Past Imperfect (Sigrid Harald) by Margaret Maron Read Free Book Online Page B

traffic.
    “Really? I’ve been too busy to read a paper or listen to a weather report.” She lapsed into silence.
    The stop-and-go traffic had brought them only a short way west on Forty-third when Sigrid drew a momentary blank.
    Most people didn’t have to stop and think where their mothers lived, especially if it were in the same borough. But Anne Harald had lived in every Manhattan neighborhood from Inwood to the Battery and seldom stayed in one place more than six months. (Her record was a Tuesday-to-Friday sojourn in Connecticut and she’d have been back in Manhattan on Thursday if any of her photography students had been free then to help her reload the U-Haul-It.) These frequent moves had been so much a part of Sigrid’s childhood that she’d never really questioned Anne’s reasons; but for a split second, Sigrid couldn’t remember if she still had that basement apartment in a Chelsea row house or had actually moved back to the Columbus Circle area as she’d threatened at Christmas. Then Anne said sharply, “If you’re going to turn on Ninth, shouldn’t you get over?” and Sigrid stopped feeling disoriented because Ninth Avenue was a one-way street heading south, which meant Chelsea and that pleasant residential block in the West Twenties.
    Traffic was snarled around the Port Authority Bus Terminal, but once past that, it was only the usual rush hour anarchy: buses pulled in and out of stops in total disregard of smaller vehicles, no one paid attention to lane markings, and double-parkers and jaywalkers added the usual impediments to a smooth flow. Yet Sigrid could feel Anne getting tenser by the minute. Normally her mother was a relaxed passenger who chattered constantly, undistracted by near misses, not even when three lanes of cars and cabs were suddenly squeezed into one. Tonight she seemed edgy and short-tempered and she cut off every conversational gambit Sigrid offered.
    Sigrid often felt like the older and staider of the two, but as tension mounted, she reacted like any guilty daughter and hastily examined her recent past to see if she’d done something to annoy her mother.
    Nothing sprung to mind, unless . . . could it be their birthdays? Today was Sigrid’s; Anne’s was still two weeks away, on the twenty-second. This wasn’t one of those benchmarks that ended in a zero or five. Those usually elicited a rueful melancholy, an awareness of fugitive time. Tonight’s edginess was something different.
    “You’re not coming down with something, are you?” she asked as she turned into Anne’s block.
    “Of course not. I never get sick. You know that. There! Is that a parking space?”
    “Where?” Sigrid asked, distracted.
    “Never mind. There’s a motorcycle parked in it.”
    Sigrid drew up in front of the brownstone that contained Anne’s basement apartment. “I’ll let you out here and go park the car.”
    In that part of town, it was a statement easier made than accomplished, but eventually she found a legal space a block and a half away. Anne had left the door unlocked and was pouring boiling water into a large silver teapot when Sigrid returned.
    Over the years, Anne Harald’s furniture had reduced itself to a few easily packed basic pieces—bed, table and chairs, three chests, two trunks that doubled as occasional tables, some lamps, two new futons to replace a couch that had finally fallen apart during the last move, a bookcase, and the five indispensable file cabinets which held all her papers and photographs. There were also a half-dozen or more cardboard packing boxes full of odds and ends that often never got unpacked between moves. These were usually stacked two high along a bare wall. Covered with exotic fabrics picked up in one of the world’s bazaars and topped with thin sheets of clear plexiglass, the large square cartons served where needed as sideboard or lamp tables.
    Anne had an eye for color and design, and her collection of tablecloths, throws, quilts, and