Free Novels: The Law is a Lady by Nora Roberts Page A

that was somehow fascinating. Her father had loved it for what it was—stark and desolate.
    Watching her daughter, Helen could remember her husband standing exactly the same way, looking out with exactly the same expression. She felt an intolerable wave of grief and controlled it. "Friendly will be buzzing about this for quite some time," she said briskly.
    "It'll buzz all right," Tory muttered. But no one will think of the complications, she added to herself.
    "Do you expect trouble?" her mother asked,
    "I'll handle it."
    ''Always so sure of yourself, Tory."
    Tory's shoulders stiffened automatically. "Am I, Mother?" Turning, she found her mother's eyes, calm and direct, on her. They had been just that calm, and just that direct, when she had told Tory she had requested her father's regulator be unplugged. Tory had seen no sorrow, no regret or indecision. There had been only the passive face and the matter-of-fact words. For that, more than anything else, Tory had never forgiven her.
    As they watched each other in the sun-washed kitchen, each remembered clearly the garishly lit waiting room that smelled of old cigarettes and sweat. Each remembered the monotonous hum of the air conditioner and the click of feet on tile in the corridor outside....
    "No!" Tory had whispered the word, then shouted it. "No, you can't! You can't just let him die!"
    "He's already gone, Tory," Helen had said flatly. "You have to accept it."
    "No!" After weeks of seeing her father lying motionless with a machine pumping oxygen into his body, Tory had been crazy with grief and fear. She had been a long, long way from acceptance. She'd watched her mother sit calmly while she had paced—watched her sip tea while her own stomach had revolted at the thought of food. Brain-dead. The phrase had made her violently ill. It was she who had wept uncontrollably at her father's bedside while Helen had stood dry-eyed.
    "You don't care," Tory had accused. "It's easier for you this way. You can go back to your precious routine and not be disturbed."
    Helen had looked at her daughter's ravaged face and nodded. "It is easier this way."
    "I won't let you." Desperate, Tory had pushed her hands through her hair and tried to think. "There are ways to stop you. I'll get a court order, and—"
    "It's already done," Helen had told her quietly.
    All the color had drained from Tory's face, just as she had felt all the strength drain from her body. Her father was dead. At the flick of a switch he was dead. Her mother had flicked the switch. "You killed him."
    Helen hadn't winced or shrunk from the words. "You know better than that, Tory."
    "If you'd loved him—if you'd loved him, you couldn't have done this."
    "And your kind of love would have him strapped to that machine, helpless and empty."
    "Alive!" Tory had tossed back, letting hate wash over the unbearable grief. "Damn you, he was still alive."
    "Gone," Helen had countered, never raising her voice. "He'd been gone for days. For weeks, really. It's time you dealt with it."
    "It's so easy for you, isn't it?" Tory had forced back the tears because she had wanted—needed—to meet her mother on her own terms. "Nothing—no one—has ever managed to make you feel. Not even him."
    "There are different kinds of love, Tory," Helen returned stiffly. "You've never understood anything but your own way."
    "Love?" Tory had gripped her hands tightly together to keep from striking out. "I've never seen you show anyone love. Now Dad's gone, but you don't cry. You don't mourn. You'll go home and hang out the wash because nothing—by God, nothing—can interfere with your precious routine."
    Helen's shoulders had been very straight as she faced her daughter. "I won't apologize for being what I am,"
    she had said. "Any more than I expect you to defend yourself to me. But I do say you loved your father too much, Victoria. For that I'm sorry."
    Tory had wrapped her arms around herself tightly, unconsciously rocking. "Oh, you're so cold,"