Danielle Steel: Southern Lights

“Something new? Or should I say someone new?”

“Just a friend. We’re going out with a bunch of people. There’s a game in Riverdale we all want to see. It’s no big deal. I can finish the application this weekend.”

“You have exactly two weeks to finish all of them,” Alexa said sternly. She and Savannah had been alone for almost eleven years, since Savannah was six. “You’d better not screw around, there’s no give on those dates.”

“Then maybe I’ll just have to take a year off from school before college,” Savannah teased her. They had a good time together, and a loving relationship. Savannah wasn’t embarrassed to tell her friends that her mom was her best friend, and they thought her mother was cool too. Alexa had taken several of them to the office with her for Career Day every year. But Savannah had no desire to go to law school. She wanted to be either a journalist or a psychologist, but hadn’t decided yet. She didn’t have to declare her major for the first two years of college.

“If you take a year off, maybe I’ll do it with you. I’ve had a run of crappy cases for the last month. The holidays bring out the worst in everyone. I think I’ve had every Park Avenue housewife shoplifter in town to prosecute since Thanksgiving,” she complained as they left the apartment together, and got in the elevator. Savannah knew that in October her mother had prosecuted an important rape case, and put the defendant away for good. He had thrown acid in the woman’s face. But since then, work had been slow.

“Why don’t we take a trip when I graduate in June? By the way, Daddy’s taking me to Vermont for ski week,” Savannah said breezily as the elevator headed down. She avoided her mother’s eyes when she said it. She hated the look on her face whenever she mentioned her father to her. It was still a mixture of hurt and anger, even after all these years-nearly eleven. It was the only time her mother looked bitter, although she never said anything overtly rotten about him to her daughter.

Savannah didn’t remember much about the divorce, but she knew it had been a bad time for her mother. Her father was from Charleston, South Carolina, and they had lived there until the divorce, and then she and her mother moved back to New York. Savannah hadn’t been to Charleston since, and didn’t really remember it anymore. Her father came to see her in New York two or three times a year, and when he had time, he took her on trips, although his schedule changed a lot. She loved seeing him, and tried not to feel like a traitor to her mother when she did. Her parents communicated by e-mail, and hadn’t spoken or seen each other since the divorce. It was a little Charlie’s Angels for Savannah’s taste, but that was just the way it was, and she knew it wasn’t going to change. It meant her father wouldn’t come to her high school graduation. Savannah was hoping to work on both of them in the four years before she graduated from college. She really wanted both of them there. But her mother was great, in spite of the animosity between her parents.

“You know he’ll probably cancel at the last minute, don’t you?” Alexa said, looking irritated. She hated it when Tom disappointed their daughter, and he so often did. Savannah always forgave him, but Alexa didn’t. She loathed everything he did and was.

“Mom,” Savannah scolded her, almost sounding like the mother and not the daughter. “You know I don’t like it when you do that. He can’t help it, he’s busy.” Doing what? Alexa wanted to ask, but didn’t. Going to lunch at his club, or playing golf? Visiting his mother between her United Daughters of the Confederacy meetings? Alexa pressed her lips tightly together, as the elevator stopped in the lobby and they got out.

“I’m sorry,” Alexa said with a sigh and kissed her. It wasn’t so bad now, at seventeen, but Alexa had been furious when Savannah was little and he didn’t show up and her big blue eyes filled with tears and she tried so hard to be brave. It broke Alexa’s heart to see it, but Savannah could handle it better now. And Savannah excused her father for nearly everything he did. “If his plans change, we can always go to Miami for the weekend, or skiing. We’ll figure something out.”

“We won’t have to. He promised he’d be there,” Savannah said firmly. Alexa nodded, they kissed each other goodbye quickly, and then Savannah ran for her bus, and Alexa walked through the freezing morning to the subway station. It was bitter cold outside and there was snow in the air. Savannah didn’t feel the cold as much as she did, and after a stop-and-start ride on the subway, Alexa was frozen to the bone when she got to work.

She saw Jack, the detective, and one of his young assistants heading for Joe McCarthy’s office, just as she strode toward it herself.

“Early meeting?” Jack asked easily. He had worked with her often over the past seven years, and he liked her a lot. He would have liked to ask her for a date, but she seemed too young to him. She knew her stuff, and was a no-nonsense kind of person, and he knew the DA thought the world of her. Jack had worked with her on the big rape case three months before. They had gotten a conviction. Alexa always did.

“Yeah, Joe sent me a text last night. He’s probably just catching up on all the two-bit cases I’ve had lately. I’ve had every shoplifter in New York,” Alexa said with a grin.

“Nice,” he laughed, and introduced her to Charlie, who said hello, but nothing after that. He looked distracted, as though he was thinking about something else. “Good holidays?” Jack asked as they reached the DA’s office, and he told Charlie to wait outside.

“Quiet. My daughter and I stayed home, and I took a week off. College applications. This is her last year at home.” She said it sadly, and he smiled. She talked about her daughter frequently. He was divorced, but had no kids, and an ex-wife he would have been happy to forget. She had married his partner twenty years before, after cheating on him for two years. Jack never wanted to get married again. He always suspected that Alexa felt the same way. She wasn’t a bitter person, but she was all business, and he didn’t know a single soul in the police department who had ever dated her. He thought she had gone out with one of the assistant DAs five years before, but mostly she kept to herself and never talked about her personal life-except about her daughter.

Alexa had noticed that the cop with him looked young and intense. The earnest look on his face made her smile. Young cops always looked like that to her.

Jack and Alexa walked into Joe McCarthy’s office at the same time, while Charlie waited outside. The DA looked happy to see them both. He was a good-looking man, of Irish origins, with a thick mane of white hair that was always a little too long. He said he’d had white hair since he was in college. It suited him. He was wearing jeans and cowboy boots and a worn-out old tweed jacket and a cowboy shirt. He was known for wearing western gear, even at meetings with the mayor.

“Did you two talk on the way in?” the DA asked, looking at Jack, who shook his head. He didn’t want to steal the DA’s thunder and knew better than that.

“Do we have a new case?” Alexa asked with interest.

“Yeah, I figured we’d keep it out of the paper for another day, until we get everything nailed down,” he said as they sat down. “It’ll probably leak by this afternoon, and then all hell will break loose.”

“What kind of case?” Alexa’s face lit up as she asked him. “Not another shoplifter, I hope. I hate the holidays,” she said, looking disgusted. “I don’t know why they don’t just give them the stuff and forget it. It costs the taxpayers a hell of a lot more than it’s worth to prosecute.”