Free Mind Games by Hilary Norman

stop them leaving, Grace and Claudia would not report them to the authorities. Frank called it blackmail, but Grace said it was just compromise. It was her
first experience of using psychology to resolve a bad situation, and she knew it had really only worked out because their parents didn’t give a damn about her or Claudia, but it was a heady
experience nonetheless – especially when she watched sixteen-year-old Claudia strengthen and blossom almost as soon as they left concrete, steel, icy winds and Frank, and reached palm trees,
blue ocean, sunshine and freedom. No
way
, the new Claudia said, was Grace quitting school, because she, Claudia, was going to find a job and work hard to make sure that Grace –
who’d always been smarter and more ambitious than she was – could finish high school and go to college.
    Neither of them had ever laid eyes on Frank since fleeing Chicago and they had seen Ellen Lucca only once, back in the winter of 1992, when she had arrived unannounced on a Greyhound bus,
bruised and weary and in need of a break from her husband – but even then all she had really wanted to do was load her daughters with guilt for running out on her. She truly seemed to feel
that none of the responsibility had been hers, to believe that it had been their
duty
to take the pain and fear and to stay home for her sake.
    No logic there either, Grace had learned, and that became a useful tool to take with her into the world of psychology and counselling: the awareness that in the recesses of the heart and soul
there was little logic, scanty justice, and no rules whatsoever.
    ‘Just how sick did Frank say Ellen is?’ she asked Claudia now.
    ‘He didn’t say,’ Claudia answered. ‘He was very vague. I asked if I could talk to Mama, but she couldn’t come to the phone – or he wouldn’t let
her.’ She sounded calm, yet her tone was shot through with traces of old bitterness. ‘I asked him what surgery she had to have, and he wouldn’t say, so I asked him straight out if
it was a hysterectomy, and that put the lid on it.’
    ‘He got mad?’
    ‘Not exactly. He got offended, said something about he’d done his bit by telling me, and now it was up to us, but he thought we should come.’ Claudia paused. ‘I’d
say what he wants is for someone to shoulder the burden, take care of Mama after her operation.’
    ‘Well, that someone can’t be you,’ Grace said quickly, hoping to quash any feelings of guilt even before they were born. ‘You have Daniel and the boys to take care of,
and you can’t afford to risk getting sucked back into that old hellhole just because Frank Lucca makes one phone call in a decade.’
    ‘I know that, Grace,’ Claudia said, softly. ‘I didn’t say I’d go.’
    ‘Good,’ Grace said, a little sickened by the force of anger that had just welled up out of her. She shut her eyes again, thought about Ellen, pictured her sick and afraid and having
to face coming home after surgery to her shitbag of a husband. ‘Oh, God,’ she said, violently, and opened her eyes.
    ‘Grace, are you okay?’
    ‘Yes. I guess.’ She knew she didn’t sound okay. ‘Just facing the fact that I’m trying to stop you from feeling guilty about Ellen, but I’m not even sure I can
switch my own feelings off.’
    ‘You’re human, too, Grace,’ Claudia pointed out, calmly, then paused. ‘So what do we do now?’
    ‘I think we should wait a while,’ Grace said. ‘With Easter in a couple of days, we probably couldn’t get a flight to Chicago if we wanted to. Anyway, we both have
commitments.’ Cathy Robbins’ face came into her mind, and she remembered the phone number in her hand. ‘Matter of fact, sis, there’s someone I need to call right
now.’
    ‘That’s fine,’ Claudia said. ‘Are you still up for this weekend?’
    Grace thought about the prospect of two days and nights with her sister and brother-in-law and their sons down in Islamorada, and warmth coursed through