Oblivion Read online

  ~ ~ ~

  Lindsay woke up glad her mother was working. The argument the night before still stung. Deborah was pleased Jace wasn’t going with her daughter and made no bones of it.

  “You’re better off and don’t even know it,” her mother had raged, holding a cigarette between her fingers, her embittered red-rimmed eyes attesting to how she spent the evening. The half-empty bottle of vodka aside, her mother’s misery could never be drowned. Still, she tried, when thoughts of how her husband betrayed her nipped at her. Something must have set her off tonight. “Turners are nothing but trash, through and through.”

  “Mom, just go to bed,” Lindsay snapped as she tossed her purse on the kitchen table. “I’m not talking to you when you’re like this.”

  Deborah got ugly then, her once-pretty face filled with resentment. “You got your nerve, Lindsay. When things were good my daughter never talked to me with disrespect. Now the money’s gone and your brother’s gone and you talk to me like this?”

  “You’re drunk! I’m not fighting with you, Mom!”

  “I told you that boy was nothing but trash, didn’t I?” her mother flung and laughed in a raspy voice. “In the end that’s what men all do, my daughter. They just let you down. I’m not surprised.”

  Lindsay was angry enough over her confrontation with Jace. She didn’t need her mother ranting against him too. Without thinking her hand swept her mother’s drink off the table. The glass crashed and splintered onto the floor. Her blue eyes bore into her mother’s.

  “He’s the best thing that ever happened to me! Don’t you ever put him down to me again, do you hear? You never gave him a chance, thinking we were too good for him. Well take a good look around, Mom! We don’t have much more than him now. Instead of sitting here bitching about Dad and drinking; why don’t you get off your ass and do something about it?”

  Deborah had looked like she’d been hit. Lindsay never talked to her that way before. With everything else, she couldn’t take it right now. Her mother dissolved into sobs. She went to her room and threw herself on her twin bed, feeling horrible to make her mother cry.

  She didn’t hear her get up that morning. Deborah was at work when she went out of her room and saw the little apartment was picked up. The mess in the kitchen was cleaned. One thing about Deborah; she never went to bed with a messy house. The apartment might be old and the carpet and tile needed replacement, but she kept it spotless.

  Lindsay eyed the phone. The microwave clock said it was half-past nine. She’d let Jace suffer a while yet. When he called, she’d let the machine get it to punish him. Smug to think that would make her feel better she went into the bathroom and ran a bath.