Page 26 of Threat of Danger
“I saw it in the paper.”
“You know I’m not going to rest until I have an article about your return.”
“Are you going to stalk me again?”
During that month after the kidnapping, before she’d left for LA, Mark had been her constant shadow. He had seemed obsessed with the story. Jess had even thought he might have been obsessed withher. At the lowest point, when her anxiety had crossed over into paranoia, she’d wondered if he’d been the kidnapper. Jess had never seen the masked attacker’s face. Maxwell was the right height and body type.
Having him inches from her now still made her uncomfortable.
Ten years ago, she had cringed from him. Now she pulled her spine straight and stared him down, looked at his hand on her door frame, then back into his eyes.
“Get your hands off my car. I’m not a hurt little girl anymore. You come near me again, and I’ll slap a restraining order on you so fast, your press pass will fly into the next county.”
A cold, calculating expression took over his face, with more than a little anger simmering under the surface.
She slammed into the car and yanked the door closed. He had to snap his hand back or lose the fingers, so he moved fast.
Jess drove away, refusing to let him upset her. She was past all that now. Maxwell was nothing but one of the demons from her past. And she’d just taken control of the situation and put him in his place. She liked that.
She couldn’t wait to tell Pam all about it tonight. She was looking forward to seeing her old friend again. As Jess drove off to Burlington, she was in a lighter mood than she’d been in since she’d gotten her mother’s text on that rooftop in New York.
“I’m taking some furniture from the house to the garage so you can move around when you come home,” she told her mother once she was sitting in the plastic chair next to Rose’s hospital bed again. “I’d also like to move Zelda down to the dining room, and move your things down to Dad’s office by the time you come home. It’ll take a while to get all that done, so I’ll probably stay longer than I thought.”
“Yes, that sounds great.” Her mother grabbed on to the offer. “Thank you.”
She had a little more color in her face today, her eyes clearer. Maybe she wasn’t on as many pain meds now as she had been right after the surgery.
A couple of seconds passed in silence; then Jess said, “I heard the Daleys moved into town.”
“Helen had a double knee replacement that didn’t heal well. Couldn’t deal with the stairs. And I think Bob might be in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s.”
Jess’s heart sank. “I didn’t know that.”
She liked Mrs.Daley. She’d put up with a lot from her husband over the years. Mr.Daley wasn’t bad either, when he wasn’t drinking. He’d taken care of a number of people who’d fallen on hard times, given them work on the farm.
Two widows—sisters—lived down the road from the Daleys on the opposite side of the road from the Taylor farm. Mr.Daley would plow their driveway clean all winter, every winter. If he was too drunk, Derek would step up and do it.
“What happened to the Pratt sisters?” Jess asked.
“Moved to a retirement home.”
How would you feel about something like that?Jess held the words on her tongue, trying to decide whether this was the right time to ask them. Not a retirement home, but something more manageable than an old farmhouse and a sugaring operation.
Her mother must have seen the question in Jess’s eyes, because she stiffened. “I’m notthatold.”
“Zelda is.”
“I can take care of Zelda.”
Jess looked pointedly at the hospital bed. Then she said, reasonably and gently, “That sugaring operation is too big for you. You could sell the farm and live a much easier life. You could take early retirement like Mr.Crane.”
If the high school principal, Harold Crane, knew when it was time to quit, why didn’t her mother?
But instead of seeing Jess’s point, Rose flattened her lips. “You never appreciated your heritage.”
And just like that, the mood in the room changed, fromhopes of reconciliationtosame old shit. Did all mothers and daughters fall back into old ruts this fast?
“Maybe you always loved that heritage too much,” Jess said.More than you loved me.
