She gasped, whirled and ran, leaving him feeling bloody even if he was the one doing the slicing. Bitch, he thought. She played me. I hope she’s crying. She deserves to get hers.
He wanted to go smash windows. Faces. Something. No more Cait to make him feel normal. Warm.
Who cares? he told himself. Who needs her?
CHAPTER THREE
MOLLY PAUSED IN THE HALL outside her daughter’s bedroom door, cocking her head to hear music or a voice. Nothing. Probably Cait was listening to her iPod while she worked on a school assignment or talked with friends online or texted. After a moment she knocked. “Cait?”
The “Yeah?” didn’t sound very encouraging, but Molly opened the door, anyway. How things change. Six weeks ago she’d have been welcome anytime in Caitlyn’s bedroom. Now she had no idea what was happening in Cait’s life. Maybe today Molly could get her to open up.
Sure enough, Cait sat cross-legged on her bed, an earbud in and her smartphone in her hands. She looked up with an expression that said, Why are you bothering me?
Molly sat at the foot of the bed, anyway. “Is something going on with you and Trevor?” she asked bluntly. “I haven’t seen you with him lately.”
“Bet you’re really sorry, aren’t you?” Resentment gave a razor edge to every word.
“I’m sorry for anything that hurts you. Please believe that, if nothing else.”
Dark smudges surrounded Cait’s eyes. Heavier than usual makeup, or had she rubbed her eyes, forgetting that she wore mascara? Wanting to reach out to her, Molly restrained herself.
Cait shrugged. “We broke up, so I guess you can go out and celebrate.”
“Honey…”
“I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” Cait stared wildly at her. “Especially not with you.”
Molly flinched at the sheer venom and knew her daughter saw it. She wanted to say something parentlike, wise, understanding, but her mind was a giant blank. After a moment, she nodded, stood up and left the room without saying another word. She heard the sob behind her as she closed the door, but she didn’t stop, felt no temptation to go back.
She went to her own room and sat in the easy chair where she often read. It had to be ten minutes before she was calm enough to feel rational. Mostly rational. Right at this moment, she couldn’t figure out how parents went on after scenes like this and looked at their children with love. She couldn’t even figure out why this particular scene had hurt so much. All she knew was that it had.
On instinct she changed to running clothes, including the iron maiden bra she had to wear when active. She’d use the middle school track. She was less likely to be recognized there than at the high school. She ought to be putting on dinner, but if Cait got hungry tonight she could feed herself. Molly didn’t even knock on her daughter’s door on the way out to tell her where she was going.
She found the track deserted and, after stretching, began to run. Slowly at first, then pushing herself harder and harder. She was on the third mile before she recognized the stew of emotions inside her as a sense of betrayal. The person she loved the most had turned on her, and all the child psychology she could summon, all the reason, didn’t seem to help.
She doesn’t really hate me, no matter how it sounded. How it looked. I know better. I know if I’m patient, when she’s eighteen or twenty she’ll return to me, my loving daughter. I know that. I do.
Hormones. Pulling away. Cait’s behavior was typical. Probably more typical than the way she’d breezed through the usually difficult middle school years.
I’m an adult. I’m the parent.
Yes, she was. But did that excuse Cait?
She was running all out now. Too fast, her lungs heaving. The slap of her feet on the track was all she heard.
I love her.
I don’t deserve this.
Finally she had to make herself slow, then walk. Her eyes stung from sweat and her thigh muscles felt like jelly.
The childish hurt had faded, replaced by a crushing sense of failure. What was she doing in a profession for which she was obviously so ill qualified? She cringed at the superiority she’d felt as she counseled parents from her own lofty height as the mother of the perfect child. To think she’d dared when she knew so little about being a parent or even a teenager. She certainly hadn’t been a usual one herself. She had never been able to rebel.
Who was I to talk? she marveled. And then, No wonder Richard Ward looked at me like that.
She felt stiff and slow and older than her thirty-five years when she got back in her car and started for home.
* * *
CUTE LITTLE CAITLYN Callahan seemed to be a thing of the past. So far as Richard could tell, there wasn’t another girlfriend, per se, although there were certainly girls. Trevor was coming home smelling of cigarettes first, then booze and finally pot. They had one ugly confrontation after another. Richard wondered if there were still military-style boarding schools.