The Armstrong Assignment (A Janet Markham Bennett Cozy Thriller Book 1) by Diana Xarissa (books for 10th graders TXT) 📕

“That was good,” Lucy admitted. “I enjoyed that trip a lot, even if I didn’t come back with much in the way of art. I had fun, though, and it definitely fed my creativity.”

“Have you done much art since you got back?” Janet asked.

Dixie laughed harshly. “She went on that trip when she was nineteen,” she told Janet. “That was over twenty years ago. Since then, she’s started a dozen paintings and finished none.”

“I finished the one I gave you,” Lucy countered. “And I did one for my mother, as well.”

Dixie sighed. “My dear girl, what if something awful happens to your father? You need to learn what you’re going to need to know to run the business.”

“Theodore can manage that,” Lucy said carelessly.

“And I’d be more than happy to help him,” Tony interjected.

Lucy looked surprised and then shrugged. “Yeah, sure, I mean, once Tony and I are married, he could help, too.”

Dixie sighed. “You know your father wants you to run the business.”

“My father wants a lot of things,” Lucy replied. “Sometimes he gets disappointed. At least after his death he won’t be around to be disappointed in me.”

Tony made a face. “That’s a bit cold.”

“My father doesn’t understand me,” Lucy told Janet. “He wants me to care about the ranch and about his other businesses, but I simply want to move through my life gathering experiences and turning those experiences into art. I suppose I’m too much like my mother for him to approve.”

Dixie laughed. “You are like your mother,” she agreed. “At least you don’t marry your mistakes.”

Lucy flushed. As she opened her mouth to reply, the waiter arrived, carrying a large tray. He cleared away the starters and then gave everyone their main course choices. Theodore ordered two more bottles of wine before the man left.

Chapter 11

“She’s just jealous,” Lucy said to Janet in a low voice, nodding towards Dixie.

“Oh?” Janet replied.

“She wants to marry my father in the worst way. It drives her crazy that my father loves me so much. If she could have her way, he’d kick me out the way he did with my mother. That was her doing, although she’d never admit to it.”

Janet glanced over at Dixie. She was talking quietly with Neil and didn’t seem to have heard Lucy’s words.

“Was it difficult for you, the divorce?” Janet asked.

Lucy nodded. “My father was determined to keep me with him at all costs. My mother wanted to get away from him so badly that she actually agreed to leave me with him. It wasn’t until she’d gotten away that she was able to think clearly. Once she’d realised what she’d done, she came back to Texas to get me.”

Janet frowned. “How old were you when all of this was happening?”

“So, they separated before I was even born, but my mother stayed in Texas for the rest of her pregnancy. Daddy gave her a ton of money to get her to agree to that. She didn’t realise that he’d only done it so that he could steal me away as soon as I’d arrived,” Lucy told her.

“Surely he couldn’t just steal you away,” Janet replied.

“He got my mother’s doctor to sign papers that she wasn’t well enough to look after herself and a new baby, and then he got my mother sent away to recover. She had had a difficult delivery, but then she got hooked on painkillers and had some other issues, so she didn’t come back to Texas until I was about two,” Lucy explained.

“How awful for both of you,” Janet exclaimed.

Lucy shrugged. “She came back with a new husband. He wasn’t really interested in being the stepfather of a toddler, so he convinced my mother to leave me with my father and move to Arizona. They were together for a year or two before my mother left him for another woman.”

Janet sipped her wine. “I feel as if I should be taking notes,” she said.

Lucy laughed. “It does get rather complicated. Mom was with Stacy for a year or so. Stacy didn’t want children, and I didn’t end up meeting her until years later, but that’s another story. Anyway, after that, Mom met another guy and ran away to Florida with him. When that didn’t work out, she moved back to North Dakota. She’d been born and raised there and that’s where her parents still lived.”

“And you went and stayed with her for a while?” Janet asked.

“I was six or seven by that time. Living back with her own parents made my mother realise what she’d been missing by not being a part of my life. She got in touch with my father to arrange for shared custody.”

“He’d had custody up to that point?”

“Actually, they’d made some sort of informal shared custody agreement, but my mother rarely visited, so it hadn’t mattered. Now my mother demanded a formal agreement where my father would pay to send me to stay with her several times a year. Daddy agreed and I went and stayed with my mother for three months in Pennsylvania.”

“Pennsylvania?” Janet wondered where she’d lost track of the story.

Lucy chuckled. “Mom had a new boyfriend and he had a summer home on a river in Pennsylvania. I spent the entire summer watching a black-and-white television and skipping stones on the river. I loved being able to spend time with my mother, but I hated him and I hated living in a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere.”

Janet took her last bite of dinner and then looked at Lucy. “What happened next?”

“I spent Thanksgiving with my mother in Idaho,” she replied. “And then spent the month of January