Page 90 of Guilty Mothers
‘Okay, you feel nothing because you can’t identify with anyone else’s experience. Not one person you know can understand your experience with your mother. Their tales of minor arguments, rebellions or groundings will never compare to you trying to keep yourself and your brother alive. Their enjoyable, positive memories will be met with not one happy memory for you. You can’t connect with what they’re saying. They might as well be talking about their experiences of flying to the moon. You have no reference.’
‘But I had Erica,’ she protested.
‘Thank God for Erica. I’ve often felt that you wouldn’t be sitting here today had it not been for the love of that lady. But that was only three years.’
‘Quality not quantity,’ Kim argued.
‘Ah, it’s not that easy. Mom is normally our history. She’s a constant, like a diary, a journal. Her presence marks important events. She’s there for your first day of school and your last day of college, not to mention everything in between. The relationship changes and adapts over the years and through the different stages of your life, but she’s like a thread that leads from birth to wherever you are now.
‘Mom is the person you can call and ask about that TV show you used to watch together. She’ll know. Mom is the person you can call to check when you went to hospital for your tonsillectomy. She’ll know. What was your favourite food, colour, book, subject at school? She’ll know. You didn’t have that.’
‘So you’re saying that my emotional response to the whole thing is normal, for me?’ she asked, reaching for her jacket. It was all she had wanted to know.
‘I am indeed saying that.’
‘Okay, but you’re wrong about one thing, Ted,’ she said, looking around at the coffee mugs, the biscuit plate and beyond to the garden outside where the fish lived. ‘I did have a constant. I just didn’t know it at the time.’
FIFTY-NINE
‘What the hell is that?’ Kim asked, stepping into the squad room at 7a.m. After her visit with Ted the night before, she felt energised. She hadn’t realised how heavily her own lack of emotional involvement with the case had been weighing her down. And while she knew she’d never be normal, the fact that she was behaving to type had put her mind at rest.
Bryant turned to face her with a ridiculous grin on his face. ‘It’s my party piece, guv.’
‘It’s a six-year-old’s magic kit.’
‘Hey, it says for ages eight and up on the box,’ he defended himself.
‘Splendid,’ she said, putting her coffee down. ‘Go on then – amaze me.’
He picked up a deck of cards which looked tiny in his hands.
He splayed them out in a fan. ‘Pick a card, any card.’
She did so, and he shuffled. She watched as he started placing the cards down one by one on his desk. The rest of the team watched in silent anticipation.
He stopped and held up the next card. ‘Is this the card you chose?’
‘No,’ she said flatly.
He waited.
‘It ain’t the card,’ she reiterated, picking up her drink.
‘It’s gotta be,’ he protested.
‘It’s not the damn card.’
‘Okay, let me try again.’
‘Bryant, unless you can find me an eight-year-old who can actually perform these tricks, I suggest you use your little plastic wand to make yourself disappear.’
‘Aw, guv, that hurt.’
‘As will my ass when I go talk to Woody, but that’s tomorrow’s problem. All I can say for you lot is thank God the police force gave you a job.’
She took a sip of coffee, pushing aside the demon in her head wondering what she was going to tell her boss.
‘Okay, laser focus today, guys. Three victims in three days. Our killer is fired up, and until we know why they’re killing pageant moms, we won’t know if they’re done. Let’s do a quick recap on our victims. Stacey, everything we know about our first victim, Sheryl Hawne.’