Mirror Image

don’t have a—”
    “You’ve got a disease, Dorothy Rae. Alcoholism is a disease.”
    “I’m not an alcoholic!” she cried tearfully, echoing the denials that her own mother had used for years. “I have a few drinks—”
    “No, you drink to get drunk and you stay drunk. You wallow in self-pity and then wonder why your husband lusts after other women. Look at yourself. You’re a mess. Is it any wonder that Jack has lost interest in you?”
    Dorothy Rae groped for the door handle. “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this.”
    “Yes, you do.” Turning the tables on her, Avery grabbed her arm and refused to let go. “It’s time somebody got tough with you, woke you up to a few facts. Your husband wasn’t
stolen
from you. You drove him away.”
    “That’s not true! He swore I wasn’t the reason he left.”
    “Left?”
    Dorothy Rae looked at her blankly. “Don’t you remember, Carole? It wasn’t long after you and Tate got married.”
    “I… of course I remember,” Avery stammered. “He stayed gone about…”
    “Six months,” Dorothy Rae said miserably. “The longest six months of my life. I didn’t know where he was, what he was doing, if he was ever coming back.”
    “But he did.”
    “He said he needed time alone to sort out a few things. He had so many pressures.”
    “Like what?”
    She made a small, helpless gesture. “Oh, Nelson’s expectations for the law firm, Tate’s campaign, my drinking, Fancy.”
    “Fancy needs a mother, Dorothy Rae.”
    She laughed mirthlessly. “But not me. She hates me.”
    “How do you know? How do you know how she feels about anything? Do you ever talk to her?”
    “I try,” she whined. “She’s impossible.”
    “She’s afraid that no one loves her.” Avery drew a quick breath. “And I’m afraid she might be right.”
    “I love her,” Dorothy Rae protested adamantly. “I’ve given her everything she ever wanted.”
    “You threw her play-pretties to keep her occupied so that rearing her wouldn’t interfere with your drinking. You grieve over the two children you miscarried at the expense of the one you have.”
    Dorothy Rae had mentioned the babies she had lost the night Carole’s abortion had come to light. Later, Avery had gleaned the details from Fancy. So much of Dorothy Rae’s unhappiness was now understandable. Avery leaned across the plush car seat, appealing to Dorothy Rae to listen. “Fancy is courting disaster. She needs you. She needs her father. She needs someone to take a firm hand. If Jack weren’t so worried about your drinking, maybe he would devote more time and attention to being a parent. I don’t know.
    “But I do know that unless you do something, and quickly, she’ll keep on behaving the way she does—doing outrageous things just so she’ll get noticed. One of these days, she’ll go too far and harm herself.”
    Dorothy Rae pushed back a strand of lank hair and assumed a defensive posture. “Fancy’s always been a handful—more than Jack and I could handle. She’s got a willful personality. She’s just being a teenager, that’s all.”
    “Oh, really? A teenager? Did you know that she came home the other night after having taken a beating from a guy she picked up in a bar? Yes,” Avery emphasized when she saw Dorothy Rae pale with disbelief.
    “I’m being an armchair psychologist, but I believe Fancy thinks she deserves no better than that. She thinks she’s unworthy of being loved because no one has ever loved her, though she’s tried every means she knows to get your attention.”
    “That’s not true,” Dorothy Rae said, shaking her head in obstinate denial.
    “I’m afraid it is. And there’s more.” Avery decided to throw caution to the wind. She was, after all, pleading for a young woman’s life. “She’s sleeping with Eddy Paschal.”
    “I don’t believe you,” Dorothy Rae wheezed. “He’s old enough to be her father.”
    “I saw her coming out of his hotel room in Houston weeks ago.”
    “That doesn’t mean—”
    “It was dawn, Dorothy Rae. You could tell by looking at her what she’d been doing all night. I have every reason to believe the affair is still going on.”
    “He wouldn’t.”
    It was a sad commentary that Dorothy Rae didn’t question her daughter’s morality, only that of the family friend. “He is.”
    Dorothy Rae took several moments to assimilate this information, then her eyes narrowed on Avery. “You’re a fine one to cast stones at