The Perfect Mom Read online

  Everybody else just gaped at her. Her father got in bed with her to…like, touch her and stuff? Emma shuddered now, remembering. She knew kids got sexually abused by a parent, but she’d never actually met anyone before who admitted to it.

  The discussion pretty much died there. The counselor had asked Rochelle to stay behind when they split up. Emma wondered whether he’d known her dad did that, or if it was a big revelation. Would they call the cops and have him arrested?

  Creepy as the idea was of having your own father do that to you, Emma could kind of see why Rochelle might not want to tell, even if she wasn’t scared of him beating her up or something. Knowing your parents had gotten divorced because of you was bad enough. What if your dad was in prison because of you?

  Emma pushed the little call button on her head-board and, with a sigh, turned on her lamp and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She fumbled for her slippers and waited for one of the attendants. The thing she hated absolutely the most about being here was having somebody watch her pee!

  Only once or twice had she ever tried to puke after she thought she had eaten too much, but the feeling was horrible. She’d rather exercise. Besides…she liked knowing she had the self-discipline to refuse food. If she stuffed it all in her mouth and then puked it back up, she’d feel like a pig! She might be slim, but she wouldn’t feel good about it.

  After visiting the bathroom, she kicked off her slippers and got back in bed. It was time for her leg lifts. She always felt better once she was sweating and her stomach and thigh muscles hurt. Secretly exercising was the only thing she could get away with here that still gave her any feeling of control. They could make her eat, but they couldn’t stop her from burning off some of the calories.

  Without that…well, she didn’t know. The whole idea was scary. She got this desperate, clammy feeling, like when she saw a picture of somebody like Christopher Reeve and imagined losing absolute, complete control over her body, and having everything done to and for her. What if you were getting water therapy, and the attendants started to laugh about something and didn’t notice that water was washing over your face and you couldn’t breathe? How could you ever trust somebody that much?

  But what if you didn’t have any choice?

  Well, she wouldn’t let them decide everything for her! She’d fight, Emma decided. Like now.

  She lifted both legs together, felt the strain on her belly and lower back, counted slowly to five, then lowered them. Again. Again.

  She concentrated so fiercely, she hardly noticed that tears joined the beads of sweat on her face.

  “YOUR BROTHER HAD a funny expression when he saw me,” Logan said with amusement. “Is he going to beat me up the next time I run into him?”

  Kathleen laughed. “I hope not. I think he was just surprised. Like I said, I haven’t been dating. Besides, he’s a brother. He probably can’t figure out why anyone would want to ask me out.”

  “Oh, he must know his sister’s a looker.” Logan opened the menu.

  “Why, thank you!” She seemed pleased, as if she didn’t get told constantly that she was stunning.

  Tonight, when she came down the stairs in drapey black slacks and a simple but elegant white top that bared plenty of shoulder and throat, he’d gaped. Without the strain on her face and the tired shadows under her eyes, Kathleen was spectacular. Sitting across the table from her at Stella’s, candlelight playing with the fine, strong bones in her face, highlighting, shadowing, deepening the blue of her eyes, Logan felt a lurch in his chest every time he looked at her.

  “Made up your mind?” he asked, nodding at the menu.

  “Mmm.” She smiled. “I always get the pasta with the marinara sauce when I’m here. It’s wonderful.”

  “I’m a fan of their lasagna.” He closed his menu, too. “Wine?”

  “Please.”

  After the waiter left with their orders, Logan asked, “Do you have a picture of your daughter?”

  “Need you ask? I’m a mother.” She bent to pick up her small handbag.

  Plenty of mothers of troubled teenagers would just as soon forget they existed. He reached for her wallet as she handed it across the table.

  “There’s Emma in, let’s see, seventh grade. And this one is her school picture for this year.”

  There was no mistaking the mother-daughter resemblance. Her Emma was a blue-eyed blonde, too, with a face that had still been gently rounded and unformed in seventh grade, and was now gaunt. The sparkle she’d had when younger had been replaced by a kind of blankness in the more recent photo.

  “She’s pretty. She has your cheekbones and eyes.”

  A shadow crossed her face. “Do you know, she doesn’t believe she’s pretty?”

  “Teenagers are famous for thinking they’re ugly,” he pointed out. “Didn’t you spend time staring at the mirror, convinced that pimple in the middle of your forehead was the most hideous zit ever, or that your nose was too long or your teeth huge or something?”

  She had such a peculiar expression for a minute that he was afraid she’d say no. Maybe she’d never had an awkward stage or a single doubt.

  But she gave an odd little laugh and said, “What terrified me was that an ‘ain’t’ would slip out of my mouth, or I’d say something like, ‘He don’t go to this school,’ because that’s the way my mother talked. I wanted so desperately to look like someone whose family popped over to Greece in the summer or went skiing at Aspen in the winter. I just knew that everyone could tell I was a fake. I agonized over what were the right clothes, or how to laugh or flip my hair back or raise an eyebrow to wither the unworthy.” She shook herself. “The sad thing is, I was a fake. Maybe I still am. The truth is, my mom was a waitress and my dad a welder. We never had any money, my mom had a sixth-grade education, and my dad’s idea of a good time is sitting in a boat on a lake with a hook in the water and a cooler of beers at his feet.”

  He shrugged. “So, you’re self-taught. What’s so bad about that?”

  “Maybe nothing.” Her smile was crooked. “I don’t know. I just regret feeling so ashamed of where I came from.”

  “You know,” Logan said musingly, “the first time I saw you, I figured you belonged somewhere like Laurelhurst or Medina. You look expensive. Classy.”

  “Then, apparently I succeeded,” she said with deceptive lightness.

  The waiter appeared with their wine. When he was gone, Logan lifted a glass. “My suspicion is, everyone fakes it some of the time. Some people, most of the time. The few people who are genuinely self-satisfied are asses.”

  This laugh was a delighted gurgle. “Wait a minute!” she protested. “Aren’t there a few people out there who have learned to like themselves, flaws and all? Isn’t that a good thing?”

  Gaze holding hers, he grinned. “Those are the ones who fake it only some of the time.”

  “I see.” The laugh lingering in her eyes, she sipped her wine. “Which category do you count yourself in?”

  “Oh, I’m a some-of-the-time guy. For example…” Why not hang himself out to dry here? “When I asked you out, I thought about suggesting the symphony or a performance at Meany Hall of that dance company I saw advertised the other day. But that would have been dishonest and unproductive fakery. You’d have seen through me in no time. I’d have probably fallen asleep in the middle of the performance and humiliated you with my snores.”

  She laughed again, making him feel witty. “To tell you the truth,” she confessed, “I like country-western and folk music. I’m afraid I just don’t have the ear to appreciate classical.”

  “That’ll teach me to make assumptions.”

  “I look like Tchaikovsky, instead of George Strait?”

  Laughing himself, he said, “Something like that.”

  Her gaze shied from his, and color touched her cheeks. “I made a few assumptions myself.”

  “Like?”

  She said it fast. “That you’re a beer-drinking baseball fan.”


  Her stereotype wouldn’t have stung so much if she hadn’t already told him about her father.

  Logan set down his wine. “And you agreed to have dinner with me anyway?”

  Kathleen gave a crooked, apologetic smile that didn’t last. “My father would never have held a sobbing stranger and told her everything would be all right. He’d have mumbled apologies and retreated, like any sane man.”

  His eyebrows rose. “So now I’m insane?”

  “Nice,” she corrected. “You’re nice.”

  “Ah.” His jaw muscles bunched. “What if I told you I do drink beer, and I follow the Mariners?”

  She lifted her chin. “I’d ask what you think their chances are this year.”

  Logan managed a laugh that rumbled in his chest, but—damn it!—she’d hit him where it hurt. Okay, so he wasn’t college-educated. He’d never been to Aspen or Greece. That didn’t mean he was a dumb-ass, boozing redneck.

  “Piss poor,” he said, and made a few pithy remarks about the manager and last year’s trades, to which she responded intelligently.

  Okay, so she at least read the sports page. Or…

  “Your dad keep you up-to-date on the Mariners?”

  “What?” she said in surprise. “Oh. No. I only talk to him every few weeks. No, I turn on the games sometimes while I’m making soap.”

  “Ever go to games?”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t in years. Not since they blew up the Kingdome.”

  “Nice sunny day, it’s fun to watch a game, eat your Cracker Jacks, maybe stand up during the seventh inning stretch.”

  She cocked her head. “Is that an invitation?”

  Was she flirting with him? “Maybe,” he said cautiously. Then he thought, what the hell. “Sure. What do you say? Shall we take in a game at Safeco Field some Saturday?”

  “Maybe.” A shadow crossed her face. “I don’t know. Let me see how Emma is, and how she feels about…” She hesitated.

  “Me.”

  “No, not you.” She bit her lip. “Her mother dating.”

  He was tempted to say, The kid is sixteen. Almost an adult. You’re an entitled to a life. But he didn’t, because he wished like hell his own mother had cared enough to make sacrifices for him.

  Assuming, of course, that Kathleen wasn’t using her daughter as an out. Oh, I had such fun tonight, but Emma says no. I’m so sorry!

  His gut told him that Kathleen Monroe wasn’t coward enough to take that route, but he couldn’t be sure. Not yet.

  While they ate, they talked about music, movies and traffic, a favorite topic—or rant—of Seattleites these days.

  “I’ve got a book in my truck,” he admitted. “I spend so much time not moving at all on the freeway, I read.”

  “I only come north a couple of exits on my way home from work, and it can take me half an hour. Especially when it’s raining.”

  He snorted. “You’d think we’d never seen a drop of rain, the way traffic snarls when the road is a little slick.”

  She nodded. “I hate standing at the bus stop when it’s pouring, but, do you know, once you’re on the bus it’s so much faster than driving yourself.”

  She told him about her job as a receptionist at a chiropractor’s office. “I was so grateful to get it, and I hate every minute.”

  “What would you rather be doing?”

  “Running a nonprofit. Raising money for a good cause. I think, if I’d been able to take some time to get a job, I could have gotten hired as a fund-raiser or even director of a small nonprofit agency. I was on the boards of half a dozen when I was married to Ian. I can’t tell you how many events I’ve put on! I’m good at it.” She made a face. “That sounds immodest, but it’s true. I am.”

  “I believe you.” He studied her. “So why aren’t you doing it?”

  “Initially, I needed a paycheck fast. Last fall, I was just starting to look around when Helen had her brainstorm about us going into business with my soap. The idea of working for myself, of having something I love doing become profitable, was irresistible.”

  When he prodded, she told him about their dreams and plans. “We already have eight outlets in Seattle and three stores on the Eastside that carry our soap. We’re going to be doing a dozen or more craft shows this summer and selling directly to the public. We’re thinking of trying for Internet sales with a Web site, too.” She lifted her wineglass in a mock toast. “Who knows? Sales may dribble along and not be worth the time we’re putting into it, or I may become a business tycoon.”

  “I’ll bet on success.” Logan lifted his glass, too. “You look like a determined lady.”

  She seemed bemused at the idea, but after a moment she gave a small nod, as if arriving at a conclusion. “I suppose I am,” she admitted. “Emma might put it less kindly.”

  She asked about his business, as well, and how he’d become a cabinetmaker. He told her about the uncle who had raised him, a silent man who could say more with a squeeze of the shoulder or a clap on the back than most could with effusive praise.

  “Someday I’ll show you his work. He can do inlay you’d swear is seamless. When I was seventeen or eighteen, I helped him inlay a floor with leaves and twining stems.” Logan shook his head, remembering. “The house was featured in one of the big magazines. Home, I think.”

  “Really?” She looked suitably impressed, maybe just out of politeness. “Is he still alive? You did say ‘can’ and not ‘could.’”

  “Yeah, Uncle Pete is retired, but he still builds furniture for fun. Remind me to show you my dining room table.”

  How was that for cocky? he mocked himself. When you’re at my house… Uh-huh. Sure.

  But she nodded, instead of looking coolly down her nose at him. He wondered again why she had agreed to go out with him at all.

  Maybe just to talk, but she hadn’t spent the evening telling him her troubles. She’d actually been pretty restrained when mentioning Emma or her ex. She had either really wanted to learn more about him, or she was damn good at faking it.

  But if she was faking, that opened the question again: why was she sitting across the table from him?

  Was there any chance at all she was attracted to him? That if he kissed her tonight, on her doorstep, her lips would soften and she’d sigh and clutch his shirt, her head falling back as he explored her mouth?

  He was getting hard just looking at her and imagining her in his arms again, but for a different reason this time.

  Gritting his teeth, he thought, Beer and baseball. Her assumptions about him did not suggest that he’d stirred any coals of passion. She clearly despised her father and her roots, and Logan knew his own roots plunged right into the same soil.

  No, she’d been tempted for some reason, but a spark of desire wasn’t it.

  Maybe he’d just been handy. Her daughter was away and she could kick up her heels, but had no partner to lead her onto the dance floor. He’d asked, and she’d thought, Why not?

  Relaxing his frown, he saw that she was watching him with open amusement.

  “What?”

  “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said in the past five minutes.”

  “Sure I have,” he lied.

  “I just told you I thought I’d run for governor and asked if you’d vote for me.”

  “Ah…” He felt himself blush and laughed. “Okay. I remembered a phone call I should have made today. Sorry.”

  Over coffee they wandered onto the touchy subject of politics, and discovered they basically agreed.

  “Ian loved to tell me masterfully who was worthy of our votes. It frustrated him no end when I canceled out most of his votes.” She smiled. “I’m still canceling out his votes. My modest revenge.”

  At last, reluctantly, Logan said, “I suppose I should get you home.”

  “Mmm. Helen and I have an appointment to talk to the owner of a day spa in Edmonds tomorrow morning at ten, so I do have to get up.”

  Tossing bills on the table, Logan said, “
I don’t see you sleeping in until noon anyway. Am I wrong?”

  Kathleen sighed. “Unfortunately, no. I’m too…” She hesitated.

  “Disciplined?”

  “That sounds much nicer than ‘set in my ways,’ or ‘uptight.’ I just don’t like feeling lazy.” She made a sheepish face. “Have I administered a mortal insult? Don’t tell me you like nothing better than lounging in bed until two in the afternoon every Saturday and Sunday.”

  Logan held her coat as she slipped her arms into the sleeves. “No, you’re safe. I’d get bored. Eight o’clock is sleeping in for me.”

  “Me, too. I like being up before everyone else. The house is so quiet and peaceful.”

  “Mine is all the time.” Damn, that sounded bleak. He nodded his thanks to the maitre d’ and held open the outside door for Kathleen.

  The sidewalk and street were busy with couples arriving for eleven o’clock or eleven-thirty showings at the Metro, a movie theater next door to Stella’s. The University district didn’t shut down early, even on weeknights. A panhandler was working the corner, a pair of kids not much older than her Emma were making out in the shadows at the corner, and headlights flashed as a steady stream of cars passed on 45th.

  At the car, Logan let Kathleen in first, then went around to the driver’s side.

  In the dark, starting up the engine, he was having amorous thoughts.

  She apparently wasn’t. “Do you have a workshop in your home?” she asked out of the blue.

  He had to clear his throat to buy time to shift gears, so to speak.

  “Yeah, I bought my place because it has a big daylight basement that opens into the garage, so I can carry cabinets straight out to the truck.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Ballard. House built in the forties, with nowhere near the charm yours has.”

  “Oh.”

  Okay. Had she been hinting that he could ask her home? he wondered hopefully, but couldn’t believe it. She was sitting a little too straight, knees too primly together, carefully not looking at him, as if she was starting to get nervous.