Anything for Her(73)
He went online again, and searched the Tulsa Yellow Pages for private investigators.
* * *
ALLIE SO DID not want to be spending Sunday with her mother instead of Nolan, but he hadn’t suggested they get together this weekend at all. So far he hadn’t said anything about Monday, either.
With no good excuse, Allie had agreed to lunch and a movie. She and her mother had made stilted conversation on the drive to Mt. Vernon after agreeing on the Calico Cupboard for lunch. Allie was doing her damnedest to be pleasant and avoid any subjects of contention.
For one thing, she definitely didn’t want to talk about Nolan.
She’d been feeling hollow for days now. He’d obviously cooled toward her. Either something was wrong, or he was getting bored. She didn’t know which explanation she hated more.
She and her mother were seated at a small table next to a railing, overlooking an antiques store a half a level below in the old brick building. The minute the two of them had given their orders and the waitress left them alone, Mom ditched the smile and leaned forward.
“I’d hoped by this time you’d have come around to seeing that I was right.”
Allie stared at her in disbelief. “Because there’s no chance you could be wrong?”
“All I’m doing is insisting we follow the instructions we were given. You know that, Allie. We made a commitment.”
All her good intentions evaporated. “You and Dad made a commitment.” Oh, God—didn’t that sound like a sulky teenager?
“What were our choices?” Her mother’s voice had hardened. “I wasn’t the only one in danger. A car bomb could have killed all of us. Or the Morettis might have decided to use my children as an example.”
“I heard you and Dad arguing, you know. Back then.”
Her mother looked wary. “What do you mean?”
“He didn’t want you to testify. He said you’d already steered the police in the right direction—they could dig up evidence on their own.”
“But what if they couldn’t? What if a murderer got away with it, because I wasn’t courageous enough to tell a jury what I heard?”
“Dad said something else.” Allie had never meant to confront her mother about this, but an anger she didn’t recognize had been driving her for weeks now. “He said the victim was another mob figure. ‘Scum’ was the word he used. He said it wasn’t as if you’d overheard someone who had killed a child.”
There was a tremor in her words now. “Mom, to ensure justice for a man who probably didn’t deserve it, you damaged all of our lives. Shouldn’t we have come first? Dad and Jason? Me?”
Her mother flinched when the shock wave of what Allie had said hit. Then she sat, very still, for a long time.
The waitress, smiling and chatty, brought the salads they’d ordered. Allie managed a distracted thanks. Mom didn’t move a muscle.
Neither of them reached for their napkins or forks when they were alone again. Allie balled her shaking hands into fists on her lap beneath the tablecloth. They stared at each other.
“You believe I damaged your life.”
Incredulous, Allie shook her head. “How can you even ask that?”
“You weren’t exactly deprived,” her mother said stiffly. “We gave you kids a good life.”
“Yes, you did. But it wasn’t the life we had. Do you have any idea how much I loved to dance? I was talented, Mom. I could have reached my dreams. You stole that from me when you decided it was more important to testify that day in court.”
She saw the way her mother blanched and knew that she had hurt her. That hadn’t been her intention when they started this, but a part of her had needed to say it, if only once. See what you did to me.
“You were thirteen. You might have lost interest or been injured or who knows what. Do you really think I should have violated my moral integrity because my teenage daughter had a favorite—” she waved a hand “—activity?”
Okay, that made Allie mad all over again. “You had to know how important it was to me. And what about Dad? He was so proud of Marr Industries. I remember how much he hoped Jason would want to go to work with him, be the fourth-generation Marr to be CEO. You stole that from both of them, too. Our grandparents lost us, and we lost them. We lost our names.”
The silence was thick and painful. “I had no idea,” her mother whispered at last.