Sebring (Unfinished Heroes #5)(9)

She let my lie go and decreed, “We’re having dinner. I’ve had my assistant make a booking for us at Beatrice and Woodsley next Wednesday evening.”

Why my mother needed an assistant, I had no idea. She didn’t work. She’d never worked.

But why she called her assistant “my assistant” I did know. Because they were slaves to her.

Since slavery was abolished in the United States some time ago and most people didn’t like to be worked like one, they told my mother how they felt about it. Therefore she had on average six “assistants” each year. In other words, they weren’t around long enough so she didn’t bother with their names.

I wanted to go to Beatrice and Woodsley. It was a fabulous restaurant.

I did not want to spend two hours with my mother frowning at every morsel I put in my mouth (even though she’d dragged me out to dinner in the first place), nonverbally (and sometimes verbally) sharing she thought I needed to watch what I ate even if I was smack in the middle of the healthy weight range for my height.

I also did not want her (contradictorily) to encourage me to drink my weight in vodka, something she would do while she pushed her food around on her plate.

Nor did I want to listen to her telling me what a reprobate my father was, even though I personally arranged the monthly kickback my father gave to Mom’s second husband, the president of a local shipping company. I did this at my father’s command in order for my stepfather to offer his services should Georgia’s machinations bear fruit and we needed something illegal shipped in or out of Denver and we couldn’t use our own legitimate shipping company as that would be stupider than my father’s usual stupid.

A kickback my mother was highly likely aware of because my stepfather might run a large, successful shipping company but she had his testicles in a vice and he barely took a breath without her permission.

No, I did not want any of this.

“I’ll be certain I’m free,” I told her.

“Excellent,” she replied crisply.

I knew it would be a wasted effort, but I did my next anyway because I was me.

“Would you like me to see if Georgia’s free?”

This was a wasted effort because Mom and Georgia had not spoken in three years. This began after Georgia lost her temper at Bistro Vend?me and let her mouth loose when Mom had a variety of things to say about Dad, much of this centering on the swelling and cut at my upper lip.

Swelling and a cut my mother knew who delivered on me.

My sister was her father’s daughter.

But she was my sister.

She might have always been and continued to be the golden child (when I was never anything close, though it must be said, I never actually wanted to be), but we’d been through a lot together. She was loyal to our father and she was loyal to me. She loved us both. This to the point I honestly didn’t know if Dad and I were both drowning, which one of us she’d save.

Anyone who knew us would say Georgia wouldn’t hesitate. She’d dive in and drag Vincent Shade to safety.

But I knew there was a fifty percent chance she’d grab hold of me.

And this was why she lost it with Mom, not because she was loyal to Dad and Mom was saying ugly things about him.

Because when Mom got fed up with Father making her life a misery, she took off.

And she left her girls behind.

But she fought tooth and nail for alimony.

Georgia knew I bore the brunt of Mom’s leaving. She knew I continued to bear the brunt of our father’s disposition.

She knew Mom knew it too and did nothing about it, not then, not ever.

So now they didn’t talk. I suggested opportunities to both of them to heal the breach, but three years had passed and I suspected thirty more would before Georgia would show at Mom’s grave and spit on it.

“No. I. Would. Not,” Mom answered my question.

Obviously, she felt the same way.

I sighed.

“Would you like me to have my driver come to get you?” Mom asked frostily.

Her driver was also her “driver” seeing as he or she too would likely be replaced in a few months (or weeks).

“I can get there myself, Mom. Thanks,” I replied.

“Good. Then see you at seven o’clock Wednesday at the restaurant. Good-bye, Olivia.”

There was no, “In the meantime, how are you?” Or, “What’s my girl doing for fun these days?” Or, “Are you, by chance, seeing someone?” Or, “My darling girl, I’m worried about you. You’re thirty-one years old and you haven’t had a steady boyfriend since your father tortured that handsome blonde man and did what he did to you when you were twenty-five. I’m aware you can be alone, but I don’t want my daughter to be lonely.”

No, none of that.

Mom just disconnected.

I felt no loss that my mother didn’t care even a little bit about me, taking me to dinner because it was her duty, something she’d tell her friends about, woe-is-me’ing about my weight, my hairstyle, my manicure or whatever she found fault in.

I was just grateful the call was over.

I was in the kitchen looking into the refrigerator and considering calling Bistro Vend?me to see if they had a table for one open when my phone rang again.

I moved to the counter to look at it.

The screen said Georgie Calling.