Double Cross
but Dad had drilled into me that when I wasn’t sure what was happening, I should always move—harder to hit that way. She followed me with her eyes as she pulled from her pocket a shiny digital camera. She held up the camera and peered into it. “Honey, hold still, I want to make sure I get this one.”
    Just before she pressed the button, she said, “Smile, baby, I’m your mother!”

CHAPTER
    EIGHT
    THERE IS NO WAY to plan for the reappearance of a mother after twenty years—especially a mother who bolted without even saying good-bye. I had struggled since I was nine to understand why she left and how she could have forgotten us so completely. No calls, no letters, no nothing.
    The saga had moved from sad to surreal, though, when I was twenty-nine and Simon Mason told me he had known my mother years before he and I met. “Known her” in the biblical sense, that is. Although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, that was why he had hired me—as opposed to the hundred other security professionals who would have leaped at the chance to take charge of security for a religious leader as well known as the pope.
    As she clicked away at me with her digital camera, I had no idea what to say or how to feel. I had mentally pictured this reunion a thousand times and in a variety of settings. No matter where or how we came together in these fantasies, one thing was consistent: She always threw her arms around me, cried, and asked me to forgive her, begged me to let her be my mother again.
    Now it was happening, right here in the foyer of Simon’s house, but she wasn’t holding me, or crying, or demonstrating any obvious interest at all in being my mother again. Instead, she was checking the price tags on Simon’s pottery and flashing away with a camera, like a tourist whose bus had just stopped in front of a decorative fountain.
    I waved at the black spots that flickered in my eyes. Before I could do anything else, she dropped the camera into her purse. “I just had to get a picture of your reaction the first time you saw me!” She held her arms out. “C’mon now and give your mother a hug.”
    After a twenty-year absence, she was asking me to run to her. That struck me as something a real mother would never have done—certainly not the mother of my fantasies. Blood rushed into my neck and cheeks, and something else rushed up behind my eyes. I was not going to allow it to happen. I was not going to cry, not here in front of her. Not until she earned it.
    My body moved forward and hugged her, but felt nothing warm or caring—or motherly—about her touch. It was a social hug, or a business hug, but not a mother’s hug. It was over in an instant. My shoulders sagged, but I forced them back and stood up tall.
    She loosened her grip. “I was so excited to see you that I took two wrong turns on the way over here. Had to stop at a Seven-Eleven for directions.”
    My effort to keep my lip from trembling seemed to trip a switch that transferred the unwanted motion to my knees. My legs wobbled. I felt for the stair rail behind me and sat on the second step.
    “Is there something wrong, baby?” Her eyes fixed on me for the briefest instant, then moved up and around to the stairway, then to the living room to her left, and finally to the dining room to her right. She was surrounded by unfamiliar architecture, unfamiliar furniture, and an unfamiliar daughter, and her glance made it clear that she had prioritized her interests in that order.
    Just then, Kacey came around the corner, a dribble of barbecue sauce clinging to the corner of her mouth. “What’s the ruckus? Did you win the publishers’ sweepstakes?”
    I realized my hands were clenched. I relaxed my fingers and pointed. “Kacey, meet my mother.”
    Kacey did a double take.
    “It’s true.”
    Kacey took a step forward and held out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. . . .” She looked at me again.
    “You’ll have to ask her. I don’t even know her

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