Page 194 of Love Me in the Dark

“Three o’clock this afternoon. Just the basics; they’re probably going to repossess a lot of the stuff.”

“Lovely.” She sighed. “All I really want is my art stuff.”

“We’ll make sure we get that, then. In the meantime, let’s work on figuring out where Mom is.”

When three o’clock rolled around,we were no closer to finding our mother than we had been. I told Eleanor one of the first things I was going to do when we got to the apartment wasfind out if she had taken her luggage and pocketbook with wallet and passport. That would at least let us know if she had left on her own or in a hurry, perhaps under duress.

The lawyer stood to the side as we entered our home, feeling oddly like interlopers. He was visibly nervous, pulling a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiping at his forehead. “Try to make it quick, ladies. I’m not supposed to let you do this.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Jerry.”

Eleanor and I moved swiftly through the apartment. I went first to my mother’s room, walking into her closet and checking to see if her luggage was present. There, behind the coats and shoe racks, sat her expensive hard case matching set.

Pressing my lips together, I went into her bedroom and opened the drawer of her delicate Queen-Anne style desk, where she sat to do her make-up and occasional correspondence. An odd location, but this was where she kept any important papers, like her passport.

The little blue folder stared up at me, along with a roll of cash.

Taking a deep breath, I collected both and tucked them into my purse, then hurried into my own bedroom to gather the few items I wanted to keep. “Eleanor, we need to hurry.”

More than ever, I felt the compulsion to make haste. As flighty as she’d been, there was no way my mother had run without her luggage and passport. Eleanor and I needed to get out of this city. Away from our father and his troubles and how they intersected with the mob.

He’d never been much of a “dad” in the full sense of the word, anyway, and there was no way I was going to allow my baby sister to become a pawn in whatever scheme he was involved in.

Fuck that.

4

Jude

“What do you mean, declined?”

The small, officious-looking manager standing in the doorway of the hotel room where Eleanor and I had been staying the past month didn’t blink. “Perhaps you could call the account holder, miss, and get this sorted out. In the meantime, we need another form of payment for the coming week.”

Shit.That would be my father, who was currently still in jail. Things didn’t look promising for him to be getting out any time soon. I didn’t fully understand everything, but Jerry had explained that there was a preliminary trial date scheduled for a month out, during which the judge would decide if there was enough evidence to move forward with formal proceedings.

He had said, uncomfortably, that he was pretty sure there was enough evidence, and we needed to prepare ourselves for that.

How the hell we were supposed to ‘prepare ourselves’ for the possibility of our father going to prison, I wasn’t sure.

I focused on the manager and the issue at hand. “Of course. One second.”

Leaving him to stand in the hall, one foot keeping the door from closing all the way, I turned and went deeper into the suite to grab my purse. I had a sinking feeling that if one card had been declined, others would be following suit, soon if not immediately.

Dad’s finances were in deep shit.

His assets, including the penthouse and the apartment I shared with a couple of girls near Columbia, had been seized. And Mom was still missing.

Eleanor clung stubbornly to the conviction that the mob had something to do with that, that she hadn’t just cheerfully abandoned her daughters to whatever fate awaited them.

Given the lack of luggage and passport, I agreed. The police weren’t so certain.

“Is everything okay?” Eleanor asked, peering around the corner of her room.

I nodded and attempted a reassuring smile. I was pretty sure it failed miserably, but I tried. It’s the thought that counts.

Right?

The state had awarded temporary custody of Eleanor to me, since I was twenty-one and her nearest relative, but I lived daily with the awareness of how tenuous that situation was. They could take her away from me at any time. They probably would, if I didn’t get my act together, and fast.