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He sighed. “All right. I’ll be there early in the morning.”
Jed handed the phone back to Elena. She finished the call and laid the phone down on the table. “He worries like a mother.”
“It’s good to have friends like that.”
“I know. I don’t know what I’d do without him. We’ve been together since I first opened the shop. He has a keen eye for art, but beyond that, he’s a good friend. He’s family.”
Because she didn’t have any other family around to be her support system.
“You miss your mom?”
She shrugged. “I can’t miss her.”
“Why not?”
“I got used to her not being around. And I’m an adult now. I don’t need my mother.”
She was staring at her salad.
“I would think a girl always needs her mother, especially at a time like this.”
Her gaze shot to his. “A time like what?”
“Come on, Elena. Your shop was burglarized, and you were nearly attacked today. That’s fairly traumatic.”
She lifted her chin. “I’m not a child who needs to go running to her mama every time something bad happens. I’m self-sufficient and able to take care of myself.”
More by necessity than by choice, he’d imagine. “Because your mother wasn’t here for you so you had no choice?”
“I never thought about that. Maybe.” She leaned back and took a swallow of beer, then pointed the tip of the bottle toward him. “You’re very good at this.”
“At what?”
“Playing psychologist.”
He laughed. “Just observing. I don’t analyze anyone.”
“Either way, it’s a good point. I don’t spend too much time delving into my relationship with my mother. She is who she is and maybe that’s made me who I am. I’m not as free spirited as she is. I don’t just drop everything and go or try new things, because I never wanted to be anything like her. I wanted to remain planted in one place, doing one thing, because she was always on the go doing a hundred different things.”
“And you didn’t like that.”
Her clear gaze met his. She didn’t seem angry, just contemplative. “No, I didn’t. I hated her lifestyle, hated the havoc it wreaked on me. Whoever she was, I wanted to be the opposite.”
“Are you angry at her?”
She looked away, out the window. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. Yes. When I was really little, she’d take me with her. We had great adventures, traveling from place to place. I met some pretty cool people. She was so much like a kid herself that it was like hanging out with a best friend. No rules, no curfews, just all this joy.
“But then she decided—or maybe other people decided for her—that I needed to be in school. So she stopped taking me with her and left me with other people. That’s when the fun ended.”
“Because she got to go off on her great adventures, and you didn’t anymore.”
She nodded. “Yes. I resented her for that. I was jealous. I had to grow up, be responsible.”
“You grew up, and she didn’t.”
He saw the tears welling in her eyes. She pushed away from the bar, threw her plate in the trash and walked to the balcony.
He’d pushed her too hard, hadn’t meant to, but there was so much about her he wanted to know. Just part of the mission, of course. The more he could discover about her mom, the better chance they had of finding her.
