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Now Emma realizes what the twinge is trying to tell her. DC is only a three-hour Acela train ride away from Penn Station, and they could have met for a day in New York if her mother had been willing to come north. Or her mother could have stayed on till Stamford and visited Emma at her new home, which she hasn’t seen yet. But she can’t let moments like this sadden or frustrate her. As her brother and she accepted years ago, their parentsdolove them, simply not in the way their children would like to be loved and not nearly as much as their mother and father love each other.
“I was only able to get away from London for a day and a half,” her mother adds, filling the silence and perhaps suspecting Emma’s disappointment. “I’m actually at Dulles now, waiting in the lounge for my flight.”
“Well, at least we’re getting to speak while we’re in the same time zone,” Emma says, still walking and keeping her tone as cheery as possible. There’s nothing to be gained with her mother by acting wounded.
“Yes, thatisnice. So tell me—is everything all right?”
The question, delivered with such a deliberate tone, throws her. The jury’s still out on whether Addison is a mind reader, but her mother definitely isn’t, at least not as far as her daughter’s life is concerned.
“Yes, Mom. By and large. Why do you ask?”
There’s a pause while her mother takes a sip of something, probably an ice-cold chardonnay. Emma pictures her leaning back in her chair, probably dressed more elegantly than any other woman in the first-class lounge, her light brown hair in a French twist.
“Well, because I got a very odd call today from Kyle Rand.”
Emma stops in her tracks. Why in the world would he be calling her mother? They’d had a small amount of one-on-one contact early in her marriage to Derrick. Kyle was intrigued with her mother’s expertise in certain areas of finance and how it related to his burgeoning hedge fund, and once, when her parents were visiting from London, he even invited Jessica out for a drink so he could pick her brain. But that was ages ago, and it’s hard to believe he even still has her number.
She tries not to betray her alarm. “Odd how?”
“He wanted to run something by me, an idea for an expansion within his own firm, and since I had a couple of minutes to spare, I offered to listen, though it turned out to be completely out of my wheelhouse. Then he brought up Derrick, saying they’ve reopened the investigation into his death. Is that true?”
“Yes, it’s true. I was going to mention it when we spokeon the phone next. They claimed it’s a routine reopening of a cold case, and not based on any new evidence, so I’m afraid it’ll be a dead end like the last time.”
“Ah, I see. Well, we’ll hope for the best.”
“Back to Kyle for a second. It seems incredibly strange that he’d call you out of the blue, Mom.”
“My sentiments exactly. And then he started asking questions about Tom.”
“Tom?” Emma says, feeling her blood begin to boil. “What about him?”
“Not much, because I didn’t allow Kyle to get too far. He wanted to know if I’d met him, and I said of course, and then he wanted to know what kind of guy I thought he was. I told him—as diplomatically as I could—that I didn’t feel it was appropriate for us to be discussing your new husband. You were devastated by Derrick’s death, but you had to move on with your life.”
“That’s a good answer, Mom,” Emma says, glad that her mother shut Kyle down fast, which isn’t really a surprise. Her mother might not be super loving and affectionate, but she’s always been fiercely protective of Emma and her brother. “What was his response?”
“He apologized, and said it was only meant to be a friendly call, but his tone cooled considerably.”
He’s clearly up to something and Emma needs to figure out what it is. But first she has to get her mother off the phone, an unfamiliar move. Usually, it’s her mother who’s “afraid she has to dash.”
“Mom, unfortunately I have to sign off now myself.”
“No problem, I should be heading to the gate anyway.”
“Have a good flight.”
“And you’re certain everything’s all right?”
“Yes, sure, Mom. Take care.”
“You, too, Emma.”
The call over, she quickly hurries back to the parking lot, and once she’s in the car, takes a minute to decide how to handle Kyle before tapping his number on her phone.
“Surprise, surprise,” he says, though there’s an alertness in his voice, as if he’s been waiting to hear from her. “We’re getting to chat twice in one weekend.”
“My mother told me you called her. What was that about?”
“Huh, she didn’t explain? I wanted to pick her brain about work.”
