While Justice Sleeps(43)
Avery inched away, but Rita closed the distance between them, her eyes battling with thick layers of mascara. The once bright green had been dulled to a drab olive of unremarkable hue. Feeling abruptly weary, Avery lifted a hand to ward off her advance. “Rita. What is it?”
Teetering on heels too spindly for wear, Rita pouted, “I just wanted to talk to my baby. I’ve been waiting all night.” She ran black-tipped nails through her disheveled hair. “Can’t we go inside and sit? This floor is hard, and I could use a quick shower. Maybe dinner, if you’ve got it?”
Avery saw the gleam of avarice. If she opened the door, she’d be cleaned out by the weekend. Steeling herself to reject the pitiable woman who had given her life, she sighed. “It’s very late, and I’ve got work tomorrow. Go away, Rita.”
“Go away? Is that any way to speak to your momma?”
“If she’s you, absolutely.” The sharp retort escaped before Avery could bite it off.
Rita responded with a quick slap across Avery’s cheek, followed by a moan of regret. She tried to hug her daughter, who froze. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I just lost my temper. Baby, I’m so sorry.”
Then, on cue, came the weeping. Tears ran down poorly rouged cheeks, dripping their sincerity on Avery’s throbbing skin. Wrapped in the emaciated arms, her nose buried in the rancid scent of unwashed hair, Avery felt despair creep through her heart. A lifetime of carefully plotted escape from this woman, this mother, and she’d never been able to shake her.
Oh, she thought spitefully, to be Jared Wynn. Both shared the death of one parent, but he’d been blessed with the disinterest of another. Why hadn’t the bus accident claimed the woman instead of the man who’d given her life? She remembered a broad-shouldered, handsome man with rich brown skin and a booming laugh. He was the one who quietly soothed away the taunts about her having a white mom and a black dad. Who explained Rita’s mercurial nature and sudden streaks of mean over fast games of chess. Who celebrated her strange memory when others called her a freak. Even her faintest memories of her father glinted more brightly than the best day she could recall with Rita.
She raised her arms and untwined Rita’s serpentine grip. Plastic bangles clacked with the motion. “I don’t have anything for you. Please go, Rita. Just go.”
“Well, I have something for you!” Gone was any pretense of maternal affection. The threat slid out smooth and practiced, serrated by jealousy. “I might not get inside your apartment, but I know where you work. You want me to come and visit tomorrow? Maybe say hello to your boss. Tell them all about the real Avery Keene.”
“They wouldn’t let you in,” Avery retorted, ignoring the first trill of fear.
Rita heard it anyway. “It’s a public building, baby. And when I tell them it’s an emergency, they’ll have to show me right into your fancy office. How do you think the big law firms will feel when they find out how you abandoned your mother? Or maybe I’ll tell them how you used to help me score? Remember that, Avery?”
Memories, burning, freezing, coursed through her. No one would wait for an explanation, not the white-shoe firms. They had no need for a tainted black lawyer with her druggie mom, not with so many pristine candidates vying for their attention. One whiff of scandal and her Yale Law degree wouldn’t be worth the paper or the student loans. All they’d see was a darker-skinned version of Rita—a potential drug addict, not a rising star.
Exhausted, Avery asked, “Will twenty dollars make you disappear?”
“If I could have slept on your sofa. But I’m probably gonna have to find a shelter this late at night. A hundred ought to do.”
“I don’t have a hundred on me.”
“You also said you had no cash,” Rita reminded her slyly. “You’ve got it in your apartment. Probably stuck inside a book.”
Which she would move to a safer place the instant she made it inside. Avery opened her purse and grabbed her wallet, keeping it hidden inside. “I’ve got eighty dollars, Rita. That’s the best I can do.” She held up the cash and waited.
Rita pinched the bills out of Avery’s fingers and turned toward the elevator. She teetered on her stilettos, and she glanced over her shoulder. “I hope you get a daughter just like you one day. A frigid bitch who thinks she’s too good for you.”
Avery said nothing, simply stood in the hallway, eyes fixed on the glowing light of the elevator arrow. She resisted the urge to wipe at a slowly forming tear. When the doors opened, she watched Rita wobble inside. Under her breath, as the doors closed, she prayed futilely, “Goodbye, Rita.”
SEVENTEEN
Pushing open the door to her apartment, Avery entered, then kicked the door shut behind her. She flicked on the light, dropped her keys on the table, and turned to flip the dead bolts into place. Ling had the graveyard shift this rotation, which meant she’d crawl into the apartment hours after Avery left in the morning.
Avery considered paging her to give her an update on the day’s events, but even the thought was exhausting. In silent confirmation, the telephone flickered with blinking message lights.
“What now?” she muttered. Avery opened her bag and removed the envelope with the pages she’d printed out from Justice Wynn’s computer, tossing it on the coffee table. She sank onto the futon that doubled as a sofa, propped her feet on the table, and picked up her memo pad to write down the messages.