Page 85 of Deliver Me

“I love you, too, and don’t forget you can call me or Dr. Lucas if you need to.”

“I will,” he promised, but he knew he wouldn’t. Whatever the consequences were of this decision, it would be between him and his mother, at least for now.

He put the car in gear and crept up the driveway, stopping at the black wrought iron gate to push the button on the intercom. All of the time he’d spent worrying with Mia and he might not even make it through the gate if his mother didn’t agree to let him in the house.

He didn’t have to wait long, and the woman’s voice that answered him was smooth and professional, exactly the kind of employee he would expect to work for an unfailingly professional politician. “Senator Miller’s residence, how may I help you?”

“I need to see the senator,” Gabriel said. He tried to keep his voice brisk and authoritative, lessons from years ago floating back through his mind, memories of his mother trying to guide him when she still thought he might someday follow in her political footsteps.

There was a pause—checking the daily schedule he assumed—followed by, “She’s not expecting anyone today.”

“I don’t have an appointment,” he said. “I’m her son.”

This time the pause was longer. “The senator doesn’t …”

“Tell her that Gabriel Myers has come to see her,” he said, the hard edge of command in his voice apparently enough to send the guard hurrying to obey. He remembered enough about living with Lilah to know how to use his background and connections to get the job done.

Several infinitely long minutes later the gate swung open without another word from the intercom, and he pulled the car up the long driveway. She was already waiting for him on the stairs in front of the massive double front doors by the time he parked.

“Gabriel,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I didn’t write,” he said with a shrug. “Or call.”

“Well.” Her pause was a weapon, expertly wielded. “Come inside then.”

He followed her in, his gaze wandering over the familiar lines of the furniture and peeking rooms that hadn’t changed in more than a decade. It was an odd feeling to be back inside his childhood home after so long, and stranger still to find the walls in the informal living room were still hung with old family photographs. His own face, young and thin with a crooked smile, looked down on him as Lilah ordered lemonade from the kitchen and sat stiffly on the edge of the loveseat cushion.

“Things didn’t go so well last time we tried this,” she said after a moment. “Perhaps you’d like to speak first this time?”

“I’m sorry,” he said without preamble, for what could he possibly say to her except that? “I’m sorry for what I did to Dad.”

She inclined her head, a silent acknowledgment, before taking a deep breath to steady herself. “I’m sorry that we sent you to Richard’s.”

He shrugged. “So, that’s the worst of it,” he said. “The two of us, both bending our pride a bit to apologize for our mistakes.”

“Did you mean it?” Her eyes were nearly the same color as his own and they reflected his own hesitance, his own pride. In theyears that he’d lived here, countless people had told him that he looked like his father, but it had always been his mother that had marked him the deepest.

“I’ve done a lot of things in my life that I regret, but nothing as much as that. I didn’t mean to do it and I’ve spent every day since wishing I could take it back.” He let the emotion flit across her face and settle before asking, “Did you? Mean it?”

Lilah turned her face away, searching the green expanse of the lawn outside the window for something he thought only she could see. “I lost both of you the day I sent you away,” she said. “I thought I was helping you, but nothing was ever right again after that.”

“I don’t know if it was right before that,” he said.

“At least before that we had hope.”

“Maybe we could have hope again.”

She looked at him, for once the steel in her spine softening. “I’d like that, and I think your father would, too. You look good, Gabriel.”

“I feel good,” he said. “I’ve been going to therapy.”

“Really?” There was surprise there, a note of curiosity that he could almost see in her face, though it remained unlined and precisely neutral. Years of practice had made her a nearly unreadable book when she wanted to be, but he had practice of his own in deciphering her.

“My therapist thought you should probably go, too,” he said, and he let it hang between them for a moment as he took a long swallow from his drink and watched her eyes narrow fractionally. “Maybe a sort of family thing.”

“I can’t go all the way—”

“They could do it over video call.” He’d anticipated that protest and smiled blandly as he outmaneuvered her.

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