Instead, Phoebe continued downstairs. Coffee, she thought again, and maybe a quick carton of the low-fat yogurt she constantly tried to convince herself she actually liked. Leave a note on the fridge, check with the cop on duty, and she'd be gone.
As she stepped into the kitchen, Essie turned from the stove. Both women gasped and stumbled back.
"I thought you were upstairs asleep," Phoebe said.
"I thought you were." Essie gave her heart two quick pats. "Though you might as well shoot me as scare me to death, I'd as soon you didn't. Shoot me," she said with a nod toward the hand Phoebe had on the butt of her weapon.
"Sorry." Phoebe let her hand slide away. "It's barely six in the morning, Mama. Why aren't you upstairs sleeping?" And at her mother's quiet stare, Phoebe shook her head, then moved over. "Mama." With her arms around Essie, she rocked. "What a goddamn mess."
"You're dressed for work."
Phoebe kept holding, kept rocking, but the eyes she'd closed opened again. "I need to go in."
"I wish you didn't. I wish you wouldn't. I wish… No, don't pull back to pat and placate me." Essie's voice sharpened as she tightened her hold on Phoebe. "You're still my little girl, and I wish I could keep you safe in this house. My whole family's under this roof now, and I wishI know it's sick and it's selfish but, my God, I wish I could keep all of you here."
It was Essie who stepped back. "And I know I can't. I'll get your coffee."
Phoebe started to say she'd get it herself, then stopped. Busy hands, she knew, helped her mother's worried mind. "I know you're scared, Mama."
" 'Course I'm scared. I'd be stupid not to be. Roy's worthless ass is blown to hell." She glanced back as she got out a mug. "I keep thinking
I should feel bad saying that kind of thing, but I don't. You never blamed him nearly enough, to my way of thinking. Didn't matter, because I blamed him plenty for both of us. But I'm scared for you, baby.
For all of us."
She poured coffee, added the cream and sugar exactly as Phoebe preferred. "I know you're worried I've gotten worse."
"I worry," Phoebe agreed. "I'm still your little girl, right? Well, you'll always be my mama."
"Sit down, baby. I'm going to fix you some breakfast."
"I don't have time. I'm just going to grab a carton of yogurt."
"You hate that stuff."
"I know. But I'm trying to acquire a taste." Determined, Phoebe opened the fridge, grabbed a carton at random. Once she'd opened it, : gotten a spoon, she leaned back against the counter. "I know that with what happened, with being smart enough to be scared, you'd be cautious about going out in the courtyard, or onto the front veranda, but-"
"I've been having trouble with that for a while now." Idly, Essie picked up a dishcloth to wipe the already spotless counter. "The veranda, the bedroom terrace especially. Palpitations," she said. "Knowing it's in my head doesn't make my heart beat any easier. But what you've never really understood is, I'm content inside this house. I don't need what's out there."
Phoebe ate some yogurt. It tasted sour, just like her thoughts. "The world?"
"I've got a nice world inside this house most days, and if I need to know anything more about the outside one, I've got my computer. Honey, let me fix you some eggs."
"This is fine." She picked up her coffee to wash the taste away. "Have you been having panic attacks when I'm not here?"
"Not full-blown ones. Tickles now and then. Phoebe, there's only one reason I wish I could walk out that door. That's so you could, if that's what you wanted. So you could walk away from this house. If I could, is that what you'd do?"
"Mama, I don't have time to talk about this now."
"It's not yet six-thirty in the morning, and if you're in a hurry, then you can answer quick and be done with it."
Phoebe opened a cabinet, tossed the half-eaten yogurt in the trash.
"I don't know. Some days, I'd say yes. I'd walk away from this house just to spite Cousin Bess. She had no right, no right to work you like a dog and give you nothing."
"She gave me a place to take my children when I was desperate."
"And made you pay and pay and pay, every single day."
"Do you think that mattered?" The little white scar stood out sharply when Essie's cheeks flushed with emotion. "Do you think that ever mattered to me?"
"It should have."
"That's you, Phoebe. You've got a tough mind in there, and you tend to draw hard lines with it."
"Mama-"
"Maybe you've had to have one, and maybe you need those lines.
And still, my darling girl, what wouldn't you do to be sure your Carly is safe and well? Did you leave Roy, when God knows you hate to give up on anything, hate to lose? Did you walk away from the FBI for yourself, or because you believed it was better for her if you took the position with the local police? For her, and for me-and don't think I haven't always known that. Did you count the cost?"
"It's not the same, Mama. She treated you like dirt, and Carter little better."
"And I've always felt there was a special place in hell with her name on it for the times she pinched and poked at that poor little boy. But he had a home, and food, and he had you and me. He had Ava, God love her, for good measure."
"The house should've been yours, free and clear."
"It's mine close enough, not free and clear, but mine all the same. Do you hate it so, Phoebe?"
"No." She sighed. "No. Some days I hate the idea of it, I hate the strings she pulls even from that reserved table in hell. She knew I would, and it burns my ass, Mama, to prove her right. But the fact is, Carly loves this house. She loves the courtyard and her room, she loves the neighborhood and the park. So, no, I don't count the cost. Or only when I'm feeling pissy. So I don't know, Mama, if you could walk out the door, if I would, too."
She drained her coffee. "I have to get to work."
"I know you do."
Essie stayed where she was, listening to Phoebe walk down the hall, across the foyer. She heard the door open, close. And she moved to the window, to look out at the courtyard with its lovely flowers and shrubs, its elegant fountain and pretty pockets of shade.
And she saw a bottomless black pit.
Chapter 25
She got in early enough to push through more files, to add to her list. The feds could've made her jump through hoops, but Phoebe knew enough people in the local bureau to slip through several tangles of red tape.
More than ten years, she thought, between her time with the Bureau and with the SCPD. Almost a third of her life. More than a third of her life if she counted the time in college, in the academy. But a decade at the work, on the job.
She'd lost fourteen people.
Her mother was right, Phoebe admitted. She hated to lose, and she'd lost fourteen in a bit under eleven years.
It didn't matter that three of those had died of injuries sustained before she'd been called on scene. And if it didn't matter to her, she was damn sure it didn't matter to Roy's killer.
So, all those losses would have to be reexamined.
She pushed back from her desk, prepared to go into the field, and Sykes tapped on her doorjamb. "Lieutenant?"
"Come on in. Ah, Arnie Meeks. His alibi hold?"
"Yeah. Story matches." Sykes's face twisted into a sour expression, as if he'd swallowed something that didn't sit quite right. "More, the woman he's cheating with has one of those nosy neighbors. She saw Arnie go in the alibi's house just before ten Sunday night. Knows his car, too, as she's seen him there before. He'd parked up the block, but she spotted it when she took her dog Lulu out for a walk around midnight." "Right."