her mother’s words, however—All men are the type—and that took some of the force from her tone.
Rachel just looked at her, and after a moment, Gina said, “I’m going upstairs to get the laundry now.”
Rachel stared into her coffee cup, making swirls in the cool, creamy liquid with a finger. Round and round, round and round, down and down…like life, she thought. Round and round…then, at the last dizzying moment, down and down.
Rachel dumped her jacket and purse onto the chair in Victoria Lessing’s office, then asked to use her bathroom. Victoria was on the phone but waved to her, whispering, “Sure. I’ll be off in a minute.”
The psychiatrist’s bathroom was as elegant as her office, both of which had recently been redecorated. There were gold fixtures and an ornate mirror, trimmed in gold.
Looks like an expensive antique, Rachel thought. I wonder if she got it from Dad. Towels were in a soft lilac, the only color in the room except for a five-foot-high plant in the palm family. Now, that—that’s more like Mom’s style.
Standing before the mirror, Rachel thought she looked older than her twenty-one years. Fine lines were already beginning at the corners of her eyes, and there were dark circles that no amount of concealer had been able to cover.
Well, the past few weeks hadn’t been easy. Add to that the accident the other night and the egg-sized lump on her noggin, it was a wonder she hadn’t turned gray.
She washed her hands for a full twenty seconds, hoping to ward off the many germs and new viruses that were all about these days. It seemed she was forever trying to wash them away, and God only knew what she might have picked up in the coffee shop that she and Gina had stopped at on the way here.
Vicki must be worried about germs, too, she thought, because there were plastic disposable gloves in her wastebasket. Rachel smiled. Vicky had beautiful hands that didn’t show her age. She probably wore gloves to bed, too, the way hand models did.
When Rachel walked back into the office, Vicky was still on the phone. “All right, all right,” she was saying. “I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything. Listen, I have to go.”
Victoria hung up the phone and smoothed her blond hair, which hung straight to her shoulders today. Golly, Rachel thought, she looks almost sexy. Idly she wondered who the boyfriend was. There must be one. When she sat at her antique desk like that, she looked so…pure, was the only word that came to Rachel. Like someone in a painting.
Victoria’s personal life, however, had always been a mystery. On one slender finger glittered a diamond and sapphire ring that she had worn ever since Rachel could remember. It wasn’t on her engagement finger, though, and so far as Rachel knew, she had never married.
Rachel took a seat and settled her jacket over her shoulders to ward off the nervous chill she was feeling. Opening up to Victoria wasn’t as bad as trying to communicate with her parents, but even so, it wasn’t something she looked forward to.
She waited as Victoria took a stack of papers from her desk and slipped them into a drawer. Her attention was caught by something new on Victoria’s desk—a bronze statue of a frog with a golden coin on its tongue. The tongue, too, was made of gold.
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