Runaway Vampire(102)

What? Mary asked herself dryly. You thought your daughter would recognize some twenty-five-year-old-looking gal as her sixty-two-year-old mom? Dream on. And what are you even doing here? Mary asked herself. She couldn’t turn her daughter, couldn’t explain about nanos and immortals and whatnot. What had she hoped to gain from coming here to see her?

“Alice Bonher.”

Mary glanced up to see that Jane was reading the name from the slip of paper the receptionist had given her.

Jane smiled crookedly. “That was my mother’s maiden name. Small world, huh?” she commented with a smile as she took her seat.

Mary tilted her head slightly. “That was your mother’s maiden name?”

“Yes. She died last week when her RV crashed and exploded.”

Mary blinked at the bald announcement, and then realizing she should respond, murmured, “I see.”

But she didn’t see at all. Well, she did see a bit. Obviously Lucian or one of his men had done some mind-control nonsense and made everyone believe that she’d died in the RV crash, which was handy and even sensible. What she didn’t understand was how her daughter could talk about her death with so little emotion. There was no grief, no sense of loss at all. She’d used the same tone Mary would have used to say she’d visited friends last week.

She frowned over that and was starting to grow upset when it occurred to her to wonder if this too wasn’t Lucian’s work. Could they have done something to Janie to make her accept the death more readily?

Mary glanced to her daughter, and seeing her questioning look, cleared her throat, and asked, “Was the funeral nice?”

“Oh, there was no funeral. There was no body. She burned up in the fire. They couldn’t even separate her ashes from the ashes of the RV.” Jane sighed and then admitted, “We’re considering buying a plot, putting up a tombstone and holding a funeral ceremony, but it will have to wait until I go to Winnipeg next month.”

“Next month?” Mary asked with dismay.

“Well, there was no sense rushing off to have it right away. We don’t have a body, and the ceremony is only for myself and my brother and our families.”

“That’s it?” Mary asked, appalled. “What about her friends? Surely they would want to attend?”

“Yes, but they all kind of abandoned her when Dad died. I think the other women were nervous of having a newly widowed woman around their husbands. Mom was a good-looking woman, young for her age and witty.”

“Oh,” Mary sat back and smiled slightly at the comment. She’d never really seen herself that way. It was nice to know her daughter did.

“It’s probably better she died anyway.”

Mary blinked and stared at her with horror. “What? Why?”

“Because Dad was her whole life. She was terribly lonely when he died. I’d hate to think of her sitting alone and miserable in some little apartment in Winnipeg with no friends or anything.”

Since that had been the future she’d foreseen for herself, Mary shouldn’t have been upset at her daughter’s envisioning it that way too, but she was. Scowling, she said with irritation, “Maybe she would have made new friends, or found a boyfriend.”

“No way,” Jane said emphatically, and then grimaced and said, “I have a friend whose mother did that. Started dating and acting ridiculous after her husband died. She wears clothes much too young for her: tight jeans and low-cut blouses.”

Mary glanced down at the jeans and T-shirt she’d chosen from the storage room. The jeans were a bit snug, and the neckline was a scoop. She tugged at the neckline to cover the bit of bra that was peaking over the top.

“And she’s dating men ten and even twenty years younger than her. The woman’s acting like a hormone riddled teenager instead of the grandmother she is.”

Mary bit her lip, an image of Dante rising in her mind. He didn’t look a day over twenty-five. And hormone riddled was probably a good description of how they had both been acting even before he’d turned her.

“She’s even buying condoms and having sex with these men,” Jane said with disgust. “At sixty! Can you imagine? I mean there comes a time when you just have to hang up your dancing shoes, you know?”

“Hmm.” Mary muttered and wondered when her daughter had become so prudish. People over sixty had every right to have sex, for heaven’s sake. Hell, at least they didn’t have to worry about birth control . . . usually, she added grimly.

“My mom was much too sensible to go in for that nonsense.”

Mary squirmed in her seat.

“Jane? The Dresdens are here for their appointment.”