brother,” Sara said, then looked at Kate. “Sorry.”

“I think Tayla would say that you should have worked harder.”

With a snort of laughter, Sara turned back to Lisa. “Sylvia escaped them through Tom.”

“Oh yes.” Lisa was smiling. “My father was a very handsome man and a darling. He used to say that if he’d been left on his own he would have been cleaning sewer lines when he was sixty. But Mother swooped him up and made him into a king.”

Lisa looked out the window for a moment. “They were a very happy couple. On the day they left me at college, they went out to dinner and my dad said, ‘It’s your turn.’ He said that she’d given up her whole life to her father, her brother, her husband, and her daughter. So now it was her turn to do whatever she wanted to—and he’d follow her.”

“I like him,” Kate said.

“She wanted to get away from her birth family,” Sara said. “I understand that.”

“Mother wanted to live somewhere warm and she wanted to write about her life. In secret.”

“If they saw the way she portrayed them, they might sue her,” Sara said. “Her portrayals of their greed aren’t flattering.”

“And it was all true. I was shocked when my parents told me they were selling the business and moving to Florida. I didn’t know about the books until long after they left.”

“I believe that in college you had other things on your mind,” Sara said.

Lisa looked at her hands. “I didn’t behave well in school. I had been raised with pink cashmere and white pearls. I was fascinated by the...I guess you’d say, the dark side of life. I experimented. I...” She pursed her lips. “It was bad. I was bad.”

She paused. “I came out of it enough that by the time Dad died, I was in a better place. I was engaged to a man my grandfather and uncle thought was perfect. I was sad about my father but...” She shrugged.

“You had a life to live,” Sara said.

“I did. It wasn’t until after I married that I found out what true hell was. My husband was like my uncle. I could take that but what I couldn’t abide was that they wanted me to be my mother.”

“A manager.”

“And an organizer. They wanted me to keep track of every business deal they made, but I inherited my father’s ability with numbers, which is none at all.”

“Bet they told you that you were a failure.” Kate’s voice told of her experience in that area.

“Every minute of every day. They never let up on me. I don’t know if this makes sense but I blamed my mother.”

“It’s hard when you’re constantly compared to another human being and always found wanting.” Sara didn’t look at Kate, but they knew she meant how she had been compared to Kate’s father.

“I’m ashamed to say that for years I had little to do with Mother. I told myself that she’d left me, that she wanted nothing to do with me. I pictured her as a Merry Widow, with no cares in the world. Dancing all night with no thoughts of me or Dad.”

“But your mother had Janet,” Sara said.

“You have done your research.”

“We’re finding things out,” Sara said.

“Tell us about her,” Jack said. “About Janet.”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“When you met her,” Sara said. “Stories must begin at the beginning.”

“That would be when I realized that I needed my mother. In spite of all my nasty thoughts about her, there was no doubt in my mind that she’d take me in.”