Lori May - Moving Target

She hated the idea of it.

It made her skin itch.

But what choice did she have?

“Yeah,” Chesca said, grudgingly, before sharing the all-too-familiar address. Though she wasn’t looking forward to the unplanned visit, Chesca knew one place with more security than Fort Knox to its credit. It would be the safest location for the short term. “I’ll be staying with my parents.”

She should have known there was no way to avoid the inevitable.

Despite ignoring a serious handful of recent messages from her mother, Chesca kept trying to convince herself she didn’t return the calls simply due to her busy nature at work, being assigned to the case in Baton Rouge, this, that…and just about every excuse in the book.

They were all excuses. She was just trying to avoid the same old conversation.

Though now that she was in her hometown, and clearly in need of a safe place to stay, there was no use in pretending she could get around a family visit. Sad that a forced opportunity had to be created to bring her back in touch with the Thorne mansion.

If Chesca had it her way, there would have been an abundance of reasons she would want to revisit her youthful home. But, sometimes life didn’t work out how we wanted.

“I have been leaving you message after message, young lady. The least you could have done was let me know you were all right and not lying dead somewhere in the street.” The stern voice of Abigail Thorne was coated in the same superficial sweetness Chesca had come to know as a child.

Even when being scorned by her mother’s words, the actual tone came off as welcoming praise. The words “I am very disappointed in you” could have easily been exchanged with “this pâté de foie gras is positively sinful” on more than one occasion. It was an effect of her mother’s Chesca had come to loathe, but expect.

No matter if she was being disciplined or praised, neither parent in the Thorne family fluctuated their tone with emotion. It wasn’t their way, her mother would say, as though that was something to be proud of.

While Chesca said, “I was on a case, Mother. I’m calling you now, aren’t I?” She double-checked the address Brighton had given her. She had found the location easily enough, with her memory never fully removed from the familiarity of her hometown landscape.

The rental car had been substituted within thirty minutes, which pleased Chesca. She didn’t quite know what to expect, or how the company would take it considering the condition of the car she was trading back to them. Luckily, they were accommodating, swift with courteous service, and shrugged off the incident as all in a day’s work.

The street cops who checked out the damaged rental were just as quick. A simple report was all that was needed, and anything further Chesca wanted to inquire about would be best handled at the precinct, so overall she lost very little time in her day after such an inconvenience.

She had to keep reminding herself that hers was not the first car that had been tampered with in the history of Athena women digging into the mystery of Arachne. And it likely wouldn’t be the last.

“Never mind that, Francesca. I’m terribly disappointed,” her mother carried on. “You missed the brunch I hosted for the foundation stewards. Though I wonder if it is too much to ask that you do not miss the annual gala?”

Chesca let out a groan, wanting to kick herself for not remembering. Along with extra sunshine, April brought the annual Thorne Family Foundation fund-raising gala. She should have known she’d be the recipient of a not-so-gentle reminder of the upcoming event.

It was a pet project of Abigail’s, touted to support whichever newsworthy charity struck her short-lived interest.

Each year there was somehow a more tragic or endearing cause the foundation rallied for, though the lack of sincerity behind the project always left Chesca feeling disenchanted. She knew it was just an excuse for her mother to host pretentious social gatherings and wave around her clout amongst fellow blue bloods.

She also knew she had an unspoken responsibility to attend at least two events per year, representing the next generation of Thornes. Unspoken, but never forgotten in the eyes of her parents.

Francesca had been a disappointment to socialites Abigail and Dorian. Her parents were of discerning blood, she was often told, who had risen to a certain status amongst their well-to-do crowd. It simply wasn’t anything Chesca wanted to be a part of. And the notion that she wouldn’t be carrying on some of the most well-established family traditions was interpreted as a slap in the face, especially to her father.

It was no secret her parents had hoped for a male child, someone to be a proper heir to the family legacies and leave a healthy dose of offspring as namesakes. Unwilling to be matched up using the sole criteria of money, Chesca simply didn’t know how to play by the family rules.

Once her parents accepted this fact, however, they made it quite simple for everyone to get along. Francesca was to put on her party face at least twice annually, to pay respects to the community as part of the Thorne family, and in return she would have her pick of extracurricular activities and academics to choose from.

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