“Anything I can do to perk you up? A little Groucho?” I raised my brows and flicked an imaginary cigar.
“Just let me be.”
“I feel so bad.”
“Not bad enough to stay home.”
It felt like a slap. My expression must have said so.
“I’m sorry.” Katy’s hand fluttered to her mouth, froze, as though uncertain of the purpose of its trip. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I know.”
“It’s just . . .” Her fingers curled. “I feel such rage and there’s nowhere to point it.” Her fist pounded one knee. “At dumb-ass Coop for going to Afghanistan? At the Taliban for gunning him down? At God for letting it happen? At myself for giving a shit?”
Katy swiveled toward me. Though dry-eyed, her face was pallid and tight.
“I know anger and self-pity are pointless and counterproductive and self-destructive and blah blah blah. And I’m really trying to pull out of my funk. I am. It’s just that, right now, life sucks.”
“I understand.”
“Do you? Have you ever had someone just blasted off the face of the earth? Someone you really cared about?”
I had. My best friend, Gabby. Cops I’d worked with and cared about. Eddie Rinaldi in Charlotte. Ryan’s partner, Jean Bertrand. I didn’t say it.
“Look, Mom. I know you’ve come here to do a job. And I know Coop’s death is not your fault. But you’re gone all day, then you get back all sunshine and Hallmark compassion.” She threw up both hands. “I don’t know. You’re in the zone so you take the hit.”
“I’ve taken worse.”
Wan smile.
Turning from me, Katy fidgeted with the tie at her waist, finger twisting and retwisting the string.
Overhead, palm fronds clicked in the breeze. Down at the shore, gulls cawed.
Katy was right. I’d dragged her thousands of miles, then dumped her in a place she knew nothing about. Yes, she was twenty-four, a big girl. But right now she needed me.
The familiar old dilemma knotted my gut. How to balance motherhood and job?
My mind flailed for solutions.
Work alternating days at the CIL? Half days?
Impossible. I’d come to Honolulu at JPAC expense. And Plato Lowery was anxious for an answer.
Take Katy to the CIL with me?
Definitely a bad idea.
I started to speak. “Maybe I could—”
“No, Mom. You have to go to work. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
“It helps to stay busy.” Gently.
I braced for incoming. Didn’t happen.
“Yes,” Katy said. “It does.”
Suggestions leaped to mind.
Rising, I hugged Katy’s shoulders. Then I went inside, changed to shorts, and strolled down to the beach.
The sun rode low, streaking the horizon and ocean tangerine and pink. The sand felt warm and soft underfoot, the breeze feathery on my skin.
Walking the water’s edge, childhood memories popped into my brain. Summers at Pawleys Island. My sister, Harry. Gran. My mother, Katherine Daessee Lee.
Daisy.
Triggered by the setting and my recent encounter with Katy, synapses fired images and emotions.
My mother’s eyes, green like my own. Sometimes radiant. Sometimes cool, refusing to engage.
A child’s confusion.
Which mother today?
A woman driven by social pretension? The newest spa, the trendiest restaurant, the charity event receiving current social column ink.
A woman in seclusion? Shades drawn, bedroom door locked, sobbing or silence within.
How I hated Daisy’s frantic party mode. How I hated her withdrawal into her lilac-scented cell.
