Free Angel's Dance by Heidi Angell

murmured,
feeling guilty for the jealousy in the bedroom. She took the
proffered cup then looked around for Laura. Just because her vision
was gone, didn’t mean she couldn’t get more on it. She headed into
the living room where Laura stood looking at pictures on the
entertainment center. Clear was hit with a wave of melancholy and
realized that perhaps Laura was worse off than she appeared. Clear
had no right to judge her. If anything, she should be impressed
that the woman was holding it together as well as she
was.
    Clear sighed and jumped right in. “Um…
Laura? May I call you…”
    “ Well, you have to call
me something ,”
Laura snapped.
    Clear brushed off the attitude. “Did
you know all of your daughter’s friends?”
    The woman glared at her balefully.
“Are you kidding? Who could possibly know all their child’s
friends?”
    Clear decided that it would be best to
just get this miserably annoying part out of the way.
    “ Look, I know you don’t
believe in me. Fortunately for both of us, that isn’t going to
affect what I do. I get that you have it in your head that there
must be something going on between us,” she jerked her thumb at
Grant “because you think I am young and beautiful and how could
he not want me. I
also get that you have a skewed view of him and think that I would
have to want him, because how could anyone not want him as much as
you, even with all his… issues. I hate to embarrass either one of
you with all this painfully revealing emotional bullshit, but I
need to make a point here. Grant and I are not together. We will
not be together. I know he thinks I am hot, but he also has been
with me enough to be more than a little… disturbed… terrified… awed
by what I do,” Clear shook her head. “I totally get how you see
Grant. He is good looking for his age, he can be sweet and charming
unexpectedly, but the guys got baggage, even more baggage than I
could have realized. He doesn’t have time for me and… well, he
can’t handle my baggage because he is pretty overloaded right now.
So, stop being so snarky and obnoxious to me because you feel like
I am taking your place. I am not.” She took a deep breath, pleased
to see that she had managed to take the woman completely off
guard.
    “ I know that you are
blaming yourself for Kat disappearing and you feel like everyone
else has to blame you too, which makes you angry and makes you feel
like every question anyone asks is a personal affront to your
motherhood. I also know that you don’t like blaming yourself
because you’re not that type of person. The only person you can
shift that blame to is Grant and you have good emotional logic to
justify it. He is the reason you feel like you are a horrible
mother. You are stretched too thin and you couldn’t do all the
mommy things you wanted, because you were busy being dad
too.
    “ Let me make this clear. I
don’t blame you. Grant doesn’t blame you. When I ask a question, it is not a
challenge to your motherhood. I just need a straight answer. Now,
back to my original question.”
    “ I need to see.. or talk
to a specific friend of Kat’s. Trust me, you will remember her if
you met her. She is tall with miles of leg. Her hair is a blue
black, but it is not natural. She was probably originally a red
head or a blond. Her eyebrows weren’t dyed. She has her hair cut
raggedly and is probably Goth. Does she sound familiar?”
    Laura stared at her in shock and
amazement, obviously not keeping up.
    “ Well?” Clear
re-iterated.
    “ Um.. no. No, I don’t know
the girl you are talking about.”
    “ Damn!” Clear muttered
under her breath.
    “ Was this girl involved in
Kat’s disappearance?’ Grant asked
    “ I’m not sure, but she was
there when Kat had a bad experience with some guy, some WAY older
guy.”
    “ Experience? What kind of
experience!” Grant snapped.
    Clear held up her hand. “I don’t know.
I was trying to pull it all back when you two came barging into