A Deadly Influence (Abby Mullen Thrillers #1)(81)

Okay, waiting her out wasn’t a good strategy at all. Abby decided to change tack. She’d go first.

“It seems like you’re angry at me,” she said.

“I’m angry at you?” Samantha repeated Abby’s words dispassionately and took a bite of her sandwich.

“How can I help you forgive me?” An open-ended question that would make Samantha think from Abby’s point of view.

“I don’t know, Mom. What do you think you should do?”

Okay, this wasn’t working at all, and Abby lost her patience. “Can you please stop repeating my words to me?”

Sam put her sandwich carefully back on the plate, her cheeks flushing. “It depends. Can you stop treating me like one of your cases?”

“I’m not—”

“Yes, you are. You’re talking to me like I’m holding a hostage at gunpoint or threatening to jump off a building. I’m not a psycho on drugs, okay, Mom?”

“Well, what do you want me to say?”

“I don’t want you to say anything! You didn’t call the entire weekend. It’s Monday. You didn’t even ask how my math test went! I had a fight with Julia yesterday, but you wouldn’t know because you didn’t pick up the phone. I had to talk to Dad about it.”

“I’m sorry, Sam, but I’m on a very important case. A kid might die if I don’t do my job right. So deal with it! I know it sucks, but your mother is also a cop, and sometimes, that takes precedence.”

Both of them were breathing hard. Some people in the café were staring while others were making an effort to look the other way.

Sam picked up her sandwich and took another bite. “You should eat,” she said, her mouth full.

Abby took a large bite from her danish and chewed angrily. Steve sometimes didn’t call for a week, but as far as the kids were concerned, he did the best he could. Damn fathers everywhere, with their double standards. If Steve worked late, only showing up for half an hour to half-heartedly ask the kids how their day was, he was an overworked father making time for his son and daughter. But when Abby went to literally save lives and forgot to call, she was the mother who neglected her children.

Once, when she and Steve were still married, they went to the mall, and Samantha, only two years old at the time, threw a scene because they wouldn’t buy her a stuffed animal. When Abby tried to calm her down, she got disgusted stares from everyone around her. She was the mother who couldn’t get her shit together. Then, finally, Steve picked Samantha up and held her while she screamed, and he got admiring looks from people. Because he was a sweet father trying to calm his daughter. Abby had never forgiven him for that day even though she knew he hadn’t done anything wrong.

“You know,” Samantha said, “you never give Ben that shit. Talking to him like he’s wearing an explosive vest.”

“Ben always does what I tell him.”

Samantha shrugged. “So I don’t. Don’t start handling me. Yell at me.”

“Will that help?”

“No, I’d get angry and yell back, and we’d have a fight, but at least I won’t feel like my mother treats me like a terrorist.”

“Okay.” A wave of guilt washed over Abby, and she nearly burst into tears. Samantha was right; she did treat her like a jumper or a crackhead on a violent rampage. She’d thought it was the best way to handle Samantha and her mood swings. But Samantha was too smart for that. She’d realized what Abby was doing.

“How was your math test?”

“It was fine, Mom.”

“What did you fight with Julia about?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Samantha ate the last bite of her sandwich. “That kid you talked about. Is it Nathan Fletcher?”

“You heard about him?”

Samantha shrugged. “Sure. It’s all over social media. Gabrielle Fletcher is sorta famous. I mean, now even more than usual. Did you meet her?”

“Yeah, a few times.”

“What’s she like?”

“A self-absorbed, impulsive girl.”

Samantha grinned. “Yeah, that’s what I figured. You know that a lot of people online are saying Nathan is hiding somewhere and that Gabrielle is doing all of this to get more followers?”

“That’s not true,” Abby said. “Nathan really was kidnapped.”

“There was a fitness guru in Florida who faked her own daughter’s kidnapping,” Samantha pointed out.

“I haven’t heard of that,” Abby said, surprised.

“And there’s a superfamous gamer girl who maybe faked her own arrest. I mean, I’m not sure she wasn’t arrested, but it sounds like that was the case. Oh, and there’s Marina Joyce.”

“Who?”

“She’s a YouTuber that everyone really thought was kidnapped because she seemed kinda scared in one of her YouTube videos. So she did a live video to tell people she was fine, and it just freaked people more because they found clues in that video that she really was kidnapped and was trying to send signals to her fans.” Samantha smiled, bemused. “Then a lot of people said she did it intentionally as a publicity stunt. Look it up; it’s a crazy story.”

“How old would I sound if I said you kids spend too much time on social media?”