The Bad Daughter(4)
Robin pressed the Pause button in her brain, temporarily freezing the conversation that had been haunting her all night. The exaggerated frown she imagined on her sister’s face froze as well, a frown that had always kept her from being the beauty their mother had predicted she would become.
Robin climbed out of the too-hard queen-size bed and shuffled toward the bathroom. Why do all motel rooms look alike? she wondered. Is there some union rule that dictates they all be uninteresting rectangles in shades of beige and brown? Not that she was an expert in motel decor, having stayed in only a few over the years. She’d gone from her parents’ crowded house in Red Bluff to a dorm room at Berkeley, back to her parents’ house to work and earn money to continue her education, on to a small shared apartment off campus, then back and forth between Berkeley and Red Bluff to help care for her mother, then on to a cramped studio apartment in Los Angeles, and finally to the spacious two-bedroom unit she shared with Blake.
Blake, she thought, silently turning the name over on her tongue as she stepped into the tub. What must he be thinking? She turned on the faucet for the shower, then had to brace herself against the wall as a torrent of ice-cold water shot from the showerhead.
Blake would be furious with her.
She hadn’t called him since yesterday afternoon. Even then, she hadn’t spoken to him directly, but just left a message with his pretty new assistant to the effect that she had to go to Red Bluff to deal with a family emergency and she’d call him later. Then she’d canceled the week’s remaining appointments, gone home to pack a small suitcase, and taken a cab to the airport, where she’d boarded the first available flight to Sacramento, arriving at almost six o’clock in the evening. The bus to Red Bluff didn’t leave till the next morning, but the thought of renting a car and making the drive herself had proved too daunting, and in truth, she was in no hurry to get there. Instead she’d found a motel close to the bus terminal and checked in. She’d eschewed dinner, instead wolfing down a Three Musketeers bar she got from the vending machine down the hall.
She also resisted turning on the TV, hoping to avoid reports of the shooting. She could handle only so much information, process only so much. She really didn’t want to know every awful detail yet.
She thought about calling Blake again, but then remembered he’d said something about a dinner meeting with clients, so why bother? He was busy. He was always busy. Too busy to phone, obviously. Too busy to spare a few seconds to inquire as to what sort of family emergency would necessitate her taking off like that, to return to a place she’d sworn never to go back to. Would it have been so hard for him to interrupt one of his seemingly endless meetings to call her, to feign at least a modicum of interest?
So maybe he wouldn’t be furious that she hadn’t tried contacting him again. Maybe he’d be relieved. Maybe she’d finally handed him the ammunition he’d been waiting for to end their relationship once and for all.
Not that he could do anything to help the situation, she reminded herself. His specialty was corporate law, not criminal law. And it wasn’t as if he even knew her father. Or her sister. Or any member of her screwed-up family, except her brother, Alec, who lived in San Francisco, so they’d actually met only twice. She’d left a message for Alec, but he hadn’t called her back either. So screw both of them, she’d decided, turning off her cell phone and climbing into bed at barely eight o’clock.
She shouldn’t have turned off her cell phone, she thought now. What if Blake or Alec had called? What if Melanie had been trying to reach her?
“It’s Dad,” she heard her sister say. She fast-forwarded her memory of the conversation as the shower gradually lost its icy sting and settled into a tepid spray. Someone had shot their father.
“Who?”
“We don’t know.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Is he all right?”
“Of course he’s not all right. He was shot. In the head. He’s in a coma.”
“Oh, God.”
“They operated, but it’s not looking good.”
Robin fumbled with the wrapping on the tiny bar of soap lying in the soap dish, tossing the paper to the bottom of the tub and watching it stick to the top of the drain like a plug, causing the water to begin rising, puddling around her ankles. The soap produced almost no lather, no matter how hard she scrubbed. “Great,” she muttered as it slipped from her hands and disappeared beneath the rising water. “Just great.” She positioned herself directly under the shower’s spray, feeling her wet hair flatten against her scalp, then wind around her head like a layer of Saran Wrap.
“He was shot. In the head. He’s in a coma.”
She turned off the shower and stepped onto the too-small ivory-colored bath mat, wrapping herself in one of the two thin terry-cloth towels provided, then returned to the bedroom. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Just after seven A.M., which meant she had three hours to kill before her bus left. Add to that the two-plus hours it would take to travel the hundred and twenty-five miles of boring highway to the middle of nowhere known as Red Bluff. Which meant at least five hours for the conversation with her sister to ricochet around in her head like a pinball.
“I don’t understand. How did this happen? Where’s Tara?”
“Still in surgery.”