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“Did you arrest him?”
“I thought I persuaded him to turn himself in. Then he disappeared and took some evidence I had brought home.”
Elisha tried to look serious, but as her daughter went on, her mouth began to move and a chuckle escaped her lips.
“Mother, it’s not funny! He left me a sponge rabbit and a note that told me he loved me!”
This broke Elisha’s resistance and a loud guffaw burst from her. She doubled over with laughter as Pro continued to protest.
“Mother, you have got to take this seriously! This is a police investigation…of a murder.”
By this time, Elisha had pulled out a chair from the overburdened table and sat down as she continued to be swept away on waves of merriment.
This frustrated Pro even more, and she walked over to her stepfather’s favorite easy chair, which now held a potted palm tree. She removed the small arboreal, got her coffee, and sat down as her mother continued to be helpless with glee.
Finally, after a couple of minutes, Elisha had laughed herself out and began to calm down. She pulled a napkin from somewhere in the bower and daubed her eyes and blew her nose.
“I should eat all of your chocolate to punish you for laughing at me,” Pro sniped from her chair.
This got another giggle from her mother, who held out the box. “Knock yourself out, baby girl.”
She grudgingly came over, took several candies, and ate them one at a time between swigs of coffee. “I feel like I did when I was a kid.”
“What do you mean, honey?”
“I mean all the craziness around Max. I didn’t have any idea what was going on and didn’t understand half of it.”
“Honey, you were a child. There’s nothing you could’ve done.”
Pro leaned forward. “Well, I’m not a child now, but he’s treating me like one. Showing up at my place, breaking in here to deliver flowers. We’re not safe.”
“Max is trying to help…in his way,” Elisha explained.
Pro shook her head. “It’s a damn annoying way. If he knows something, he should just tell me—tell us.”
“Your father has spent his life keeping and creating secrets. You have to understand how hard it is for him to open up. And I have to admit I didn’t help.”
“Mom, Max left you. I don’t see how you could blame yourself in any way.”
Elisha bit her lip. “I guess I told you that because I wanted it to be easy. I wanted it to be simple for you.”
“What do you mean, Mom?”
“Max wanted to take us to Vegas with him. He wanted to buy us a house and be a family there.”
Pro frowned. “No, he left us…”
“Temporarily, honey. He asked me to go. Promised that within a year he’d buy us a house.”
Pro looked at her mother, overcome with the feeling that everything in her world had just tipped off-center. “I don’t understand.”
“I was afraid!” Elisha snapped. “I was afraid that if I gave up my job as a designer, I wouldn’t find one out there. I figured if I lost my job and his show wasn’t a success, we’d be stuck in Vegas and be flat broke.”
Elisha turned from her daughter and looked at the flowers as she sipped her coffee. “But it’s not what happened. Max became big, bigger than he ever planned. But then it was too late. I had filed for divorce and I made my commitment to stay here in New York.”
Elisha turned back and Pro could see tears in her eyes. “So, I lied to you. I told you Max left us, but that wasn’t totally true. I wouldn’t follow him, I wouldn’t trust him, probably when he needed me the most.” The tears began to fall as Elisha lowered her head. “I was afraid…”
Pro was overcome. She rose from the chair and knelt in front of her mother, taking the older woman’s hands in her own. “Now you listen to me. You were the finest mother anyone could have asked for.”
