The door opened on her second knock.Toby Johnson stood there, the smile on his face vanishing quickly.
“What do you want?”he asked brusquely.
“I—” Taken aback, she stopped talking.
Something was very different from the last time she was here, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.The television was blaring in the background, and she glanced inside the house before she spoke to him.
“I was hoping I could talk to you again about my dad,” she began tentatively.
Before he could say anything, his wife appeared behind him and took his arm.
“My husband isn’t well enough to talk to anyone today.Please leave,” she said rudely and closed the door in Dana’s face.
Flabbergasted, Dana stared at the door.
What… Turning back toward her car, she noticed the Mercedes again.As far as she could see, there hadn’t been anyone else in the house.
Frowning, she got into her car and drove back.Pieces of a big puzzle tried to fall into place, but she felt like her head would explode, and she simply couldn’t grasp the final picture.
All she wanted to do at that moment was go back to her house and try to figure out what was going on.But there was still one more stop she had to make before she would be able to sleep tonight.Her mother.
*
David heard Dana’svoice floating through the open window as he was about to knock on her front door.He froze.
“Did you know about it?”she was asking.
Frowning, he listened to the one-sided conversation.
“I’ve just been to see her, and she eventually admitted she pleaded poverty so I would give her money,” Dana was saying again, a hitch in her voice.
“I spoke to her financial advisor,” she said, and David finally realized she had to be talking about her mother.
He shouldn’t be listening.He knocked on her door.
“Just a minute,” he heard her say, and the front door opened.
It was a completely different Dana from the one he’d left on Sunday night.There was no welcoming smile.Instead she was frowning, her red-rimmed eyes telling their own story.And she was very, very pale.
“I don’t want to see you,” she said and tried to close the front door in his face, but he stepped forward, and in a huff, she turned her back on him, resuming her telephone conversation.
“I don’t know.She said she’d pay me back, but…” Dana sat down on a chair and rolled her shoulders.
David’s hands itched.He so badly wanted to go to her and massage her shoulders, but the fed-up glance she was sending in his direction warned him not to even try.
“She’s our mother, so yes, at some point I will.But not right now.Okay, thanks.”She put the phone down and looked straight at David.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said.
“Fine.Because I want to talk to you.”David took the chair opposite her.
His fingers were tingling.He wanted to kiss her, hold her, make love to her, but before he could do that, he had to try and make amends.He had to fix this.
“I’m sorry about the car.It’s just…” He got up and started pacing.
He had to get this right.No deal he’d ever done before had been so important.Words were his thing; he knew how to use them.They were well-known tools he arranged in very specific ways to entice people, to persuade them—but with Dana’s big eyes on him he wasn’t sure how he could apologize.
He turned to her, desperate to make her understand what his reasoning had been.“I want you to have a dependable car, one that won’t leave you stranded,” he said and pressed his hand against his heart.“I need to know you’ll be safe.And if that means I have to pay for half your car, then that’s what I’ll do,” he ended, hoping for a smile.
