#TeaserTuesday: Complicated

 

 

There were other, more pressing questions to ask, but the one that formed on Ava’s tongue needed to come out, or drive her crazy forever for missing her shot. “Dee didn’t want to be with Remy – she left him. So why was she so obsessed with him? Why’d she keep tabs on him?”

That finally landed like an arrow. Barbara blinked, and, afterward, her gaze skated across the room. It snagged on something – maybe Reese, going by her slight frown – and then returned. Her eyes weren’t so impassive this time. “Dee was complicated.”

“So’s cancer. It’ll still kill you.”

The first glimmer of emotion touched her: frown lines deepening around her mouth. “She–”

Out of patience, Ava decided to swing the hammer, and sweep up the glass if necessary. “She was a bitch,” she said, coldly, and Barbara’s brows jumped, once.

Colin muttered, “Oh, shit.”

Maggie nodded, subtly. Approving. It gave Ava the nerve to press on.

“I know you cared about her,” Ava said. “And I know that, even though she’s dead, your loyalty lies with her, and not us. Not Felix. I’m not here to resurrect ghosts. I’m looking for my son. Loyalty to Dee aside, you should at least want to protect an eight-year-old boy who never hurt anyone. Dee’s grandson, at that.”

Barbara jerked, sat somehow more upright, and crossed her legs the other way. Picked an invisible spot of lint off her skirt. She met Ava’s gaze head-on, and Ava thought she was seeing the real Barbara for the first time. In a sharp, affronted voice, she said, “Did I say I didn’t want to help your little boy?”

“Not in so many words,” Ava shot back. “But you sure were beating around the bush about it.”

It's wall-to-wall ghosts in this one, for everyone.