Page 2 of Bad Mother

Kat held out her hand. “Welcome to homicide,” her new partner said. “Call me Kat.”

Sienna shook. “Hi, Kat, nice to meet you.”

“All right, now that the niceties are out of the way, why don’t you show Sienna to her desk and get her acquainted with the layout.”

Kat stood. “Come on, partner. I’ll show you the most important room in this building—the one where we keep the coffee.”

Sienna thanked Sergeant Dahlen and then followed her new partner out the door.

The coffee lounge was small but adequate, featuring a corner kitchen area and a table off to the side, where no one currently sat. Kat picked up a paper cup and held it up to Sienna, her brows rising in question.

“Sure, thanks,” Sienna said. Kat poured two cups of coffee and handed one to Sienna before turning and leaning against the Formica counter. “So what’d you do?” she asked.

Sienna let out a small, surprised laugh, then swallowed a sip of weak coffee. She hadn’t expected the direct question right off the bat, though she knew well that rumors spread quickly among cops. “I neglected to follow orders.”

Kat looked mildly disappointed. “Insubordination? Damn, I was hoping you had an affair with the chief or something juicy.”

Sienna let out a chuckle that died a quick death.If only.“Well, it was a little more complicated but not very juicy. The orders I disregarded came down from the mayor.”

Kat’s eyebrows rose. “Ah.” She was obviously considering that nugget of information. “So they did you a favor and shuffled you out of town before the mayor could demand you resign or be fired.”

“They obviously don’t call you Detective for nothing.”

Kat smiled, nodding to the door and tossing her cup in the garbage. “Let me show you to your desk. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together. If you decide you feel like telling me the details of that story, you won’t have to travel far.”

She followed Kat to their work area, the only privacy a flimsy partition, with two standard-issue metal desks just like the one she’d had in New York. She pulled open a drawer, expecting the squeak that followed. The familiar piece of furniture felt like one of the only things in her life that hadn’t changed.Welcome to Reno PD, Sienna.

Sienna was surprised that the trailer park looked slightly less squalid than she remembered. Maybe it was due to the wash of golden light from the setting sun softening the ramshackle trailers and patchy grass. Or maybe it was because her memory had exaggerated the seediness of this place. Ormaybeit was because at some point, someone had come along and tried to rejuvenate Paradise Estates Mobile Home Park—a true misnomer if ever there was one—and somewhat succeeded, even if minimally.

Perhaps a mixture of all those things.

In any case, here it sat, in front of her, the layout the same, though the girl she’d been, the one who’d grown up here, felt different in every way. Even though she was sitting in her car, staring out the window, she had a strange sense of imbalance as she looked down the rows toward the lot where she’d once lived, as though the world had shifted subtly beneath her.

Why were you pulled here?She’d found herself driving in this direction after meeting with her new boss and partner, without even really deciding to do so, almost as if by muscle memory alone.

The heart is a muscle too.Yes, and maybe that was the one she’d been using. She’d been raised in this trailer park. She’d left for school every morning from here, until the day she’d graduated high school. She’d had some of her happiest moments in this place and some of her worst.

She’d fallen in love here. Her chest squeezed as she turned her head to the right, gazing down the row wherehistrailer sat. Of course, it wasn’t his anymore. Or his mother Mirabelle’s. Someone else lived there now, she was sure. He had made it big. And though it had turned out she didn’t know as much about him as she’d once believed, she knew in her heart of hearts that the first thing he would have done with the money he earned was to buy his mother a home. Arealhome, not housing made of plastic walls that swayed in any moderately strong wind.

At the thought of Mirabelle, she felt a pinching sensation under her breastbone and unconsciously brought her hand up to massage away the pain. She missed her. Still. She’d been the only real mother Sienna had ever known, her own an alcohol-drenched shell of a woman who had been generally unaware of Sienna’s existence. The woman who had passed on her green eyes and her golden-blonde hair to Sienna and—thankfully—not much else had died five years before. When Sienna had learned the news, she’d felt little more than a passing sadness that might accompany the knowledge that any wasted life had ended.

She’d sent her father a check to help with the cremation costs and made a donation in her mother’s name to a local charity that helped drug and alcohol addicts find recovery. It was enough closure for her. And while her father had very promptly cashed the check, she hadn’t spoken to him since.

She’d left this mobile home park eleven years before without saying goodbye to either of her parents. The ache in her heart had only been for Mirabelle. At the time, that particular ache had been drowned outby a greater one, though, and it was only in the aftermath that she had realized her grief had layers.

She stared, unseeing, in the direction of what had once been her home. Her mind cast back.

Mirabelle pulled the door of the trailer open, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Sienna? What’s wrong, sweet girl?”

Sienna let out a quiet sob, allowing Mirabelle to usher her into the trailer, where she led her to the plaid sofa and sat her down. Mirabelle took a seat next to her, turning so they were knee to knee, and took Sienna’s hands in hers, squeezing gently. Lemons and lilies met her nose, and the scent served as comfort before Mirabelle had even uttered a word. She took a deep, shaky breath. “I got invited to Amybeth Horton’s birthday party, and my dad said he’d bring home some money so I could buy her a present, but he didn’t, and now I can’t go.” Truth be told, her father hadn’t necessarily forgotten. He’d likely never intended to at all or even thought twice about her request after she’d made it. He’d come home drunk that afternoon, and she hadn’t “reminded” him, as it was best to steer clear entirely when he’d been drinking. He was mean in general, and liquor only enhanced that attribute. Sienna’s face screwed up, the disappointment of having looked so forward to something, having been included, and then being let down—again—by her parents bringing all her misery to the surface. She couldn’t go without a gift, though. That would be humiliating. The other girls Amybeth hung around weren’t rich by any stretch, but they had more than Sienna’s family. In every conceivable way.

Sienna wished she weren’t so hyperaware of that, but she was fourteen, no kid anymore, and it was just her personality. She noticed everything. She always had. Not like Gavin, who was perpetually happy go lucky and didn’t seem to care what anyone thought. He was observant, too, when he wantedto be, but his observations didn’t seem to constantly hurt him in some way or another the way hers did.

Gavin wasn’t currently at home. She knew that, and it was the only reason she’d come. She didn’t want him to see her cry, but she’d needed a mother. She’d needed Mirabelle.

Mirabelle frowned, wiping Sienna’s cheek with her thumb when a tear spilled from her eye. “Oh, darling. I’m so sorry.” An expression flitted over her pretty face, part sadness, part anger, but then she set her lips together, tilting her head as she thought. “When is the party?”

“Today,” Sienna said, taking a deep breath as the sharpness of the misery lessened. She still felt disappointed, but she was here, in Mirabelle’s neat and orderly trailer, being listened to as though her pain mattered. She’d only come to her for comfort. She knew Mirabelle didn’t have a lot of money either. She worked as the assistant to a magician named Argus, a kindhearted Greek man who called Sienna “Siennoulla” and brought homemade baklava to Mirabelle sometimes in a white box with a black ribbon, which Sienna and Gavin gorged themselves on until their stomachs were stuffed and their lips were coated in honey. Their show wasn’t that popular, though, and barely paid the bills. But Argus said that the joy it brought to their audiences was worth far more than riches.

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