Her Mother's Shadow. Diane Chamberlain
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gold pin on the lapel, and she was not a customer, that much was clear. Her eyes were red and smudged with mascara.
“Nola!” Lacey was instantly on her feet, rushing toward the woman. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Lacey, I’m beside myself!” The woman stood in the middle of the floor, looking as though she might burst into tears. Her hands were pressed to her cheeks and the heavy gold bracelets on her wrists clanged together. Her fingers sparkled with rings.
“I can see that.” Lacey took her arm and drew her toward Tom Nestor’s worktable. “Here, sit in Tom’s chair. Are Jessica and Mackenzie all right?”
“I think so,” the woman said. “I mean, I think they’ll be all right. But I’m on my way to Arizona and wanted to stop in to let you know what was going on before I left.” She looked at Lacey, her eyes wide and filled with pain. “Jessica and Mackenzie were in a car wreck,” she said.
“Oh, my God.” Lacey’s hand flew to her mouth. She lowered herself to her haunches in front of the woman, her long skirt billowing around her on the floor, and rested one of her hands on Nola’s. “How bad?”
“Mackenzie’s fine, or at least that’s what they’re telling me. But Jessica has broken ribs and a collapsed lung and a broken pelvis—” the woman ticked the injuries off on her fingers “—and who knows what else.”
“Oh, Nola, how awful.” Lacey looked over at Rick. “Jessica—Nola’s daughter—is an old friend of mine,” she explained. “How did it happen?”
“A drunk driver,” Nola said. “That’s all I know. I’m going out there to take care of Mackenzie while Jessica is in the hospital. Right now, she’s with a neighbor.”
“You’ll feel better once you see Jess and know she’s in good hands,” Lacey said, and Rick could see tears forming in her eyes as well. He felt intrusive.
Nola nodded, but she looked unconvinced. “My poor little girl.”
Lacey stood up and leaned over to hug her. The woman was unresponsive, stiff as a stick. He wondered how old she was. There was not a wrinkle on her tanned face, and it was obvious she’d visited a plastic surgeon more than once.
“She’s tried so hard to make it, Lacey,” Nola said, a mix of anger and sorrow in her voice. “You know that. Raising Mackenzie by herself, holding down a stressful job, going to school at night.”
“I know,” Lacey agreed. “Maybe I should go with you.”
“No, no.” Nola opened her large brown leather purse and pulled a tissue from inside it. She stood up, dabbing at her eyes. “I’ll call you when I see how she is.”
“Please do,” Lacey said, embracing the woman once again. “Please call me right away.”
With a nod, Nola turned and walked out the door, the sun-catchers clanking against the glass once again.
Lacey sank into her chair behind the worktable. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “Poor Jessica.”
“You’re very close to her?” he asked.
“We grew up together.” She was staring at the door, but he could tell she was not really seeing it. “She was my best friend from the time we were in kindergarten through junior high. She got pregnant when she was fifteen, though, and Nola shipped her off to Arizona to live with her cousins and she ended up staying out there. We’ve lost touch a bit since then, but we still have these long, wonderful phone conversations a few times a year. I haven’t seen Mackenzie—her daughter—since the last time they visited the Outer Banks, which must have been three years ago.” She stood up abruptly. “I’ve got to go home,” she said. “I want to call her. I need to hear for myself how she is.”
“Of course,” he said, standing up.
Lacey looked at her watch. “I’ll call Tom to come back to the studio to keep it open, but would you mind staying until he gets here? In case that couple comes back? Or I could just lock up and put a sign on the—”
“I’ll stay,” he said. “It’ll make me feel like I’m helping somehow.”
She smiled at him, a quick, distracted sort of smile. “Thanks,” she said, gathering up her purse and day planner. “I’ll talk to you later.”
He watched her leave. She was gentle with the door; the sun-catchers barely clinked against the glass. Looking over at her worktable, he noticed she had left behind the book on forgiveness. He wanted to run after her, press it into her hands, but he didn’t dare. She already thought him strange in that regard, a religious zealot, perhaps. And the last thing he wanted to do was to scare her away.
8
IF IT HAD NOT BEEN FOR THE BEACH TRAFFIC, Lacey would have ignored the speed limit and raced all the way to Kiss River from her studio. As it was, she was stuck in a sluggish trail of cars making their way north from Kill Devil Hills. She wanted to call the hospital and hear for herself that Jessica was all right. She wanted to talk to her old friend, hear her voice, reassure her that Mackenzie would be taken care of while she recovered. Again, she thought of packing a bag and flying to Arizona with Nola. They could spell each other while they took turns taking care of eleven-year-old Mackenzie and spending time with Jessica in the hospital. But even though she’d known Nola for as long as she could remember, she had never felt completely at ease with her. Nola could be difficult. She’d been divorced for many years and had never remarried or even dated, although at one time it had been clear that she had her eye on Lacey’s father. Thank God Olivia had come along at that point, or Lacey might have ended up with Nola as a stepmother. Just talking to Nola on the phone could send a chill up her spine.
Nola had been a lax and permissive mother with Jessica. Lacey’s mother had certainly been lenient and indulgent, as well, but Annie O’Neill’s permissiveness had been balanced by her deep love for her children. Although Jessica had often been critical of Lacey’s parents, she’d admitted just a few years ago that she had actually been envious of the close and loving relationships Lacey had enjoyed growing up in the O’Neill family.
The traffic was ridiculous! She was driving through Duck, her car creeping so slowly that she feared it might overheat. It had happened before. She turned off the air-conditioning and opened the windows to try to prevent it from happening again. She knew every alternate route available along the Outer Banks, but the island was so narrow here that there was only one road running south and north, and she was on it. She glanced at her cell phone lying on the passenger seat. She could try to call Jessica on the cell, but she didn’t know what hospital she was in, and the thought of coping with cellular information and the iffy reception in the area was more than she could manage.
Her thoughts turned to Mackenzie. What had the accident been like? Mackenzie wasn’t hurt, Nola had said, so maybe she had been conscious and had witnessed everything. Maybe she saw her mother’s body pinned behind the wheel, or maybe the car had flipped over. Then she began wondering, as she always did when she thought about Mackenzie, what had become of the girl’s father. That had been a sore spot between her and Jessica for years. Mackenzie’s father was Bobby Asher. He’d been one of the many guys she and Jessica had hung around with the summer Lacey was fourteen. In her mind, Bobby would always be that seventeen-year-old chain-smoking, beer-drinking, pill-popping, sexy-as-hell guy, with the blond hair that touched his shoulders and the same light blue eyes she saw in every picture of Mackenzie. Lacey had lost her virginity to him, as had Jessica, the very next night. She’d been hurt that Bobby had ultimately picked Jessica over her. Jess had been less uptight, ready for anything. Lacey had been fairly wild that summer, too, but she knew the scared little kid inside her had been evident to anyone who looked hard enough. Nothing had seemed to frighten Jessica, however, and Bobby had been drawn to that quality in her.
At the end of that summer, Bobby returned to his home in Richmond, Virginia, and neither she nor Jessica ever saw him again. When Jessica realized she was pregnant, she adamantly refused to tell Nola