Senator Love by Warren Adler Page B

revealed nothing but a seamless grey slab.
Finally, under control again, she turned back to Mrs. Taylor. "But even a
pretty bird must flah on her own. There was no way to keep huh in a cage. There
was no stoppin huh."
    Fiona saw the onslaught of memories invading the woman,
reviving the pain of the old grief. Fiona had been through similar situations
many times before. It had never been easy and only a great effort of will kept
her emotions in check. Her experience had also taught her that the woman was
deliberately postponing the inevitable revelation on the theory that any new
information would be the awful truth.
    It was, in a way, a danse macabre, a kind of game.
Postponing the revelation also gave Fiona an opportunity to learn more before
the curtain came down irrevocably.
    "What did she do there? In Washington?" Fiona
asked.
    Mrs. Taylor, cooperating in the silent conspiracy, nodded,
continuing.
    "Worked for this committee in the Congress of the United States. Loved huh job. She wrote often. Called once a week. And then..." Mrs.
Taylor's grey-blue eyes misted, but she was a woman who obviously considered
control a virtue and she quickly recovered. "Later we blamed ourselves foh
the estrangement between Betta and mah late husban and myself."
    There was a long pause through which Fiona remained silent.
She was certain that the woman sensed her daughter's death, had sensed it for
years. Still she held back her own question. Now she was remembering, holding
back the flood of emotion, like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.
Fiona knew she would be more forthcoming in this state than later, when the
dike burst.
    "Somethin changed. She wouldn't tell us much. Even
when she came home on holidays she told us nuthin about her life except that
she still had the same job and she was happy. But we both knew, mah husban and
I, that somethin had changed. Parents know their children. Wasn't that she was
morose or unhappy. Not moody. She was quieter, like she feared sayin much to
us. Betta always confahded. That was what made us think that somethin was being
hidden from us. Oh we asked if she had any boyfriends. Mah husban worried more
about that than anythin. She just smahled over that one, but she told us nothin
and treated us as if we didn't have a raht to ask." She paused, shook her
head then looked away and stared into space. "So we went up thayah to see
for owah selves." The woman paused and cleared her throat. Then she saw
that Fiona's cup was empty.
    "May ah offer you moh?" she asked. Fiona
declined, worried that the interruption might inhibit the woman's story. It
didn't.
    "We came up thayah without tellin Betta. It was a
Sunday, ah remembah. We had her address. She told us she was livin with some
girls in an apahtment on Capitol Hill." She shook her head. "We
didn't expect to fahnd what we did. She was livin in one of them townhouses
that had been converted to apahtments. She was sure surprahzed to see us. Not
too happy, I can tell you. In fact, she was downraht mad, accusin us of spahin
on her. The surprahz was owas, I can assure you. We saw no sahns of girlfriends
and the place looked more expensive than she could afford. We had words and it
was apparent that Betta wanted us to leave and we did." She shrugged and
was silent, forcing Fiona to prod her.
    "What did you and your husband think?"
    "We may be small-town folks, but we are not uneducated
and naive." She drew herself up stiffly in the chair. "Somebodah was
helpin her pay for that."
    "Did you confront her with that accusation?"
    "We did. She told us to mahn our own business. Oh, she
had become arrogant. While we wuh thayah she got a phone call and we heard
words between huh and whoever it was. They're jes leavin, she told the person.
And we had the impression that the person on the othah end was none too happy
with the revahlation that Betta's parents had come to visit."
    "Did you have any idea who that might be?"
    She shook her head.
    "Any intuitive