Brock just smiled. He undoubtedly felt that as soon as they got Good Old Mom home and rested she’d be a sweet little old lady who was, after all, grateful for the wonderful gift her daughter had given her.
But Phoebe knew better. These last few unfortunate days would by far outweigh all the other months when Mom had been having a wonderful time. Phoebe would be blamed for it. Not a day would go by when Felicia would forget to remind her daughter that it was her fault she had been in Kuwait when all hell broke loose. And Phoebe would have a heck of a time getting her to take another trip.
Why was it that thoroughly rotten apples like Felicia Hooks seemed to lead charmed lives? She could probably walk through the middle of a gun battle and not be harmed. She would probably live to be a hundred and ten.
Phoebe’s spirits had fallen about as low as they could go by the time Brock turned off the freeway at the airport exit. What can I do? she asked herself as big, sloppy raindrops began to shatter on the windshield. Now her paycheck would have to go into a nice apartment for Good Old Mom or else she’d be moving into their house and disrupting everything with her rattlesnake personality and her garish sofa cushions. Could her marriage survive Felicia Hooks? Phoebe doubted it.
Oh, if only she had been hatched! This business of having a mother like Felicia was the absolute pits. But what could she do? What could she do?
When they pulled into the loading zone at the terminal, it was raining hard. Phoebe could see Good Old Mom inside, just beyond a bank of double doors, standing amid a heap of luggage. She just sat there and looked dully at her mother through the rain-spattered window while a cloud of misery settled down over her.
“I’ll help with the luggage,” Brock said as he pulled the lever that opened their trunk.
“She told me she left most of it in Kuwait,” Phoebe muttered.
“Maybe she had left some excess baggage in Rome or someplace before that and picked it up on her way home. She must have accumulated a lot of it in — what? — eight, nine months?” Leaving the motor running, Brock got out of the car.
At that moment, Felicia spotted Phoebe. A smile and a wave after months of separation? Not on your life. She sent her daughter a look that could have curdled milk. It’s going to be worse than ever, Phoebe said to herself.
Brock dashed inside and introduced himself to Felicia. Phoebe could see her mouth moving rapidly, her hands gesturing angrily, as she ripped into her new son-in-law for something. Brock did not lose his composure. Smiling, he grabbed a couple of suitcases. Good Old Mom stood guard over the remaining luggage until Brock went back for another load and some more verbal abuse.
I should be helping, Phoebe told herself, but she didn’t move. She just sat and listened to the purr of the engine.
Brock loaded the trunk and started to fill the back seat behind Phoebe. As he went back for the last load, Felicia started for the car, a look of total disgust on her face. Shielding her hair from the rain with a magazine, she saw that she’d have to go around to the other side to get in because the curb side was filled with luggage. It amused Phoebe in a grim sort of way that Brock had overlooked that detail. He was usually so thoughtful.
The little pouches of discontent at the corners of Felicia’s mouth bulged as her cold gray eyes swept Phoebe once more. You married a clod, those eyes said as she stepped off the curb and crossed between their car and the one parked in front of it.
“All that money down the drain,” Phoebe moaned.
She shifted around so that her back was to the door, so she’d be facing her mother when she got in the back seat. She’d have a few seconds for a few crisp words before Brock joined them. She was going to tell her that he was a shrink who could have her committed if she didn’t behave herself. It was a spur-of-the-moment idea — perhaps not the best of ideas, but all she had, until—
Well, it was a small car and, somehow, just as Good Old Mom paused to wait for a taxi to pass, Phoebe’s knee — or something — must have hit the gearshift — or something — because it jumped forward suddenly, catching Felicia Hooks, slamming her violently into the car in front and holding her there in a crushing grip.
“Oops,” said Phoebe.
Later, much later, after the police and the ambulance had gone, Brock drove Phoebe home. “It’s odd, isn’t it,” Phoebe said as they sped along, “how a car can be in an accident bad enough to kill someone and still be in working condition.”
“Yup,” Brock said goodnaturedly. “The front end’s a mess, though.”
“Imagine,” Phoebe said, sneaking a sly little look at Brock’s profile, “traveling all over the world like that and getting killed in her own back yard... so to speak.”
“Statistics say that most accidents occur within fifteen miles of home,” Brock said, his eyes on the road.
“Strange,” Phoebe said, “really strange.”
