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“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
His gaze turned toward her. “Was she drinking?”
She never should have told him about Sandy’s drinking. It was a part of her life that was between her and her mother and Marie. Outsiders didn’t understand. They judged.
But Ramsey Miller had been safely removed several states away, with no cause to ever be in Aurora, or anyplace close to her personal life, the night several months before then when she’d first found out Sandy was drinking again. She’d been tired. And discouraged
. And he’d called to tell her that another missing toddler had fallen into Peter Walters’s clutches.
They’d both been having low moments and had traded woes. No big deal.
“I don’t think she was drinking,” she said in answer to his question. If he judged he judged. He was going back to Massachusetts, anyhow. “She had a nightmare.”
“Wakerby induced?”
“They all are, in one fashion or another.”
“She has them often?”
They were passing the time it took to drive to their next business meeting. What was it going to hurt to be honest with him? He saw too much, anyway.
And, she reminded herself again, he was leaving.
“All my life. When I was little she used to come into my room whenever she had a nightmare and wake me up just so that she could make certain that I was okay.”
Maybe if people saw Sandy’s pain, they wouldn’t judge her as harshly as her teachers at school had. The guidance counselor in junior high who’d tried to sic child protective services on them. The mothers of schoolmates—potential friends— who wouldn’t let their children play at Lucy’s house, or, in later years, hang out there, because of Sandy’s influence.
“We’d play games. Or watch television. When I was a little older, we’d watch movies on the VCR.”
“On school nights?”
“Yes.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That must have made it rough at school the next day.”
“I graduated with a three point six.” She’d shown the naysayers that she could thrive just fine living with her mother. “My mother lost a child in a brutal fashion,” she said, turning onto the freeway that would take them into Cincinnati and back to UC. “It’s something she’s going to live with for the rest of her life. You don’t go through something like that and get over it.”
“I’m not suggesting you do.”
His tone suggested that she might have come on a bit too strong. Defensiveness where Sandy was concerned was inbred.
“I can’t take away the horrors my mom lives with, but I can make the worst times easier to bear,” she said, softening her tone. “Talking to me, connecting with me, eases her panic. Calms her. I bring her a measure of peace.”
“That’s a hard cross for a child to bear.”
“I turned out okay.”
He didn’t respond and his silence bothered her. Did he think there was something wrong with her?
Was he judging her, too?
Was that why he wasn’t interested in kissing her?
