by Leanne Brice
It seems Scott still hasn’t quite gotten over whatever he had with this girl, and I want to ask him more—what happened to her? Why didn’t it work out between them? But I’m hesitant to disturb whatever memory lane he’s now on; it seems painful, but welcome to him. Like he’s appreciating the moment to go back there—the pleasure of it worth all the pain.
Damn, I’m suddenly glad Jewel didn’t get to string me along for much longer—I have no doubt I could’ve fallen for her hard, and the next thing I know, I’m a mess when she does take off, then trying to bang anything that breathes in lame attempts to forget her, including my friends’ sloppy seconds.
As my mind returns to Jewel, I remember I need to figure out what to do next. I’m wasting too much time here.
While Scott’s busy sorting out another drink order, I approach Nate.
"Hey, Nate—I need to talk to you for a sec. Privately.”
Nate seems only too happy to be pulled aside.
"Dude, what the fuck?” he says quietly, his eyes are searching my face, great worry reflected in them.
"Is it really that obvious?"
"That something went down? Yeah. I don’t know if those guys picked up, but spill it.”
I fill Nate in on the rest of the details, unable to look at him as I talk.
I don’t want to see the judgment or worse, amusement on his face at my expense.
I know he’s my friend but everyone loves a juicy story. That’s just a fact.
I run my hand through my hair, frustration filling me again with my recap.
My emotions have risen to the top again.
“I mean, she totally cleaned me out!” I finish, looking at him last, prepared to see some sort of judgment or poorly hidden pleasure on his face.
Thankfully, all I see is sympathy as he lets out a long breath.
"That fucking sucks,” he says, emphasizing each word.
Definitely an understatement, but his tone makes up for it.
"I need to find her,” I say. “You know how much that watch means to me.”
His eyes study me.
"Is it really just about the watch?” he asks, looking a little too wise.
I consider following through with the lie I’ve been perpetrating since I left the suite to head to the casino.
Yes, it’s just about the watch—screw the stolen money. It’s definitely not about the girl herself.
"No," I admit, knowing he’d see right through me. "Despite what she’s done to me, I need to see her again—if only to confirm she’s not who I thought she was, that my gut, for the first time ever, was wrong. I need to get closure in a way. I need her to show me her true colors.”
He takes a breath and I’m not sure how to interpret it.
“What do you need me to do?" he says.
I stare at him, once again struck by how much of a real friend he is to me.
Sometimes I forget some people are actually capable of loyalty. Sometimes I forget there are people you can count on.
"That’s where your skills come in,” I say. “Hopefully, this doesn’t have to get much bigger—I’d prefer to just track her thieving ass down here quickly, get my watch back, then turn her in to authorities.”
“What info do you have on her?”
Boy, do I regret not looking through her stuff earlier—I don’t have a single clue to work with.
All I know is what she looks like and the name she gave me—which I’m damned sure by now isn’t her real name.
I really don’t want to have to break out the big investigative guns, and I sure as hell don’t want to risk anyone else finding out about me getting played by some baby-faced blonde.
Plus, I’m guessing she wasn’t supposed to be in that room after all, that she weaseled her way in somehow.
“Anyway, I don’t want to give her too much of a head-start. Maybe we can start with the suite booking info?”
I can see Nate’s excited to put his hacking skills to work.
We head to his suite where he pulls his computer from the safety box and happily gets to work.
We find out whose info she used, but it’s pretty much a dead end.
We alert the hotel of the imposter and talk our way into getting access to security footage and nail the booking to a petite brunette.
I figure it’s just Jewel in disguise, so we access additional security footage and eventually pinpoint the same girl leaving hours later—same clothes, same wig.
“Sweet. Another dead end,” I say.
“Don’t you worry. I’ve got more than one card up my sleeve,” Nate says, his fingers flying over the keyboard again.
Chapter 10
April
I stare at the residence—the building supposedly housing my mother.
I’ve never been so nervous in my life—even when Taylor sent me to do my first big job.
I’m practically shaking, my palms are sweating, and I can hear my heartbeat in my ears while my heart thumps against my chest.
I’m even twiddling with my fingers like I’m twelve again.
I walk up to the door and knock, trying to remind myself there’s a chance she won’t answer. That she might not even be at home. That she has moved since my last address check.
That she’s the type who won’t open the door to strangers under any circumstances.
The wave of emotion washing over me as my mother opens her door is more than a little alarming.
I learned how to keep my emotions under control a long time ago, and though I get hit by joy at times at some of my luck—like pocketing a black card—such moments are brief, sharp, non-threatening to my state of mind and ability to act. The residual happiness is controlled, and I can operate normally.
This wave, however, almost knocks me off my feet.
I expected to be pleased by feasting my eyes on my mother again, to be happy about getting to see her in the flesh, warm-blooded, and familiar. To see recognition light up her eyes.
But there is no recognition in those ice-blue eyes.
“Hi!” I say with my brightest, warmest, most disarming smile.
This smile takes guards down like nobody’s business.
People tend to mirror others near them, and especially right in front of them, and even when I encounter someone wary who is resisting the urge to smile back, I catch the quirk of their lips as they fight the urge.
But from this woman, I get nothing.
"May I help you?" she asks.
I didn’t realize I was cheesing so wide until my smile rapidly retracts at her frosty words.
"Sort of," I begin, trying to regain my footing.
This is definitely one of those cases where giving my real name is appropriate.
“I’m… April,” I say, smiling again, barely strangling the word “mom” and stopping it from escaping.
I don’t want to freak her out. She already looks like a deer pausing their exploration of your yard because they heard a noise from inside the house.
"Your daughter,” I nudge.
She just stares at me, barely blinking, her blue eyes sending a chill through me.
She tilts her head, but the look in her eyes doesn’t change.
"Yes?" she says like she’s waiting for me to get to the point. “I know who you are,” she continues, though I have no idea when recognition dawned on her—her face hasn’t changed a bit.
Damn. Talk about a good poker face.
“What do you want?” she asks.
All right, I clearly need a different approach.
I’m pretty used to swerving—I’ve had to pivot like you won’t believe when I realize I’d miscalculated many times before, but the number of times I have to catch myself and regroup so far in the past minute or so is unmatched.
Mostly because my mother is giving me nothing—I don’t know which angle to work.
Clearly, just being a fruit of her womb is not enough to keep her interest, nor is being open, forgiving, and warm working in my favor.
<
br /> I feel something falling inside me, and I try to ignore my emotions so I can stay focused on the task at hand.
I can’t let it sink in that she might be unmoved by me; I can’t process the possibility that she actually couldn’t care less.
But you know what? Even if she is totally indifferent to my existence right now, I just have to win her over.
I’ve done this before countless times.
Heck, just recently, I took down a raging hothead in a matter of a minute, scrambling his brain so much, he left some of his valuables in the hands of a perfect stranger.
"I happened to be in the area, and I figured I’d drop by and say hi. It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, and I figured maybe we could catch up a bit."
I know my smile is coming across as nervous.
Dammit! Confidence, April. At the very least, don’t let her see how much this is affecting you; don’t give her that power.
Her lips widen ever so slightly in a distant smile.
"Catch up," she repeats dryly, and I can practically see the quotation marks around her words, almost as clear as if she’d done the gesture with her fingers. "What for?” she asks almost brightly.
She can’t be serious, right?
I mean, it’s not like I expected her to become overwhelmed with joy and scoop me up in her arms, holding her only child to her in relief that she turned out okay, that she’s still alive. It’s not like I expected we’d start baking cookies and braiding each other’s hair like deranged BFFs.
But I thought she’d at least be pleased to see what I grew into.
I’m a competent human being when it comes to taking care of myself. I made it all the way to this point, grounded and beautiful to boot. Shouldn’t she at least be proud?
My eyes start itching.
I recognize the feeling, but I know tears definitely won’t work on this woman, and I wouldn’t even have to fake them this time.
I take a breath and center myself again.
I’m sure my smile makes me look unbreakable this time.
"May I come in?" I ask more formally, my voice even.
Maybe the inside of her place will give me a clue as to how to reach her.
I can pretend to have a similar interest in something or other. Hell, we might actually have something in common—she’s my mother, for christ’s sake.
“Why?” she asks.
Dang, is she made of pure logic? Is there nowhere I can touch?
I try to think of a logical appeal.
God, I feel like a novice.
How is it she has made me feel like this is my first time putting myself out there all over again?
“I feel like a Jehovah’s witness or something out here,” I say lightly.
She hesitates for a moment, her eyes passing over me as she weighs the pros and cons of letting her discarded daughter inside her home.
I don’t blame her, I guess.
What if I have an ax to grind?
As far as she knows, I could be here to exact some sort of revenge, or, at minimum, try to ask something of her she’s not willing to part with—money. An apology. A kidney.
You can’t just trust people these days, much less let them inside your home. I should know.
I lift my hands in a surrendering motion.
"Relax," I say even more calmly, "I’m not here to ask you for anything, I’m just here to update you. Not for your sake, for mine. I won’t take too much of your time.”
Her mouth tightens briefly before she steps back to let me in.
I immediately glance around.
It’s a space I’ve never been in, obviously, but somehow, it feels almost the same as the space she carved out for us back in my childhood home.
Then again, people tend to recreate home in some way wherever they go—unless completely trying to leave it behind, of course.
In my first foster home, I tried to make it feel more familiar by arranging my stuffed animals the same way.
The room I’m in is sort of dark with lit candles, and it smells like incense.
My mom stands out in contrast to the dark room with her fair looks—white dress on pale skin.
I am suddenly struck by a moment of recollection—me, about eight, my hair in a single braid down my back—one of the rare times my mom decided to do something with it—working on some drawing while my mother floated around in a white dress, ‘smudging’ the room, I think she said, saying something under her breath while she waved around this smoking bundle of sticks.
I take a seat on the nearest couch but my mother remains standing near the door, staring at me, even after she has closed it.
It almost makes me stand up too, but she’d win in making me uncomfortable enough to leave sooner rather than later.
She obviously has nothing to say, so I begin.
Compliment her.
"You’re as beautiful as I remember," I begin with a warm smile. “And this place is nice; in fact, it reminds me so much of our old home." Oops. Keep it casual. No blame, no accusations. "Anyway, I’m just here in Vegas for my birthday weekend. Figured it would be a great place to celebrate my twenty-first birthday, and since I always wondered about you—if you were okay—I sort of tracked you down here at some point and figured if I ever had the chance to come visit, I’d say hi, let you know all’s well. So here I am. That’s it.” I shrug casually as I flash a smile again.
But that’s not it. I’m not ready to go yet.
“Anyway, I’m doing pretty well overall. Working in Hollywood now."
That last part isn’t exactly a lie. I did live in Hollywood, and I did ‘work’ there.
I even tried to get an acting career going at some point, but boy are there a lot of pretty people with far more experience doing the same.
I went to an audition once and thought someone had slipped me something beforehand, making me trip for a second—just about every girl there looked like me.
Anyone who thinks they’re something special can be humbled pretty quickly by attending a casting call. No matter how much you think your features are unique, you’re probably wrong.
Anyway, I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea to pursue such a career—if I got enough exposure, someone I scammed might recognize me at some point.
What I wanted to do was behind the scenes anyhow—I wanted to work in graphic arts.
My dream job is animating comics someday.
In another life, maybe I would have been holding down a steady job in the midwest somewhere while working on launching my career as a comic book artist before eventually transitioning to animation, working on Disney or Pixar movies or something.
Not that my mother is about to know any of this.
It seems I calculated correctly, and she asks no follow-up questions, so I don’t have to answer what exactly it is I supposedly do in Hollywood.
We sort of just look at each other for a few more seconds.
I mean, is she going to say anything else at all?
I find myself longing to hear her voice again, the voice that filled me with even more emotion once the familiarity of it registered as I stood outside, even as she stared at me coldly.
Her voice is clear and feminine, but firm.
And you should hear her sing. Her voice then sounds like sunny meadows. Like you expect butterflies to start landing on flowers magically appearing near you, even if you’re locked up inside.
"That’s nice," my mother says, starting to look agitated at last—but not because of guilt or anything. Her body language screams she wants me out of there.
My throat tightens briefly, and I rise from the seat.
"Well, it was nice to see you again," I say as casually as I can, but I’m not really sure how it came out. My footing feels unsteady once again.
I try to squeeze out another smile.
I fight back the instinct to at least extend my hand for a shake, but something tells me she’d just stare at it.
I certainly don’t e
xpect a hug or anything, despite how desperate I am for contact with her. I need to feel the warmth of my mother as she wraps her arms around me.
I know I can get through anything if I could just...
I lift my chest and hold my head high.
She has been missing almost half my life now.
I’ve done just fine without her all this time—why the hell should I need anything from her now?
As usual, I’ll manage the next stage by myself.
She opens the door for me, and I nod my head in final goodbye, unable to find any more words.
I jump a little as the door closes firmly behind me.
Wow. This is horribly embarrassing.
My throat feels weird again—like I took a huge bite of an apple—like, almost half of it—and now the chunk is stuck in there; I can’t get it to go down.
I suddenly get the impression that even if I had revealed that I found the cure to cancer, my mother would still look at me with those flat blue eyes, uninterested.
I am horrified to find my eyes stinging with tears.
I choke them back, impressed with my ability to suck them back in.
I re-center myself, casually acknowledging that my mom would make a terrible mark—even for Taylor.
My mother would be a hypnotist’s worst nightmare—none of the usual tricks work on her.
Talk about the opposite of gullible.
I try to think what I could have done differently, just like with some of the auditions I went on where I ultimately didn’t book the job and couldn’t stop thinking afterward about how I could have been better.
Oh, well.
It’s pretty obvious I’ll have to go back to that L.A. apartment now.
There’s always Lorax—if someone’s tutu-wearing dog hasn’t taken him out.
Getting back to the motel and even L.A. won’t be too problematic; free rides are one of the easiest things to get.
Still, though, talk about a one-eighty—the most promising trip ever turned into the most painful in the blink of an eye.
A drop of water suddenly splashes onto my arm.
Just great. It’s starting to rain now. Perfect.
