with the orders she had. Yeah, well, Joanna thought, slinging her saddlebag up onto her left shoulder as she carefully lifted the sturdy shopping bag packed with a pair of Father Christmasses off her worktable, she’d given up sanity about the same time she’d stopped wearing panty hose.
She and the bulging bag forged through the small sea of cats who called her rambling Albuquerque North Valley adobe home. Some minutes later she was tearing across Paseo del Norte in the Blue Bomb when her cell phone rang.
Ever since some yahoo yakking on his cell had nearly creamed her after running a red light, Joanna had been none too keen about talking on the phone while driving. But—damn—a glance at the readout revealed her mother’s number.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Glynnie Swann’s voice chirped in her ear when she answered. “Why don’t you swing by and pick me up on your way to the gallery? There’s the most adorable new toy store right by there—Patty Kohler was telling me about it the other day—and since Barbara’s oldest just had another baby, I thought this would save me a trip.”
Why wasn’t her mother at work? Why couldn’t she go get Aunt Barb’s oldest’s baby a present by herself?
“I’m really running late, Mom—”
“I’ll be right in front, so you won’t even have to get out,” Glynnie said, and hung up.
And what had Joanna done in some previous life to merit her present torment?
The word railroading had been invented expressly for her mother, Joanna thought on a weary sigh as she headed into the chamisa and sagebrush-infested Sandia foothills and toward her parents’ new house, hidden so deep among the twisting, turning roads that Joanna managed to get lost every time she drove up here. The wind coming through her open window was making the curls tickle her face; she jabbed at the automatic button, only to realize that, once again, she’d missed a key turnoff.
Even as she realized that, for something that wasn’t supposed to be bothering her, she was sure thinking about Bobby’s news an awful lot. But why? It wasn’t as if she was jealous. And she certainly wasn’t envious.
Her mouth twisted. Okay, so maybe that part wasn’t exactly true, even if she of all people understood all too well the pitfalls of marriage. Such as waking up one morning and looking at the naked man snoring beside you and wondering, Who the hell is this person and what is he doing in my bed? And, hey, just because two people shared living space, body fluids and three kids, where had she gotten off thinking that that also meant they shared the responsibility for the living space and the three kids who were the direct result of sharing body fluids?
Still, it hadn’t been all bad. The sex had been nice. And not infrequent, she thought on a despondent sigh. And there’d been laughter, at least in the beginning when she still believed she could count on Bobby to do what he’d said he’d do. She did miss that. And the sound of a man’s voice booming out to the kids when he came home from work—even if “work” had been a hand-out job from her father. She missed family dinners and Christmas mornings with everybody in their pajamas and secret winks over small heads and clandestine gropes when nobody was looking.
What she didn’t miss were the fights or the blank looks in Bobby’s eyes when she’d light into him about something and he’d look at her as though she were speaking Klingon. What she didn’t miss was who living with him had started to turn her into. Stewing in resentment was not her idea of a fun time. The thing was, she’d been more than prepared to give her fifty percent. Sixty, if push came to shove. But marrying Bobby had been like buying a jumbo bag of potato chips only to open the bag and discover it was half air. Even the make-up sex grew stale after a while. Phone calls from creditors really wreaked havoc on the afterglow, boy.
She’d felt cheated, is what. Although…well, to be truthful, not so much by Bobby as by her naive expectations. The nine years had definitely been a learning experience, that was for damn sure. But she also felt…what? Jolted awake? Something. Sort of a well-gee-there-he-goes-off-to-have-a-new-life-and-where-does-that-leave-me? kind of feeling.
Actually she knew where that left her. In a house with a leaky roof, ancient plumbing, a half-empty bed and three children with various and assorted issues probably stemming from the divorce and/or the shared custody backings and forthings. Oh, and two credit cards on the verge of meltdown. Although she supposed things could be worse: at least she had a roof, leaking though it might be, and everyone was healthy and…
And…
Well, hell. That was it?
Another frown bit into her forehead as she pulled into her mother’s driveway. Eschewing the ten-second fashion trendiness known to fell many a lesser woman, Glynnie hot-footed it out to the van in a snazzy linen suit, silk blouse and a pair of classic slingbacks that sure as shooting hadn’t come from Payless. Behind her mother loomed a two-story, rose-stuccoed monstrosity still glittering in its newness. Lots of arbitrary levels and grand arched windows and things. “Indigenous” landscaping. No grass, no trees, just lots of dirt, rocks and scruffy-looking bushes. Not exactly homey. But definitely impressive, in a Southwest bourgeois kind of way.
Joanna saw her mother’s half-pitying, half-repulsed expression long before the woman reached the ten-year-old minivan. Sort of the way you might look at a homeless person.
“You know what, honey?” Glynnie said when she reached the car. “Why don’t we take the Lexus? It’s got a full tank.”
“So does this.”
“But, Jo—”
“Hey. You invite yourself along, you ride in the van. I don’t have time to switch stuff over.”
“But, honey—”
“Mom? Get in. You can always duck if you see anyone you know.”
Glynnie did, her fashionably pale mouth set in a glistening line.
“And, if it makes you feel better,” Jo said as she backed out of the drive, “I’ll park far enough away from the gallery that nobody’ll see it. ’Kay?”
“And aren’t we being Miss Sensitive this morning?”
“I’m not the one who just looked at my car like it was dog poop.”
“I just don’t understand why you won’t let your father find you something a little less…used-looking.”
“Why, when this one already smells like the children?”
“I noticed,” Glynnie said, then lifted a manicured, beringed left hand to her hair, which, much to Glynnie’s perpetual chagrin, shot the control-freak image all to hell. Hundreds of itty-bitty corkscrew curls shuddered around her mother’s face, curls that had triumphed over every straightening and relaxing process known to cosmetology. At one time—like last week—her mother’s hair had been redder than Joanna’s. Today, however, it was kind of a strawberry-blond.
“Nice color,” Jo said.
“You really like it?”
“Yes, Mom, I really like it.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Glynnie said on a sigh. “Sylvia thought the natural color was getting too harsh for my face.”
Joanna swallowed a smile, then said, “So how come you’re
