“Yes, you ought.” Mira spoke gently. “Some people aren’t capable of love. You know that, too.”
“Better than most. I had this fantasy. Didn’t even know I had it until it shattered on me. That she was looking for me, worried about me. Trying to find me all this time because . . . under everything she loved me. But she didn’t. There wasn’t anything but hate in her eyes when she looked at me. Looked at the child.”
“You know it wasn’t you she hated because she never knew you. Not really. And her lack of feeling wasn’t—isn’t—your fault. It was—and is—her lack. You’re a difficult woman, Eve.”
She laughed a little, jerked a shoulder. “Yeah. So?”
“A difficult woman, often abrasive, moody and demanding, and impatient.”
“Are you going to get to my good parts anytime soon?”
“I don’t have that much time.” But Mira smiled, pleased to hear the habitual sarcasm. “But your flaws, as some might see them, don’t prevent those who know you from loving you, respecting you, admiring you. Tell me what you remembered.”
Eve blew out a breath, and ran through it with the cool dispassion and attention to detail she’d use in a police report.
“I don’t know where we were. I mean what city. But I know she whored for money and drugs, and that was okay with him. I know she wanted to ditch me, and that wasn’t okay with him because he had other plans for me. For his investment.”
“They weren’t your parents.”
“I’m sorry?”
“They conceived you—egg and sperm. She incubated you, and expelled you from her body when it was time. But they weren’t your parents. There’s a difference. You know there is.”
“I guess I do.”
“You didn’t come from them. You overcame them. There’s another difference. Let me say one more thing before my assistant chews through my door and punishes me for ruining her schedule. You’ve also left your mark, and had an impact on more lives than either of us can count. Remember that when you look in the mirror, and into your own eyes.”
Chapter 11
When Eve walked into the break room, Baxter was chowing down on an enormous sandwich that smelled too good and looked too fresh to have come out of the facility’s AutoChef, any of the vending machines, or the take-out counter at the Eatery.
It looked civilian and delicious.
Beside him at the square table, the sweet-faced Trueheart was making neat work of a leafy salad topped with chunks of chicken. Across from them, a woman who looked to have seen the dawn and dusk of a couple of centuries beamed goodwill over them.
“There now,” she said in a reedy voice, “isn’t that better than anything you can get out of a machine?”
“Glump,” Baxter responded over bread and meat in what was obviously delirious agreement.
Trueheart, who was younger, nearly as green as his salad, and whose mouth wasn’t quite as full at the time, scraped back his chair when he spotted Eve. “Lieutenant.” He shot to attention as Baxter rolled his eyes in amusement over the rookie, and adoration over his sandwich.
He swallowed. “Jeez, Trueheart, save the brownnosing until after I digest. Dallas, this is the amazing and wonderful Mrs. Elsa Parksy. Mrs. Parksy, ma’am, this is Lieutenant Dallas, the primary investigator you wanted to see.”
“Thanks for coming in, Mrs. Parksy.”
“My duty, isn’t it? As a citizen, not to mention as a friend and neighbor. Lois looked after me when I needed it, now I’ll look after her, best I can. Sit down, dearie. Have you had your lunch?”
Eve eyed the sandwich, the salad, and ignored the envy that swirled in her mostly empty stomach. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I told these boys I’d fix extra. Can’t abide food out of a machine. It’s not natural. Detective Baxter, you offer some of that sandwich to this girl. She’s too skinny.”
“I’m fine, really. Detective Baxter told me you saw a man leaving Mrs. Gregg’s apartment building on Sunday morning.”
“Did. I didn’t talk to the police before as I went straight on to my grandson’s after church and stayed overnight. Didn’t get back home until this morning. Heard about Lois on the news yesterday, of course.”
The countless wrinkles in her withered raisin of a face shifted in what Eve took for sorrow.
“I’ve never been so shocked and sad, even when my Fred, God rest him, fell under the Number Three train back in 2035. She was a good woman, and a good neighbor.”