SURVIVAL INSTINCT

Chapter: 10

Sarah extricated herself from the car and ran up the stairs and threw her arms around her. "Mom!"

Her mom hugged her back, a little less vigorously. "Darling. So good to see you." Her lips were cool against Sarah's cheeks, and she smelled wonderfully of roses.

"You look great!" Sarah said.

She did. Sarah's mother was turning fifty-eight and looked ten years younger. Her skin glows, and is practically wrinkle-free, her hair gleam, she has kept her petite figure and sets it off to full advantage in silk dresses and high heels. It takes a good bit of effort, not to mention money; to maintain the illusion, but it isn't like she can not afford it, after all.

Her mom smirked. "Come in, darling. Your room is ready. Dinner is cooking. would you like a drink while we wait?"

She meant a glass of sherry or a mint julep or something equally ladylike. Sarah shook her head. "I will take my things upstairs first if you don't mind. But you go ahead, mom."

"No, no, darling. I will just sit here and wait for you." She smiled. Sarah smiled back and headed up the stairs with her overnight bag.

Sarah's room tonight was the same room she grew up in, and it had not changed appreciably in the nine years since she left it. It had not changed much in the hundred and fifty years before that either. Sarah had a few low-brow posters hanging on the wall at one time, and they had disappeared, but otherwise, everything was the same. The bed that her great-grandfather Ralph Miller was born in stood against the wall, and grandmother Elizabeth's wardrobe was in the corner. Sarah hung her clothes in it and headed back down the stairs for that drink and conversation with her mother.

They spent the cocktail hour catching up, and over dinner, they discussed her new career. Sarah had been home only once since she got her real estate license less than a couple of months back, for a family picnic, but at that time everything had been so new that she had very little to say about it. She was more forthcoming this time. "It is a nice place to work. I am glad my friend Yana suggested it, and not only because it is so convenient to my apartment. Parker is very professional and knowledgeable; there are rumors that the governor is considering him for a spot on the real estate commission next year; also most of the others are decent and helpful, too. I am not making any money yet, but times are tough for everyone, and I am sure things will get better soon."

"Any handsome young men?" Sarah's mother wanted to know. 

Sarah snorted and pretended it was a sneeze. "Excuse me. Oh, yes. Many of them, starting with Parker himself. He is not that young, around  45, maybe, but he is very well off, absolutely gorgeous..."

"Seventeen years difference isn't so much," Sarah's mom murmured, to which she smiled.

"...and gay. Tim is an unpleasant and gorgeous gay, but he is a very successful turd. As are more than half the other men. The rest are either married or involved, too young or too old. Except for James," Sarah said.

"And what is wrong with him?" her mother asked, resignedly.

Sarah grinned, "Not a thing. He is 32 and very handsome. Makes a good living, has his own apartment in a very good locality, and drives an Audi. Dresses well and works out regularly. He is single, straight, has no ex-wives or children, and is looking for the right woman."

"So why are you not snatching him up?" Sarah's mother questioned her.

"He is not interested in me," Sarah answered.

"What the bull shit...?" Sarah's mother felt insulted on her behalf. "Why ever not?"

"He is black," Sarah replied. "He wants a black girlfriend only."

Sarah thought that in fact, she should probably tell her very good friend and fellow realtor, Yana Turner about him the next time she and Sarah got together for one of their tax-deductible real estate power-lunches. Not that Yana was interested in settling down, having just escaped from a much worse marriage than Sarah, but she was always interested in beginning a friendship with a good-looking guy. If it came to that, she should also tell Yana about Ryan, as well.

"By the way, Mom," Sarah said, "You will never guess who I ran into the other day."

"Who?" Her mom asked suspiciously. She must have understood from Sarah's tone that this was not likely to be good news.

"I met Ryan Johnson," Sarah said and watched her mother wrinkle her brows. "Who?"

"Ryan Johnson. Come on, Mom, you can't have forgotten him. He is three years older than me and you knew his mother slightly. I think she may have worked during some of your parties here, back in the old days," Sarah reminded her.

Mom's immaculately made-up eyes widened a bit. "The one who got herself pregnant by the colored boy?"

"The same," Sarah said.

"Isabel Johnson. And you saw her son? How did that come about?" her mom asked.

"He called," Sarah said. "Not me personally; the office. He wanted to see a house. I will tell you about it later. When we have finished eating. I don't want to spoil our dessert."

Sarah then devoted herself to her sherry cobbler. Her mom went to supervise their dinner.

Later, when they were sitting in the formal parlor, on her Great Aunt Hilda's turn of the last century sofa, which was now upholstered in red velvet, Sarah told her the whole story from beginning to end. Including the part, she had not heard yet, in which she found the body. And then she watched her mother turn pale, despite the layers of makeup she had meticulously applied.

"How awful for you, Sarah," her mother said.

"It was unpleasant," Sarah admitted.

"That arrogant, ill-bred young clown. To talk to you like that!"

"Not that. Finding Diana was awful. Ryan Johnson is merely annoying," Sarah said.

"Well, of course, dear. Naturally, finding a butchered body," she shivered mildly, "Could not possibly compare to having to deal with young Mr. Johnson, rude though he may be. Still," she lowered her voice, "Do you think he may have had something to do with it?"

"The police seemed to think so. Or at least they seemed very interested in him. They kept him for a very long time after they finished with me. He was there, after all, and he would not be what I consider a particular law-abiding person, I think," Sarah said.

"No." Sarah's mother agreed with a mild shudder, "I imagine he wouldn't be."

"He went to prison once, didn't he, Mom? Right after high school?" Sarah asked.

Her mom nodded. "For assault, dear. Or maybe it was the battery."

"Oh, Lord!" Sarah said. She had assumed it had been for stealing a car or forging a check or something frighteningly violent, not something as comparatively innocent as assault or a battery. "What happened then?" Sarah asked her mom.

"A bar fight, I believe." Her mother cackled. "He was arrested, of course. There was no doubt that he was guilty. It was a particularly brutal beating, from everything I heard at the time. Practically killed the poor man."

They sat in silence for a moment.

"Do you ever see her?" Sarah specifically asked, "Isabel Johnson?"

"Dear me, no," her mother said, smoothing a hand over her impeccably styled, blond hair. "She was common as dirt, bless her heart. We did not associate. And now she has passed on."

Sarah blinked at her. "Passed on? Dead, you mean?" Mom nodded. "But she was not very old. If she was only fifteen when Ryan was born, and he is three years older than me..." Sarah counted rapidly on her fingers, math not being my favorite, "She would only be in her mid-forties. What happened?"

"It was quite big news dear. I am surprised you didn't hear about it on the news up there in  Kansas City." Mom lowered her voice slightly. "She died of an overdose of some drug or other. At home. By the time someone found her, she had been dead for several days, or maybe as much as a week."

"And nobody went looking for her for all that time? What about the neighbors? And where was Ryan? Didn't she have a job?" Sarah asked her mom.

"She worked at a distillery when she was younger," Mom said, "but she has been collecting disability for at least ten years. and she lived alone. There is no telling how long she was lying there. She might have called out, but if she did, no one heard her. The wetland is mostly empty these days, and I have not seen her son since he went off to prison."

"Did it happen recently? Isabel's passing away?" Sarah asked.   

Her mom nodded. "They found her a fortnight back, I would say. Here have some brandy, dear. You are as white as a ghost."