Like Father Like Daughter Read Online Free Page B

immediately as I began walking as fast as I could away from Detective Dorne and his minions.
    Lake Mingo Park was adjacent to the police-fire station, so I walked the hundred yards or so to the park until I found a bench to sit on, where I could collect my thoughts and call my mother. And Ryan’s mother. That was a call I didn’t want to make, so I put it off as long as I could.
    I dialed my mother’s contact on my cell phone and waited as it rang several times. She finally answered.
    “Hello?” she said cheerily. My mother always woke at dawn, no matter what day of the week it was.
    “Mom, something terrible has happened.” I told her everything. From the time I woke up to the moment I walked out of the station.
    “Oh, my God, Libby!” Mom sighed into the phone. “Where are you now? I’ll come get you.”
    I told her how to get to Lake Mingo Park. When she pressed me for more details, I told her I’d explain everything when she picked me up.
    The next call was going to be even harder. God damn it. I did not want to call Ryan’s mother. But someone had to, and I wanted to tell her before the police got to her.
    It was just as bad as I had feared. She fell apart on the other end of the line. I could hear her wailing and praying to God to make it not be true. I tried to comfort her as best I could, but there was nothing else I could say, so I just told her I loved her and hung up the phone.
    As I sat waiting for Mom to arrive, I watched the ducks glide across the pond. The baby ducklings trailed behind their mother, leaving a wavy pattern in the water behind them. Babies. Ryan and I had never had babies. Not for lack of trying, mind you. In the early days, we tried like champions, doing everything we could think of and following every suggestion I could find on the internet. But every single fucking stick I peed on showed only one line, not two. Eventually, we gave up and lied to ourselves and each other that we were happy without kids and that we didn’t need them to make our marriage complete.
    Mom pulled up in her minivan—the one she bought years ago in anticipation of the grandchildren she would drive around to play dates and Chuck E. Cheese. I never told her we gave up two years ago, so every time I would see her, she’d ask me when she was going to become a grandmother. Never , I should have said. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. Just get it over with. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t look in her eyes and see the disappointment that would take over once she realized she was never, ever going to be a grandma. So I lied to her. Every single time. Told her we were still doing fertility treatments when in reality, our fertility doctor, Dr. Ashish Patel, had told me two years ago I had no ovaries left. The endometriosis had literally devoured them. There was no surgery, no treatments left to try. It was over. Caput. Finito.
    I opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. Mom reached across the armrest and pulled me into a tight embrace. Just when I thought I was all cried out, big, ugly, animalistic sobs racked my whole body. Everything that had happened came pouring out of me, like I was vomiting information all over my mother. I told her about waking up next to Ryan with his head blown off, about my headache—which was finally dissipating—and my interview with Detective Dorne.
    “There, there,” she said, squeezing my hand. “Mommy’s here now. You come back to my place and get some rest, okay? Maybe you’ll feel better after a shower and a nap. Then we can talk about where we go from here.”
    When we arrived at my mother’s house on Jacks Creek Road in Richmond, I did just as my mother had suggested. I took a nice hot shower and then laid down for a nap on my former bed. But I couldn’t sleep. I lay there in the daybed I had slept on until I was eighteen, looking around at all the changes Mom had made to my room. The bed was the same. The furniture was the same. The decorations, however, were