Page 185 of Homeport

“I know you’re very fond of her.” Miranda set down the glass in the precise spot where it had been. She was careful to make certain the stem of the glass fit exactly on the outline it had left on the cloth. “Fonder, I think, than you ever were of your own children.”

“This is hardly the occasion for pettiness, Miranda.”

She looked up then. “Do you hate me?”

“What a ridiculous thing to say, and what an inappropriate time to say it.”

“When would be an appropriate time for me to ask my mother if she hates me?”

“If this stems from the business in Florence—”

“Oh, it goes back much farther, in much deeper than what happened in Florence, but that’ll do for now. You didn’t stand by me. You never have. All of my life I’ve waited for it, that moment when you’d finally be there. Why the hell weren’t you ever there for me?”

“I refuse to indulge you in this behavior.” With an icy stare, Elizabeth turned and started out.

She’d never know what prompted her to ignore a lifetime of training, but Miranda was across the room, grabbing Elizabeth’s arm, whirling her around with a violence that stunned both of them. “You will not walk out on me until I have an answer. I’m sick to death of having you walk literally and figuratively away from me. Why couldn’t you ever be a mother to me?”

“Because you’re not my daughter.” Elizabeth snapped it out, her eyes flaring to a blue burn. “You were never mine.” She wrenched her arm free, her breath coming fast and hard as control frayed. “Don’t you dare stand there and demand from me after all I’ve sacrificed, all I’ve endured because your father elected to pass his bastard off as mine.”

“Bastard?” Her world, already shaky, tilted away under her feet. “I’m not your daughter?”

“No, you are not. I gave my word that I would never tell you.” Infuriated that she’d allowed temper and fatigue to undermine her control, Elizabeth strode to the window, stared out. “Well, you’re a grown woman, and perhaps you have a right to know.”

“I—” Miranda pressed a hand to her heart because she wasn’t sure it continued to beat. She could only stare at the rigid back of the woman who’d so suddenly become a stranger. “Who is my mother? Where is she?”

“She died several years ago. She was no one,” Elizabeth added, turning back. The sun wasn’t kind to women of a certain age. In its glare Miranda saw that Elizabeth looked haggard, almost ill. Then a cloud rolled over the sun and the moment was gone. “One of your father’s . . . short-term interests.”

“He had an affair.”

“His name is Jones, isn’t it?” Elizabeth said bitterly, then waved a hand as if annoyed. “In this case, he was careless and the woman became pregnant. She was not, apparently, as easily shaken off as most. Charles had no intention of marrying her, of course, and when she realized that, she insisted he deal with the child. It was a difficult situation.”

A quick, nasty stab of pain lanced through the shock. “She didn’t want me either.”

With the faintest of shrugs, Elizabeth walked back and sat. “I have no idea what the woman wanted. But what she chose to do 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.

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