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Smiling up at me, she nudged the shot glass and bottle to the side, like I wouldn’t realize she was drinking alone and in the dark except for a light over the stove. At least she was awake and relatively sober.
I dropped a kiss on her lined cheek and leaned against the counter, my hands braced on the countertop behind me. “How are things?”
“Not bad.” She stubbed out the cigarette in a dented brass ashtray that was older than me. “How about yourself?”
“Not bad.”
“I thought you were away.”
“Yeah? Where did you hear that?”
Her eyes shifted sideways. “You know. Word gets around.”
I grunted. No one but Brien, Cain, Twilight, and a few of the castle staff had known I was off island.
“Was he here?”
“No. You said yourself he’d better not come to the island.”
“So you went to him, then.”
She shrugged, fiddling with her shot glass.
Of course she’d been to see him. Now that I looked closer, I saw the signs. Her salt-and-pepper hair had been recently cut in a stylish cap that feathered around her face; she was wearing an outfit I’d never seen before—a soft cream sweater and khaki pants—and she was trying not to drink.
When Esposito crooked a finger, she went running—to Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver. I knew about it, of course, but she was an adult. Yeah, I could’ve stopped her, but she was still my mom, even if she was piss-poor at mothering.
The only good thing about it was that when she was with Esposito, she drank less. Sometimes she even stopped altogether for a few months.
I folded my arms over my chest. “Where is he?”
And how the hell had he known I was off-island, anyway?
Her mouth pinched. “Is that the only reason you came to see me? To grill me about Marc?”
I clenched my back teeth. “You know that’s not true. I check in on you every few days. I was here Tuesday night, and the Friday before that.”
Instead of replying, she patted the chair to her right. “Sit down. Tell me what you were doing on the mainland.”
“Mom—”
“I said, Sit.”
When she took that tone, I knew she’d dug in. I wasn’t getting any more information out of her until she was ready.
I lowered my ass to the damn chair. “I wasn’t on the mainland. Well, not in Canada anyway. I was in New York. Syndicate business,” I added to forestall further questions.
She snagged the whiskey bottle and glass and poured herself a double shot. “The primus sent you?”
I looked at her without speaking.
“Hm.” She fingered the glass.
She took her whiskey neat. Ice melted and diluted the alcohol, she said. I expected her to toss it down, but she only ran a fingertip around the lip. Yeah, my father was definitely in the picture.
“I always wanted to go to New York,” she said. “See a Broadway show, go to the museums.”
I reached for her hand. It was lean and strong, but she had age spots and a few wrinkles now. Sometimes I forgot she was almost sixty-seven.
