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“The leg is fine,” she muttered before pursing her lips in irritation. “Why don’t you go find Natches? I bet there’s something he needs to talk to you about.”
Not that she actually thought that was going to work.
“Even Bliss can come up with something better than that.” Chaya grinned, moving with Angel as she strode from the patio wall and headed around the side of the house.
“At her age she better be able to come up with something better.” Angel swiped at the hair that insisted on escaping her braid and falling over her forehead. “Fortunately, I don’t have to. I can just tell you I don’t want to talk to you.”
Yet she couldn’t make herself ensure Chaya did just that by doing as she’d threatened to do with Timothy and letting the bitch out to play. Instead, rather than finding a way to escape, she kept her pace even and kept her mother in her peripheral vision. And she wondered why she was remaining silent rather than ensuring Chaya returned to the house.
No, she didn’t wonder why, she amended that thought. She knew why. Because as angry as she was, as much as she wanted to hate her mother, she couldn’t. She’d convinced herself she did for years. She’d tried to tell herself nothing mattered but Bliss, but she’d been lying to herself. She didn’t need just her sister in her life but her mother as well, and sometimes she hated herself for that need.
“How’s your leg feel?” Chaya asked as she walked next to her, her hands pushed into the pockets of her shorts, the short-sleeved white blouse neat and complementing the other woman’s tan.
Angel shrugged at the question. “Better. Ethan always manages to fix me.”
“So I hear.” There was a thread of stress in Chaya’s voice, almost worry, that made Angel want to believe she cared.
“Look.” Angel stopped and turned to her, unwilling to admit to the nervousness she couldn’t push away. “You don’t have to pretend when we’re alone. Just say whatever it is you want to say and we’ll get on with our day.”
She couldn’t let herself believe that Chaya wanted to be a mother to her at this late date. The time for that had long passed.
“You think I feel as though I have to pretend to be concerned?” she asked rather than doing as Angel suggested. “You’re my daughter. . . .”
“Please don’t.” She couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t deal with platitudes or lies. She was too hungry, too desperate to believe them. “I’m sorry Duke forced you into dealing with me like this, but I don’t need you to start swearing your motherly love and concern for me. It’s okay, really.”
The frown Chaya leveled on her made her feel like she was three again. It was filled with disappointment and an emotion she simply didn’t want to try to decipher.
“Little girl, that mouth of yours is writing checks you can’t hope to cover,” Chaya warned her, her tone low, almost gentle.
Really? She’d actually said that?
“I’m not three any longer,” Angel reminded her. “I haven’t been three for a very long time. And trust me, Chaya, I learned a long time ago how to back up every word out of my mouth.”
Sort of. She’d learned how to talk nastier and meaner and how to fight with a viciousness that had the power to actually make her feel ashamed of herself now.
“By drinking too much, smoking too often, and trying to disguise the pain inside by making certain the outside hurt worse?” Chaya asked softly then. “How did that work out for you, Angel? Did it really help?”
That was exactly what she’d been doing, Angel knew. Hurting so bad inside that it actually seemed to fade a little when the outside hurt worse.
Rather than meet the compassion in Chaya’s expression, Angel turned away from her and stared into the leafy, twisted vines of the border Natches had somehow convinced to grow around the perimeter of the yard surrounding his home. Better to stare into it than to see concern, or a mother’s affection, where it didn’t really exist.
“Whether it worked or not doesn’t matter anymore,” she finally said, wishing she could hide who she had been and the ugly behavior she’d displayed in those days. “And it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t require you to pretend with me.” She turned back to her mother and met her gaze with a cool, unaffected stare. “You should go back to the house. . . .”
“So you can keep hiding? So you keep telling yourself that it’s not killing both of us to continue ignoring the anger and pain?” Chaya demanded, and Angel could have sworn the pain in her eyes was genuine and the huskiness in her voice was due to the unshed tears gleaming in her eyes. “Angel, we have to talk about this. I won’t let you continue telling yourself that I didn’t want you. That I deserted you.”
But that was exactly what she had done and Angel couldn’t make herself pretend otherwise, no matter how much she wanted to.
“It’s okay,” Angel promised her, wishing she could rage at her, wishing she could spill all her pain and fury onto this woman’s shoulders as she’d once promised herself she would. “I survived. . . .”
“Oh God, Angel . . .” Chaya whispered, her voice thick with emotions Angel simply couldn’t deal with, and when Chaya moved as though to embrace her she jumped back, suddenly terrified, certain she’d break and become that three-year-old again. The one that wandered Baghdad’s streets crying for her mother.
“Don’t,” she demanded, strangling on her own words, desperate to escape what she was feeling, what she wanted to believe her mother was feeling.
“Why?” Chaya questioned her softly, her arms dropping to her sides, her expression twisted with pain. “Why, Angel? Are you afraid you can’t keep telling yourself I didn’t want you when you know differently?”
Angel shook her head, terrified of what she knew she’d end up doing if she wasn’t careful.
“No. I’m scared I’ll want to believe you even knowing the truth.” Remembering every moment of it and hurting worse for the deception. “I’m afraid, Chaya, I’ll want the illusion over the truth, and in the end, that will only destroy me. That’s what I’m afraid of. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m sure there are things I need to be doing, even if there’s nothing you need to be doing.”
