Northern Lights

you say something like that to me?" The angry red color had drained, turning her face white, white and drawn and suddenly old."You can't hate me that much."
    "I don't hate you. You've always been wrong about that. Maybe I'm ambivalent toward you most of the time, but I don't hate you. Those boys found an ice cave. It's where they took shelter part of the time they were on the mountain. He was in there. He's been in there."
    "That's crazy talk. I want you to get out." Her voice rose to a hoarse shriek. "Get the hell out of here right now."
    "They took pictures," Meg continued, even as Charlene grabbed one of her paperweights and heaved it against the wall. "I saw them. I recognized him."
    "You did not! " She whirled, grabbed a trinket off a shelf, threw it. "You're making this up to get back at me."
    "For what?" Meg ignored the statuary and glassware that smashed into walls, onto the floor, even when a shard nicked her cheek. It was Charlene's usual method of venting temper.
    Break it, destroy it. Then have someone sweep it up. And buy new.
    "For being a lousy mother? For being a big ho? For sleeping with the same guy I was sleeping with to prove you weren't too old to steal him from me? Maybe for telling me, most of my life, what a disappointment I am as a daughter. Which offense am I pulling out of my hat?"
    "I raised you by myself. I made sacrifices for you so you could have what you wanted."
    "Too bad you never gave me violin lessons. I could use one about now. And guess what, Charlene. This isn't about you or me. It's about him. He's dead."
    "I don't believe you."
    "Somebody killed him. Murdered him. Somebody hacked an ice ax into his chest and left him on the mountain."
    "No. No, no, no, no." Her face was frozen now, as still and cold as the sky behind her. Then it collapsed as she slid down to the floor to sit among the broken china and glass. "Oh, my God, no. Pat. Pat."
    "Get up, for God's sake. You're cutting yourself." Still angry, Meg marched around the desk, grabbed Charlene by the arms to haul her up.
    "Meg. Megan." Charlene's breath hitched in and out, in and out. Her big, blue eyes swam. "He's dead?"
    "Yes."
    The tears spilled over, flooded her cheeks. On a wail, she dropped her head on Meg's shoulder and clung.
    Meg fought her first instinct to pull away. She let her mother weep, hold on and weep. And she realized it was the first sincere embrace they'd shared in more years than she could count.
     
     
    WHEN THE STORM PASSED, she took Charlene up the back way to her room. It was like undressing a doll, she thought, as she took off her mother's clothes. She doctored the minor cuts, slid a nightgown over Charlene's head.
    "He didn't leave me."
    "No." Meg walked into the bath, scanned her mother's medicine cabinet. There were always plenty of pills. She found some Xanax, filled a glass of water.
    "I hated him for leaving me."
    "I know."
    "You hated me for it."
    "Maybe. Take this."
    "Murdered?"
    "Yes."
    "Why?"
    "I don't know." She set the glass aside after Charlene took the pill. "Lie down."
    "I loved him."
    "Maybe you did."
    "I loved him," Charlene repeated as Meg pulled the covers over her. "I hated him for leaving me alone. I can't stand to be alone."
    "Go to sleep for a while."
    "Will you stay?"
    "No." Meg pulled the drapes, spoke into the shadows. "I don't hate being alone. And I need to be. You won't want me when you wake up anyway."
    But she stayed until Charlene slept.
    She passed Sarrie Parker on the stairs on the way down. "Let her sleep. Her office is a mess."
    "I heard." Sarrie raised her eyebrows. "Must've said something that put her into a hell of a temper."
    "Just try to get it cleaned up before she goes back in there."
    She kept walking and grabbed her coat as she swung into the restaurant. "I have to go," she said to Nate.
    He pushed away from the bar, caught up with her at the door. "Where?"
    "Home. I need to be home." She welcomed the cold, the light slap of the wind.
    "How is she?"
    "I gave her a tranquilizer. She comes out of it, she's going to crash down on you. Sorry." She pulled on her gloves, then pressed her hands to her eyes. "God. God. It was what I was expecting. Hysterics, rage, why do you hate me. The usual."
    "Your face is cut."
    "Just a scratch. China-poodle shrapnel. She throws things." She breathed carefully as they walked toward the river. She watched the ghost of her breath fly and fade. "But when it sank in, when she understood I wasn't messing with her, she fell