LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Two

      “Oh, come on, Michelle. Come to the party with me. You work too hard, darling. Don’t be afraid of having a little fun.”

      Mikki McKenna suppressed a deep sigh.

      Served her right for answering her cell phone without looking at caller ID. But she’d just pulled into her parking spot in front of the medical building, and because of the hour, she had naturally assumed that it was someone in her office or the hospital calling.

      Either that, or it was one of a handful of patients she’d entrusted with her private line in case of an emergency.

      She hadn’t expected her mother to call. That came under the heading of an entirely different sort of emergency. Something just short of the apocalypse.

      It had been several months since she’d heard from her mother. Thinking back, Mikki vaguely remembered that it had been right between her mother shedding Tim Wilson, husband number four, and going off on a cruise to some faraway island paradise, the name of which presently escaped her. Her mother always went off on a cruise after every divorce. Cruises were her mother’s primary hunting grounds for potential new husbands. She kept going on different cruises until she found someone to her satisfaction.

      “I’m not afraid of having fun, Mother,” Mikki began, attempting to get her mother to see her side for a change even though, in her heart, it was a hopeless endeavor.

      Veronica McKenna Sheridan Tolliver Wilson—her mother thought that having so many names made her seem like British royalty—immediately interjected, “Well, then come! This promises to be a really wonderful party, Michelle. Anderson throws absolutely the very best parties,” she said with enthusiasm.

      Anderson. So that was the new candidate’s name. She wondered if the man had any idea what he was in for.

      “I’m sure that he does, Mother,” Mikki said, humoring her. “But—”

      Veronica was quick to shut her daughter down. She’d had years of practice.

      “Michelle, please, you need to have a little fun before you suddenly find that you’re too old to enjoy yourself. Honestly, I don’t know how I wound up raising such a stick in the mud,” Veronica lamented dramatically.

      Possibly because you didn’t raise me at all, Mother, Mikki thought.

      Between her parents’ arguments and the almost-frenzied partying they both indulged in, singularly and together, she’d hardly ever seen her parents when they were still married.

      She remembered being periodically dropped off to stay with various relatives as a child. As she got older, there were sleepovers at friends’ homes instead, especially her best friend, Nicole. Envious of the family unity she witnessed, Mikki had made sure she was the perfect houseguest, going the extra mile by cleaning up after herself as well as her friend and even preparing breakfast whenever possible.

      It was her way of ensuring that she would be invited back.

      By the time she was twelve, her parents had divorced, and they’d professed to want shared custody of her—which meant, in reality, that neither parent really wanted to be saddled with her upbringing. Each kept sending her to the other. Money was substituted for love. The only interest from either one of her parents came by way of the actual interest her trust fund accrued.

      If it hadn’t been for her great-aunt Bethany, Mikki would have felt that she had no family at all. It was Great-Aunt Bethany who took an interest in her education and suggested that she consider attending medical school.

      The latter had grown out of her having nursed an injured bird back to health after it had flown into the sliding glass patio door.

      “You have a good heart and good instincts, Michelle. It would be a shame to let that go to waste,” Great-Aunt Bethany had told her that summer, literally dropping a number of medical school pamphlets in her lap.

      And that had been the beginning of Mikki’s career in medicine. Her desire to help others, to make a difference, took root that summer. Very simply, it was the reason she had decided to become a doctor.

      There had also been a small part of her—because for the most part, she had given up hoping to make any meaningful connection with her mother—that did hope her mother would be proud of her choice.

      She supposed she should have known better.

      “Well, if that’s what you want, I suppose you should go for it,” Veronica had said when she told her mother of her plans to go to medical school. “But personally, I can’t see why you’d want to go poking around people’s insides or whatever it is that you’ll be doing. It’s all so very icky, darling.” Mikki could still picture the look of revulsion on her mother’s face. “And you really don’t have to do that, you know. You don’t need to earn a living.”

      She let her mother go on trying to talk her out of her choice until Veronica lost interest in the subject.

      Her mother was always losing interest in subjects, this included the various men that she had married. It was always “the next one” who promised to be better. Until he wasn’t.

      Watching her mother over the years, Mikki had become sure of one thing. That was not the kind of life she wanted.

      “I’m only going to be in town for another day or two,” her mother was saying now. “I don’t know why you don’t want to take the opportunity to come out of your shell and see me.”

      “Because I won’t be seeing you,” Mikki pointed out patiently.

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