Betrayed (Rosato & DiNunzio, #2)(5)

“Right before I saw you, I had my first treatment. I hadn’t lost my hair yet, that happened on day seventeen, just when they said it would. Chemo was awful, I felt tired and foggy. Chemo brain, they call it. It made my nails weird, dried my skin, and obviously, I’m prematurely bald. I’m going for a Pirate Queen look.” Aunt Barb patted her bandanna. “Not bad, huh?”

“Very Gilbert and Sullivan.” Judy managed a smile, because they both loved G&S operettas.

“My friend gained weight during chemo, but I lost twenty-five pounds. So there’s the good news.” Aunt Barb chuckled ruefully. Then she sighed, tilting her face to the sun. “Anyway, enough. It’s a beautiful day, you’re here, and we’re in the presence of Reine Victoria.”

“You mean the rose you were trying to grow? You did it?”

“Yep, go take a whiff. There’s still one or two blooms left, in the middle, the pink.” Aunt Barb gestured to the rosebushes on her right. “Reine Victoria is a Bourbon rose, one of the most fragrant. It can smell like pears.”

Judy got up, crossed to the bushes, and smelled a rose with pinkish blooms. Its perfume filled her nostrils with a fruity sweetness. “Wow, that’s so cool. Aromatherapy.”

“Also, its thorns aren’t that bad. I hate thorns. Who needs attitude from a flower?”

Judy heard her phone ringing in her back pocket, reached for it, and saw that the screen read Linda Adler, the client she’d been trying to reach. “Oh, damn.”

“Feel free to get that, honey,” Aunt Barb called to her.

“Nah, I’ll get it later.” Judy let the call go to voicemail because her conversation with Linda would have been a long one, and her aunt deserved her undivided attention. Judy went back to the table and sat down.

“So how’s work, honey?”

“I’m not going to complain, in the circumstances.”

Aunt Barb touched her hand. “No, please don’t act differently around me. Tell me. I’m sick of talking about lymph nodes.”

“Okay, well, I have a cool sex-discrimination case for this woman who just called me, but I also just got dumped with seventy-five new cases, all damages trials.” Judy didn’t add that her goal in the damages cases would be to diminish the value of a lost human life, a heartbreaking thought right now.

Suddenly Aunt Barb turned to face the house, where Judy’s mother was coming out the back door, carrying a floral-patterned tray. Judy didn’t call to her because it was too far away, but she was struck, as always, by her mother’s beauty, even in her late fifties. Delia Van Huyck Carrier had round blue eyes, now slightly hooded, and a squarish face and high cheekbones that bespoke her paternal Dutch heritage. She kept in trim shape and had great style, even in her standard airplane outfit: an oversized gray sweater, black leggings, and black ballet flats. She crossed the lawn toward them, her lips pursed and her head tilted slightly down, showing the top of her head with its loose, lemony blonde topknot.

“Hi, Mom!” Judy stood up, went to her mother, and gave her an awkward hug, around the tray, a pitcher of iced tea, glasses, napkins, and a platter of chocolate chip cookies.

“Hello, honey.” Judy’s mother set the tray on the tabletop, and the glasses clinked. “You might want to wipe your nose.”

“Oops, sorry. How are you?” Judy plucked a napkin from the tray and blew her nose, sensing that her mother seemed oddly cooler than usual. Aunt Barb stiffened as soon as her mother came over, and Judy realized that the two sisters had been fighting, which wasn’t atypical, though she would have guessed there was an exception for breast cancer.

“I’m good.” Her mother’s Delft-blue eyes narrowed in the sunlight, which caught the golden strands of her fine, smooth hair. “Dad says hi. How are you, all right?”

Of course not, Judy wanted to say, but that wasn’t the right answer. “I guess so, but I’m worried about Aunt Barb. You didn’t know about this, did you?”

“No, she kept it from us. I took the red-eye as soon as I found out. Sit down, please.”

Judy sat down. Taking the red-eye was code for showing concern, even though her mother seemed completely pissed off. “Mom, is something bothering you?”

“No, I’m just determined to get my kid sister through her operation. I’m staying for the duration.”

“You make it sound like a war.”

“It is a war,” her mother shot back, meeting her eye. “And we’re going to win.”

“Delia, it’s not a war, to me.” Aunt Barb shook her head, frowning. “We work on visualization in group, and I don’t see it as a war, or ‘my battle with cancer,’ like the obits say. My cancer is part of me, and I have to work on it to heal myself, the same as my faults or my dark side.”

“You don’t have a dark side, Aunt Barb,” Judy said, her throat thick.

“Nonsense, dear,” her mother interjected. “We all have a dark side.”

Judy recoiled. “Mom, what gives? Play nice.”

Aunt Barb cocked her kerchiefed head. “Your mother and I had words, and now we’re at an impasse, agreeing to disagree.”

“About what?”

“Speak of the devil,” her mother hissed, turning toward the house, as the back door opened.