Broken Pieces Read Free Page B

Mariah replied. “And I’ll contact the phone company and get some Internet juice in the house so you can keep up with your e-mail to your friends back home.”
    “Cool,” Kelsey replied.
    Mariah found a parking space in the same block as the restaurant and together she and Kelsey got out of the car. Clouds had begun to form in the southern sky and the air-conditioning in the restaurant was a welcome relief from the thick humid outside air.
    An attractive Asian woman led them to a booth in the back and then left them alone with oversized menus. There were several other diners and Mariah eyed them curiously, wondering if she knew them, but none of them looked familiar.
    She turned her attention to her daughter, who studied the menu with single-minded focus. For years Mariah had studied her daughter’s face, seeking a physical clue to the identity of the man who had raped Mariah that night so long ago. But Kelsey was the spitting image of her mother with her heart-shaped face, dark hair and blue eyes.
    “I know what I want,” Mariah said, and set her menu aside.
    “Let me guess, sweet-and-sour chicken and some crab rangoons,” Kelsey replied. Mariah nodded. “You never want to try anything new.”
    Mariah shrugged. “I know what I like. You’re the adventurous one when it comes to food.”
    At that moment the waitress arrived and took their orders, and Mariah sat back against the bench seat and drew a weary sigh.
    “Does it feel weird to be back here?” Kelsey asked.
    “I think I’m too tired to process everything at the moment.” Mariah picked up her water glass and took a sip. She set the glass back down and frowned. “There’s so much more to do than I thought there would be. I don’t even want to talk to a Realtor until some of the basics in the house are taken care of.”
    Kelsey gave her mother a sly grin. “Don’t you have any old boyfriends that could give us a hand?”
    Mariah laughed. “I imagine all my old boyfriends are married and have families of their own.”
    “Then maybe you could hire some single hot dude to help with the work,” Kelsey said.
    Kelsey, at the age where she was discovering the attraction of the opposite sex, had decided her mission in life was finding her mother a boyfriend, or preferably a husband.
    Mariah had had one fairly serious relationship when Kelsey had been seven years old. Tom Lantry had been a fellow teacher at the school where Mariah worked. It didn’t take long for Kelsey to bond with Tom.
    Mariah thought Tom was great. Kelsey thought Tom was great, and unfortunately Tom thought he was great, far too good to limit himself to one woman and a kid that wasn’t his.
    Kelsey had been far more upset than Mariah when Tom had walked away, and it was at that time thatMariah decided no more dating until Kelsey was grown.
    The one thing the relationship with Tom had done was prove to Mariah that she could enjoy a healthy sexual relationship with a man as long as the man let her set the rules.
    As they ate, Kelsey kept up a steady stream of conversation that would be of most interest to any person her own age. She talked about the latest CD release from her favorite singer and gossiped about her friends back in Chicago and as usual worked in the fact that she was probably the only teenager left in the world who didn’t have a cell phone.
    Mariah pretended to give her daughter her full attention while her mind whirled with all the work that lay ahead of her. Maybe she would take Kelsey’s advice and hire a handyman to help out, although she wasn’t looking for a hot dude, just a man who knew how to paint and use a hammer.
    They were just finishing up their meal when the door opened and a tall, portly man walked in. He wore the khaki uniform of law enforcement and swaggered like a man who enjoyed his position.
    His gaze met hers and he stopped, a look of surprise on his face, and in that moment she recognized him. Clay Matheson.
    A vivid flash of memory filled her