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Page 36.
Chapter 29.
 "I hate this house," Lexa's mother said.
"There now," Lexa said, offering a bowl of pudding. They were in the kitchen of Grandfather's big house. "I understand what you mean, Mother. I know you never felt welcome here. But some crazy man is after us, he means to kill us, and you must remember that. We can't go home until it's over."
"I'll remember well enough," Myra grumped, digging into the pudding with a spoon. Her dyed blonde hair puffed around her head, haphazardly held with pins and combs. Her clothing was awry, and her face had too much makeup.
Lexa could not call her relationship with her mother a love-hate relationship; maybe one of love-frustration. Her mother had a strong will and a good intellect, but there had always been something out of kilter about Myra. Nobody expected much of Myra. Grandfather had hated her, refused to even go to the wedding of his only son Alex. Lexa knew, from old photos, that her mother had been beautiful. She thought she could understand her father's love for the fragile, child-like beauty he had married, but then Lexa had been a child when her father had died, so Lexa had never really known Daddy, and that was the one great element of grief in her life. The other piece of grief, which now suddenly looked miniscule by comparison, was her realization that she did not love Arthur, and would not marry him. Somehow, the shock of the accident, the slam of van and police car, then the nightmarish ride to the hospital, had informed Lexa about life. She had made her decision in the ambulance, and she had told her grandfather in the Emergency Room, in whispers heard only by him, that she was finished with Arthur and with Grandfather's pressures on her. Oddly, Grandfather had seemed to take it in stride.
Grandfather had gone off to work this morning, as he had done every day for a million years or so it seemed. Lexa had been released from the hospital and had driven her mother here over her mother's protests. Lexa had insisted: They had to get away from their house, where that horrible man might come looking for them. Something about Grandfather's attitude was puzzling; almost as if he knew who the stranger was; some dark knowledge he wasn't sharing with Lexa; but wasn't that how Grandfather always conducted himself?
Lexa knew herself to be strong-willed. Her mother was in some ways childlike, and could be influenced. But Myra was making the present situation impossible. "For God's sake, Mother, what do we have to do? You don't want to stay here. We can't go home. Should we go to some motel?"
"If we must, why not?" Myra retorted out of her pudding. "We're not safe here either, darling, I can assure you." Lexa sighed. The one thing she was glad of was that Arthur had not called. Surely he had some inkling. Or perhaps he was still fuming about her imagined relationship with Xavier.
"Your grandfather drove your father to an early death." (Lexa sighed; she had heard it all so many times). Myra licked her spoon, thoughtfully, as though it were not covered with pudding but with memories. "Your father and I were in love. Because I was Jewish, your grandfather did everything he could to oppose our wedding. Alex was just as strong-willed. The final straw came when your grandfather refused to come to the wedding. So Alex and I had a nice little backyard wedding with a minister and a rabbi, both from neutral congregations, with money we'd saved, and just friends, lots of friends who weren't stuck on prejudice, and then Alex told his old man to go fly a kite. Instead of joining the firm just out of college, Alex joined the Army and was killed in Vietnam. Just think, he could have had a deferment of some kind and lived to see you, his little baby, and maybe we could have had some more children. You could have had a little brother or sister."
Lexa hated every time Mother talked about these things. Lexa had long ago decided to try and let the past, and its dead, take care of themselves. She had a lot of anger toward Grandfather too, but she'd tried to see around it for years. She had never known her Daddy, had never been held by him, had never been able to kiss him or show him a childhood drawing...
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