Read Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) for Free Online

also have a daughter.”
    “A daughter. And she’s not at the top of your list of people you’re close to?”
    “Well, she lives with her father, my ex. They’re in Sacramento. That’s a long way from my world. Even though I drive through there on the way to Tahoe, I’ve never visited them there. And she’s... She’s very different from me. She doesn’t like what I like. She doesn’t even like me. She’s pretty much told me she doesn’t want me in her life. We never bonded. Even when she was a baby, she wouldn’t nurse. It’s like from point A, she was telling me that she didn’t care for me.”
    “This was her decision, not a reaction to anything you did.”
    “Of course! I just told you. My daughter rejected me. I’ve been suffering ever since.”
    “And she rejected you from the time she was a helpless baby.”
    “That’s what I just said.”
    “Sorry,” I said. “I thought that parents of newborn babies were in charge. Not the other way around.”
    Nadia squinted her eyes at me as if I’d suddenly become her enemy.
    “I guess I never had a good family experience,” she said. “My mother was mean. She never missed a chance to tell me that I was homely. Two or three times when I was a kid and I put on something nice and did my hair and tried some makeup, my mother said, ‘What’s the point? You could never make yourself look good. Why bother trying?’ One time, she even told me I was ugly.”
    “So you’ve been trying to make up for those slights ever since,” I said.
    “Yeah.” Nadia seemed to look inward. “For most of my life, I believed what my mother said. I had self-contempt. I would wear ratty clothes and not comb my hair. In high school, the other kids would taunt me. Especially the kids who had new clothes and their own cars. They were the worst.”
    “And now you are beautiful and you have a great car, right? So you can move past that.”

    FIVE

    Nadia stared at me.
    “What’s your daughter’s name?” I finally asked.
    “We named her Gertrude. You know how old-fashioned names are back in style. Merrill, my ex, calls her Gertie, but I call her Trudy.”
    “Is Trudy your only child?” I asked.
    “Yes. I have visitation rights. But Trudy doesn’t want me to come.” The woman used a pleading tone in her little speech, but it felt flat to me.
    “It doesn’t sound to me like you ever liked your daughter.”
    “What do you mean?!” Nadia said. “I love her dearly!”
    “She was last on your list of people who are close to you. Maybe the truth is she’s just the victim of two parents who don’t care about her.”
    Nadia squinted at me. Her cheeks colored a shade of burgundy. “Merrill and Ian weren’t the only bastards I have to deal with.”
    “Were they bastards for the same reason I am? Because they made you face your real feelings about your daughter?”
    Nadia’s eyes moistened. Tears thickened and spilled over her lower lids. She cried soft at first, then harder. Eventually, her lungs heaved as if she couldn’t get enough air.
    She reached into her purse and pulled out a tiny designer handkerchief that had a stitched logo and wouldn’t be sufficient to blot the tears of a distraught parakeet. She used it on her eyes, but tears escaped and fell onto her pantsuit.
    Spot was worried. He looked at her, turned to me as if to see if I was going to do something, then turned back to Nadia.
    I reached a box of tissues off the little sidebar that held the coffee maker and handed it to her.
    Nadia reached her fingers into the box and pulled out most of the tissues in a bunch. She held them against her eyes.
    In time, she calmed a bit, sniffled, blew her nose.
    Spot and I waited a long time.
    When she could breathe well enough to talk, she said, “Do you have a powder room?”
    I wondered how much of her reaction was sincere and how much was for dramatic effect. “In this building, we just have restrooms. Even the ones for women are just restrooms. Bad light. Tiny