Free A Cold White Sun: A Constable Molly Smith Mystery (Constable Molly Smith Series) by Vicki Delany

munched on a cookie, catching crumbs in her palm.
“Not much point in keeping you here any longer. I’ve an appointment to interview Gord Lindsay in a few minutes. Finish your drink and you can come with me.”
She grinned.
 

Chapter Eleven

“What do you mean, he’s your son? He didn’t recognize you.”
“You don’t have children yourself, do you, Eliza?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“There’s a bond, you see. A bond between a mother and her child. A bond so strong it can never be broken.”
Margo stared over Eliza’s shoulder, a soft smile on her face, a warmth in her heart. The door chimes were slowing to a halt following William Westfield’s departure.
He was gone but the air was full of him. His scent, his aura. The totality of his being.
Her son.
How could she not know him?
“It’s been a long time,” she said to Eliza. “A very long time. But I knew. He recognized me, I could tell. After all those years, the bond is still there.”
“Margo, what are you talking about?”
She didn’t expect Eliza to understand. Most people, parents or not, wouldn’t understand. Only when the bond between mother and infant had been shattered so sharply, so abruptly, so deliberately, did a mother and child know it existed. Like an amputee feeling pain in a limb no longer attached.
She’d tried to explain that analogy to the therapist her husband Steve had insisted she see. The therapist had been a stuffy woman, all power suit and glasses dangling from a jeweled chain. Pictures of children and grandchildren prominently displayed on her desk. What could she know about Margo’s loss?
Margo had refused to make another appointment, and Steve let it go.
Eliza was studying her, a question on her face. She reached out one hand, and touched Margo on the arm with fingers as light as air.
“I had a baby, you see. When I was just a girl. I…gave him up. I didn’t want to, but I had to.” Margo felt tears behind her eyes. She always did, when she thought about what had happened. She tried not to show her ever-present pain to Steve. He was a good man, a good husband. He didn’t deserve to know how much she pined for what she had lost.
“You think this man, William, is that boy? When did you see him last?” Eliza’s voice was kind. Soft. Her lovely face was crinkled in concern. Margo decided to trust her.
“The day he was born. They didn’t even let me hold him in my arms. They didn’t let me say goodbye. One of the nurses was kind. She took me to the nursery window and pointed him out. In my heart I named him Jackson, after his father.”
“Oh.” Some of the sympathy melted from Eliza’s face. Margo didn’t care. She knew . She knew Jackson had been here. In this gallery. She took a deep breath, pulled the essence of him into her body, the very body that had nourished him over all those months of her shame and her misery.
“If you’d like to go home I can manage for the rest of the day.”
“No, I’ll be fine. It’s wonderful, Eliza. So wonderful. You’re wondering why I didn’t say something to him. I want to take it slowly, tread carefully. He wouldn’t recognize me, of course, not on a physical level, but I could tell he sensed something about me. Deep down inside he knew . Oh, Eliza. This is so exciting.”
The rest of the day passed in a blur of sheer joy. Margo practically danced around the gallery. She dusted and swept with cheerful abandon, she greeted customers with an enormous smile, she swung her arms and moved her body to the music playing on the sound system. Eliza watched her, clearly thinking that Margo had lost her marbles, but she could hardly complain when Margo sold several pieces of art.
She wouldn’t say anything to Steve. Not yet. Steve would remind her, in that patient so-understanding voice that drove her crazy, of the other times when she’d mistakenly thought a man was her son. Of course, those hadn’t been the same. She’d simply suspected the man in the