Baltimore 03 - Did You Miss Me?

precious minutes from her morning routine. The wigs that had been a necessity during chemo had now become a time-saving, sanity-saving convenience.
    And a shield of sorts . She liked being able to choose which Daphne the world got to see. She liked being in control, having had so little of it in years past. She depended on appearing put-together and confident on the outside, even if on the inside she still fought panic attacks.
    They were a lot less frequent than they’d once been, but she never knew when one would hit. Sometimes they were triggered by one of those ubiquitous pink ribbons, a stark reminder that her cancer could sneak back. Every now and then an underground parking garage sent her into a mental spin, flinging her back into her fear of confined spaces and childhood terrors.
    When panic attacks took root, she relied on the façade, hiding behind it while she wrestled with her fears. The façade normally held firm.
    Unless she heard The Phrase. The four little words uttered in a mocking singsong still had the capability of reducing her to rubble inside, so absolutely that the outside façade crumbled, too. She’d trained her mind to block it if she heard someone start to say it. Did you—
    Stop . She frowned at herself in the mirror, yanking her mind back to safe ground. Fix your hair, Daphne . Repair the façade . It was a crutch, she knew. But fixing the façade kept her grounded and didn’t hurt anyone, so it was a crutch she embraced.
    She repositioned the wig, fixing it firmly into place. Then she pulled her real hair into the wig’s hairline, combing it until real blended with fake, the colors a perfect match. Nobody could tell she wore a wig except for hairdressers with a very good eye.
    Or bitches who tried to grab the wig off her head. She scowled. If Cindy Millhouse had touched her hair, she’d have been a dead woman. Guaranteed .
    With some measure of control returned, Daphne reapplied her makeup, cursing the TV cameras that caught every blemish. Briefly she considered escape through the back door of the justice building, but that would be letting Cindy win.
    She twisted the top off her mascara. Not today, baby . Except her hands still trembled, jerking when her cell phone suddenly vibrated in her pocket. She gave up on the mascara, checking her phone with a frown. She had a million voicemails.
    Reporters. She’d given up changing her phone number. It never seemed to even slow them down. Ignoring the voicemails, she checked her texts and smiled. One from Ford, sent while she’d waited for the jury. Good luck, Mom! He was such a good kid.
    She steadied her hands enough to type. Thx . Call me later . Love u .
    There were many texts from Paige. The first three were notes from yesterday’s meeting with the contractor they’d hired for their foundation’s newest project – the rehab of an abandoned school into a facility that would serve twenty single mothers undergoing chemotherapy. It had been one of Daphne’s dreams for years, ever since she herself had faced the big C as a newly divorced woman with a twelve-year-old son.
    Daphne’s mother had taken care of her and Ford, but the single moms who had no support system weren’t as lucky. Back then she’d vowed that someday she’d change that. With the help of Paige and a lot of other people, that someday had become today.
    Paige’s other messages were increasingly more urgent. She’d seen the news and heard about the courtroom drama. No one was releasing information and she hadn’t been able to reach Grayson. Poor kid , Daphne thought. She must be frantic .
    Grayson and I are fine , she typed. I’ll have him phone you asap .
    Unsurprisingly, there were a whole slew of messages from her mother, most of them in the last ten minutes. Daphne knew her mother – she’d have had the TV on in the shop and all of her customers would be watching.
    Working in a dress shop had been her mother’s dream when Daphne had been small and her mother had also been a single mom, cleaning hotel rooms for a living. Now her mother owned her own shop and it was her pride and joy.
    Both she and her mother had come a long way from the hills of West Virginia. Being a prosecutor had been Daphne’s goal since she was old enough to understand what ‘justice’ really meant. And what happened to victims when justice was denied.
    Think about that, Daphne . About the good you were able to do . Smell those roses . Today she’d felt the thrill of delivering