Homeport

was demand that Charles raise you. He came to me and outlined the problem. My choices were to divorce him, live with the scandal, lose what I had begun to build here at the Institute, and give up my plans for my own facility. Or—”
    “You stayed with him.” Beneath the shock, the hot edge of hurt, was a simmering outrage. “After a betrayal like that, you stayed with him.”
    “I had a choice. I made the one that was best for me. It was not without sacrifice. I had to go into seclusion, lose months while I waited for you to be born.” The memory of that could still swim to the surface like acid. “When you were, I had to present you as mine. I resented the fact of you, Miranda,” she said evenly. “Perhaps that’s unfair, but it’s accurate.”
    “Yes, let’s be accurate.” Unable to bear it, she turned away. “Let’s stick with the facts.”
    “I’m not a maternal woman nor do I pretend to be.” Elizabeth gestured again, with some impatience in her voice. “After Andrew was born, I had no intention of having another child. Ever. Then through circumstances that were none of my doing, I was given the responsibility of raising my husband’s child as my own. You were a reminder of his carelessness to me, of his lack of marital integrity. For Charles you were a reminder of a serious miscalculation.”
    “Miscalculation,” Miranda said quietly. “Yes, I suppose that’s accurate too. It’s hardly a mystery now why neither one of you could ever love me—love at all if it comes to that. You don’t have it inside you.”
    “You were well taken care of, given a good home, a fine education.”
    “And never a moment of true affection,” Miranda finished, turning back. What she saw was a woman of rigid control, towering ambition, who had traded emotion for advancement. “I beat myself up all of my life to be worthy of your affection. I was wasting my time.”
    Elizabeth sighed, got to her feet. “I’m not a monster. You were never harmed, never neglected.”
    “Never held.”
    “I did my best by you, and gave you every opportunity to prove yourself in your field. Up to and including the Fiesole Bronze.” She hesitated, then rose to open one of the bottles of water the cleaning staff had yet to clear.
    “I took your reports, the X rays, the documents home. After I’d calmed down, after the worst of the embarrassment faded, I wasn’t quite sure you could have made such blatant mistakes, or that you would skew test results. Honesty has never been something I doubted in you.”
    “Oh, thank you very much,” Miranda said dryly.
    “The reports, the documents were stolen out of my home safe. I might not have known, but I wanted something before I left to come here. And I saw they were gone.”
    She poured water into a glass, recapped the bottle, then sipped. “I wanted to get your grandmother’s pearls, to bring them here and put them in the safe-deposit box I keep at the local bank. I was going to give them to you before I left.”
    “Why?”
    “Perhaps because while you were never mine, you were always hers.” She set the glass aside. “I won’t apologize for what I’ve done or the choices I’ve made. I don’t ask you to understand me, any more than I have ever been able to understand you.”
    “So, I just live with it?” Miranda demanded, and Elizabeth lifted a brow.
    “I have. I will ask you to keep what we’ve spoken of in this room. You are a Jones, and as such have a responsibility to uphold the family name.”
    “Oh yes, one hell of a name it is.” But she shook her head. “I know my duties.”
    “Yes, I’m sure you do. I have to meet your father.” She picked up her bag. “I will discuss this with him if you like.”
    “For what purpose?” Suddenly Miranda was weary, too weary to worry, to wonder, or to care. “Nothing’s really changed at all, has it?”
    “No.”
    When she was gone, Miranda let out a half-laugh and walked to the window. The storm that had been threatening all day was rolling in on a blistered sky.
    “You okay?”
    She leaned back as Ryan laid his hands on her shoulder. “How much did you hear?”
    “Most of it.”
    “Eavesdropping again,” she murmured, “sneaking in on little cat’s paws. I don’t know how to feel.”
    “Whatever you feel, it’s right. You’re your own woman, Miranda. You always have been.”
    “I guess I have to be.”

    “Will you talk to your father about this?”
    “What would be the point? He’s never