Smoke in Mirrors

Make that more, not less. It was a good bet that he didn’t think too much of her, personally, let alone find her sexy and alluring. The number of that offshore account had endowed her with a lot of bargaining power. The fact that she had used that leverage without mercy had probably given him a rather jaundiced view of her character.

But somewhere along the line she had begun to revise her initial impression of him, she realized. He still made her think of a junkyard dog, but at least this dog was on her side. For the time being, at any rate.

Thomas took a swallow of brandy. “Mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“What is it?”

“How did you and Meredith become friends? I can’t see a lot of similarities.”

“She showed up when I was in college. Used her computer to fiddle with the dorm assignments. Ended up on my floor.”

“Why did she go to the trouble?”

“It’s a long story.” She drew her finger around the rim of the brandy glass. “Meredith had a very unusual history. She never knew her father. Her mother was an intelligent, but deeply troubled woman who refused to get psychiatric help. At some point Meredith’s mom went to a sperm bank and had herself impregnated by an anonymous donor who was selected for intelligence, good health and good looks.”

“A sperm bank.”

“Yes.”

“Well, hell.” Thomas rested his forearms on the counter, cradled the glass between his hands and shook his head, looking bemused. “A sperm bank.”

“Uh huh.”

They drank brandy in silence for a while.

“On the one hand, she hated her father, even though she never knew him.”

“Probably because she never knew him.”

Leonora looked up quickly. “Probably.”

“Don’t look so surprised. Guys have insights, too. Once in a while.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” She paused. “On the surface, Meredith was one of the most confident people I’ve ever met. But I think she had some major self-esteem problems. She was always making grim jokes about how she was the offspring of a man who cared so little about fathering her that he hadn’t even bothered to meet her mother, let alone sleep with her. He was a man who literally hadn’t given a damn about his own kid. Didn’t even bother to find out if she had been born. Didn’t want to know her name.”

Thomas said nothing.

“Meredith said her mother assured her that she was the product of good genes that had been carefully chosen. But Meredith saw it differently. As far as she was concerned she was the product of some seriously flawed genes. She always said that a man who felt so little concern for his daughter had to be damaged goods, himself, in some really fundamental way. No commitment genes, or something.”

“By definition,” Thomas agreed.

“Maybe things would have been different if Meredith’s mother had been more stable. Or if there had been other close relatives who could have stepped in and taken care of a little girl. But she wasn’t and there weren’t.”

“Must have been rough.”

“About as rough as it gets, I think. Meredith’s mom wouldn’t get professional help but apparently she had no qualms about self-medicating with a variety of drugs, legal and illegal. Eventually she managed to commit suicide with them. Meredith was seventeen years old when she walked into her mother’s bedroom and found the body.”

“Christ.” Thomas was quiet for a moment, thinking. “That kind of addiction costs a lot of money.”

“It also makes it difficult to hold a steady job or make house payments or eat regular meals. I guess Meredith and her mother moved around a lot. And there were a number of men who came and went in her mother’s life.”

“Figures,” Thomas said.

“I think that the extreme insecurity of that time left its mark. Meredith was obsessed with money-making scams. Always talked about the big score. Everything she did was done with a view toward ensuring her own financial stability.”

“How did she get into your life?”

“After her mother died, Meredith went looking for her father. There was no one else, you see. She had to find someone.”

“Sure.” Thomas nodded. “I’d have probably done the same in her shoes.”

“Me, too.” She fell silent for a moment, letting the sadness well up.

“What happened?” Thomas prompted.

“She hacked into the records of the sperm bank her mother had used. Got her father’s name out of the supposedly anonymous files.” Leonora hesitated. “She discovered that he had died many years earlier. Plane crash. So she went in search of her relatives on that side of the family.”

Thomas set his glass down on the counter and looked at her. “Oh, man. Don’t tell me—?”

Wrench came to sit by Leonora’s stool. She rested her hand on his head. “Meredith found her half sister.”

Thomas did not take his eyes off her face.

“That would be you?” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

“Damn.”

There was another silence. The fire crackled on the hearth.

“Goes to show,” Thomas said after a while, “that the gene pool isn’t destiny. You and Meredith are as different as night and day.”

“That bothered her, you know. She asked me once why I thought we had turned out so differently.”

“What did you tell her?”

“What could I say?” She raised one shoulder in a small shrug. “I lost my own parents, but I had my grandparents to take their place. There was no one to take care of Meredith. She learned the hard way how to fend for herself.”

Thomas drank more brandy.

“Well,” he said eventually, “that information does help to fill out a big chunk of the puzzle.”

“What puzzle?”

“You,” Thomas said. “I’ve been trying to figure you out from the beginning.”

She liked the idea that he had been trying to figure her out. She had never considered herself the mysterious type.

She took off her glasses. The small action was designed to buy her a little time to contemplate his comment. Absently, she fiddled with the temple.

“I always thought of Meredith as the mystery woman in the family,” she said.

“Nah, she was easy to understand compared to you. You, on the other hand, are a real enigma. At first, I assumed you were Meredith’s accomplice. Thought you were after the money.”