The Deadly Caress

Chapter 1

  "Welcome. My name is Estella," the woman said.

  Startled, Amanda took a half step back. Chauffeurs, maids ...what next? She heard the Rolls start forward. "Oh! My bags, my camera. He's forgotten about them." She swung around and waved, trying to attract Ricardo's attention.

  "Please do not worry, Miss Amanda. He will take your luggage to your room." The maid spoke English quite well but her Mexican accent was still evident. "Mrs. Campbell is please you have come. She is waiting inside for you."

***

"Jean, have you heard anything I've said?" Lionel Cohen, her balding and overweight lawyer asked, seated beside her on the cream damask sofa.

  "I hope Amanda likes me." Jean Campbell pressed her manicured hands to her temples. "Oh she'll probably hate me, despise me. Be upset that no one's told her. That I hadn't contacted her years ago."

  "I did suggest it would have been better to leave it."

  Jean looked suddenly towards the door. "Is that Ricardo?"

  She jumped up and straightened her silk skirt. "I should be out there to greet her."

  "Come back and sit down. We're not done. Estella will bring her in."

  "But-" Jean began.

  "You want to look calm, don't you?" Lionel interrupted. "She doesn't need to know how desperate you are for her acceptance."

  But I am, she thought. "And her love, Lionel... the child must feel abandoned by me. I have only one chance for a good impression."

  He put his glasses into his suit pocket and then picked up some documents from the coffee table. "I can't say that I agree with the changes, but I'll get them done and back to you tomorrow." His tone was grudging. Lionel was a good lawyer, Jean mused, but he was an extremely old-fashioned man, with outdated ideas; he didn't like that she'd gone against his advice. Though, she couldn't divulge to him what she knew yet until it was confirmed. If all went as planned, tomorrow would be the day.

  Jean pulled out a knitted baby's bootie from her suit pocket. "I slipped it off Amanda's foot the last time I saw her." She shook her head as the memory of that heart-wrenching moment assaulted her. "You can't imagine..."

  "No, I guess not," he said, giving her a blank stare.

  Twice she'd managed to sneak into the nursery to see Amanda. It was during the second time that she'd taken the bootie off that tiny pink foot.

  For many months afterwards, she'd cried herself to sleep. Every year, on Amanda's birthday, she sank into the shadows where there was no hope, only alcohol, and lately prescription medications from any doctor whom her money could still convince. The melancholy took many weeks to lift and the supply of pills always dried up. Her daughter's birthday was tomorrow. Now, for the first time in thirty years, she hoped they would celebrate it together.

  "Is there anything else you want to add to this draft?" Lionel said holding up the pages in his hand. "I'm advising you not to leave-"

  Jean held up her hand. "Lionel, I've agonized over this, you know that." After staring at the bootie again, she put it back into her pocket along with the years of guilty memories. "Somehow, I have to try to make it up to her." Something I should have done long before this, she said to herself.

  "I'm tired of people telling me what I should do." She lifted her head to look at Lionel. "I lived with that when Murray was alive. You know what it was like—he told me who I should see, who I could speak to, what I should wear. No one will dictate my life again. I'm sorry, Lionel, not even my closest friend."