Abandoned by Allison Brennan

Author:Allison Brennan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Chapter Eighteen

Max was missing something.

When she returned to the cottage from the Hendersons’ house, she made herself lunch and mixed a mimosa. She sat on the deck and ate, drank, and tried to clear her thoughts. Focusing on the ocean waves was relaxing, and her mind kept drifting back to the postcards.

Why had her mother sent her postcards of art she had stolen—or knew had been stolen? What could she have possibly thought Max could do about it? The six years between abandonment and Martha’s death was summed up in sixteen postcards that evidently meant something more than Max had realized.

Everything came back to the postcards.

Max got up, rinsed her plate, mixed a second mimosa, and went back to her den. She removed all sixteen postcards from her timeline. Martha had spent far more time with Jimmy Truman than Max had thought she would. Their relationship was neither simple nor fleeting.

Max took the postcards to the dining table and laid them out on the table in order, message side up. The first card was a belated birthday postcard from Hawaii. That was the only postcard that specifically mentioned Jimmy Truman.

There was a postcard every January—only one came within days of her birthday; most were weeks, sometimes months, late. The birthday postcards had the same theme: happy birthday, have fun, too bad Max didn’t know how to have fun, maybe I’ll call and chat.

Martha had never called.

Max had twice asked her grandmother Eleanor whether she intentionally kept Martha from her. The first time was when Max and Eleanor had a huge argument. It started after Max informed the rest of the family that her uncle Brooks was cheating on his wife. Eleanor tried the stern lecture, but Max wasn’t having it. She was angry—furious, really—that her family were hypocrites, that there was a double standard for them and everyone else. Max tossed back every rule, every lecture, every character trait Eleanor had instilled in her because Eleanor had sided with Brooks. It wasn’t until later that Max realized Eleanor hadn’t sided with her son so much as abhorred Max’s method of delivery.

But at the time, Max was angry and upset. She asked Eleanor if she knew where her mother was and maybe now was the time Max should find her.

She’d been fifteen.

Eleanor was hurt, Max realized later, but at the time all Max wanted was to hurt her and she didn’t think she’d gotten under her skin at all.

“Your mother does not want to be found. She does not want to return. I’ve heard on occasion that so-and-so saw her in one place, and another person saw her somewhere else. But never for long. She’s still transient, and is truly lost. Yet, no matter how angry I am with you right now, Maxine, I would never want you to leave me.”

It took Max a long time before she really understood what her grandmother meant. While she was not sorry she’d exposed Brooks, she ultimately wished she’d exposed him differently. Because she’d

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