Page 66 of Seduction
Penina Ross
Ibooked a seat on a flight to Tampa that was taking off in two and a half hours and then called a cab. The driver was to arrive in half an hour. I packed fast, trying not to forget what I needed for a two-day stay in Tampa, Florida, while attempting to see clearly through my teary eyes. My suitcase was almost packed when I remembered that I had to call Deb. I didn’t want her to sense that I’d been crying, so I pulled myself together as much as I could before getting her on the phone. I told her I needed two days off.
“What’s going on? Are you okay?” She sounded highly concerned.
I closed my eyes to get a handle on my grief. “I have to fly to Tampa, Florida, and identify my mom’s body.”
She gasped and apologized profusely for my circumstances. Although she had nothing to do with my mom’s death, I accepted her apology and asked if she wouldn’t mind keeping my situation between the two of us.
“Of course. Your privacy will be respected.”
I thanked her. Deb wished me safe travels, and we ended our call.
Part of me wanted to call and report to Jake what had happened in his penthouse. That would’ve been the mature thing to do. Jake had been ready to tell me everything about himself, which more than likely would’ve included the information Gina had hurled in my face. I was blessed with a sharp intuition, and I recognized a spiteful person when I encountered one, so I wasn’t convinced she was Jake’s girlfriend. Her eyes had been shifting when she said it, and that indicated deception. Also, the energy in her body meant she was desperate to claim him. I was a threat to her. I probably should’ve stayed and held my ground.
With at least ten minutes to spare before the cab was to arrive, I had all that I needed in my suitcase, and I decided to wait for the driver out front. It was a warm and lively late afternoon. Cars raced up and down the road, and people shuffled along the sidewalks on both sides of the street.
But none of the activity distracted me from my thoughts about Jake. Maybe he had left Gina without ever officially breaking up with her. Anyone who was running from the law and would go through the effort of changing their identity was not only fickle, but also content with being the type of person no one could rely on. Jake and I had chemistry, that was for sure, but the more I learned that he was not the sort of person I could trust, the more I felt our connection fading.
I’d concluded that Gina was one jilted girlfriend too many when my suitcase and I plopped into the back seat of the taxi. It was time to focus on the new subject of my heartache—my mother. Aunt Christine wanted to meet me at the airport, but since I would be arriving in Tampa after ten p.m., I told her I would catch a cab and meet her at the hotel where she’d booked a room for the both of us.
“A real cab and not one of those services where you’re putting your safety into the hands of an unvetted average Joe?” she asked.
Even though my tears were still rolling, I smiled a little. “Yes, a real taxicab.”
The thought of not being alone made me happy, and I was excited about seeing her. My aunt was odd, but she was family. In her own way, she loved me very much.
* * *
The hustleand bustle of the airport was as miserable as I remembered it. I’d had no idea so many people wanted to fly to Florida at eight thirty at night. I had never been a happy traveler. It was the getting there that made me irritable.
I was still scowling once I made it to my window seat. By the time the last person boarded, I realized how lucky I’d been. The seat between me and the nice lady who smelled like gardenias and was knitting remained empty. The extra space in the middle and the fact that I was seated beside the perfect traveling companion relaxed me.
I pressed my head against the window, remembering a story Aunt Christine had told me once about my first Christmas. She said she was so happy that I was in the world, and she bought me everything under the sun. Oddly, that was the end of the story. She never said what happened next—at least I didn’t think so—and since I was only eight months old at the time, I couldn’t remember the toys or whatever happened to them. But it was memories like that that made Christine weird. I always felt there was a lot about Mom and our past she wasn’t sharing with me. However, I never pressed her for answers because deep down, I didn’t want to lose hope that one day Mary Louise Ross would rise to the occasion and become better than some of the greatest moms in TV history. Of course, I knew those women didn’t exist in real life, which meant my mother was more of the real thing than they were, but still, I kept hoping.
At some point during the flight, I fell asleep so hard that when the flight attendant shook me awake, the plane was nearly empty.
“Holy shit,” I said, springing to life, spurred by a sudden hit of adrenaline.
It hadn’t taken long after two days of getting too much rest to become completely exhausted again. Becoming a happy and successful surgeon required a work-life balance, and though I hadn’t achieved it yet, I was determined to one day find the key and unlock the answer.
I grabbed my purse out of the bin and disembarked the aircraft as fast as I could.
* * *
My neck was stiff,my head throbbed, and my body was jerky as I walked to baggage claim and grabbed my luggage. Instead of a cab, I caught a shuttle to the hotel. It was even warmer and more humid in Tampa than it was in New Orleans.
All the thoughts about Jake were back with a vengeance. I pinched my lower lip, remembering his delicious mouth on mine. I could somehow smell his skin, hear his voice, and picture his infrequent smile. I’d turned off my cell phone for the flight and chose to keep it off afterward, knowing he would be calling me by then. I couldn’t deal with trying to figure out whether he could be trusted. My eyelids grew heavier by the moment, and I couldn’t stop yawning. I had to force myself to put Jake in a box and deal with him when I was emotionally able to. The next morning, Christine and I would drive over to the coroner’s office together. Our appointment to identify the body of Mary Louise Ross was at ten a.m.
I tried to remember what my mom looked like. It was almost as if over the years, she’d become a faceless and bodyless aberration. My mom had been hooked on drugs, but which ones, I didn’t know. A daughter should’ve known, but not me. I never knew much about her—where she grew up, how she met my father, nothing. I’d been sent to boarding school at the age of thirteen. My aunt Christine had paid for it. But before then, my mom used to drag me around the smallest and poorest towns in Southern California. I never knew why we moved so much. She never worked a real job.
Suddenly, my mind fed me snapshots of Mary and certain men. I remembered one guy her age who stared at me as if he wanted to cart me off and never bring me back. Mary had slapped him, pulled a gun on him, and told him to leave and never come back. Once he was gone, she gathered me into her arms. Later, we took a long bus ride to somewhere else, and she hugged me close as I slept on the way to our next destination. Or maybe she didn’t hug me so close. I couldn’t remember.
My sinuses tightened, and I squeezed the bridge of my nose as tears slid down my cheeks. Then I swiped my face, though I was the only passenger on the shuttle, so I didn’t have to worry about sparking a fellow rider’s curiosity.
I wondered why, after so many years, I had remembered that. Then another memory I always tried not to think about came to me. My mom used to always make me sit here or there, usually somewhere in public, while she ran an errand that took her away for hours. How a child could sit in one place for that long, I had no idea, but that was exactly what I had done. Her instructions were to never talk to or go anywhere with anyone unless that person was Aunt Christine. I must’ve asked her about a police officer, because she advised me to run away from them too. If she didn’t return at the time she showed me on my watch, then I was to go into a store she had identified for me and tell the nice lady behind the cash register that I needed help and then give her an envelope.
She always made me keep that envelope folded and in my pocket, and I still had it. I had no idea why I’d kept it for so many years, but it was in my closet, inside a banker’s box where my birth certificate, social security card, old report cards, and stuff like that were stored. I had never opened the letter. Just thinking about it made my scalp prickle. I took a deep breath in through my nostrils and let the air clear my brain. Maybe I was ready to read it. As I released the breath, I decided to open the soiled and ragged envelope and read the contents as soon as I returned to New Orleans—or maybe not.
