Free Her Mother's Shadow by Diane Chamberlain

wanted to do was to scare her away.

CHAPTER 8
    I f it had not been for the beach traffic, Lacey would have ignored the speed limit and raced all the way to Kiss River from her studio. As it was, she was stuck in a sluggish trail of cars making their way north from Kill Devil Hills. She wanted to call the hospital and hear for herself that Jessica was all right. She wanted to talk to her old friend, hear her voice, reassure her that Mackenzie would be taken care of while she recovered. Again, she thought of packing a bag and flying to Arizona with Nola. They could spell each other while they took turns taking care of eleven-year-old Mackenzie and spending time with Jessica in the hospital. But even though she’d known Nola for as long as she could remember, she had never felt completely at ease with her. Nola could be difficult. She’d been divorced for many years and had never remarried or even dated, although at one time it had been clear that she had her eye on Lacey’s father. Thank God Olivia had come along at that point, or Lacey might have ended up with Nola as a stepmother. Just talking to Nola on the phone could send a chill up her spine.
    Nola had been a lax and permissive mother with Jessica. Lacey’s mother had certainly been lenient and indulgent, as well, but Annie O’Neill’s permissiveness had been balanced by her deep love for her children. Although Jessica had often been critical of Lacey’s parents, she’d admitted just a few years ago that she had actually been envious of the close and loving relationships Lacey had enjoyed growing up in the O’Neill family.
    The traffic was ridiculous! She was driving through Duck, her car creeping so slowly that she feared it might overheat. It had happened before. She turned off the air-conditioning and opened the windows to try to prevent it from happening again. She knew every alternate route available along the Outer Banks, but the island was so narrow here that there was only one road running south and north, and she was on it. She glanced at her cell phone lying on the passenger seat. She could try to call Jessica on the cell, but she didn’t know what hospital she was in, and the thought of coping with cellular information and the iffy reception in the area was more than she could manage.
    Her thoughts turned to Mackenzie. What had the accident been like? Mackenzie wasn’t hurt, Nola had said, so maybe she had been conscious and had witnessed everything. Maybe she saw her mother’s body pinned behind the wheel, or maybe the car had flipped over. Then she began wondering, as she always did when she thought about Mackenzie, what had become of the girl’s father. That had been a sore spot between her and Jessica for years. Mackenzie’s father was Bobby Asher. He’d been one of the many guys she and Jessica had hung around with the summer Lacey was fourteen. In her mind, Bobby would always be that seventeen-year-old chain-smoking, beer-drinking, pill-popping, sexy-as-hell guy, with the blond hair that touched his shoulders and the same light blue eyes she saw in every picture of Mackenzie. Lacey had lost her virginity to him, as had Jessica, the very next night. She’d been hurt that Bobby had ultimately picked Jessica over her. Jess had been less uptight, ready for anything. Lacey had been fairly wild that summer, too, but she knew the scared little kid inside her had been evident to anyone who looked hard enough. Nothing had seemed to frighten Jessica, however, and Bobby had been drawn to that quality in her.
    At the end of that summer, Bobby returned to his home in Richmond, Virginia, and neither she nor Jessica ever saw him again. When Jessica realized she was pregnant, she adamantly refused to tell Nola or anyone else who the baby’s father was. Only Lacey knew. Jessica had had other lovers, if you could call them that at age fourteen. They’d both had others. But the timing of her pregnancy