The revelation clearly unsettles her, visible in her expressions and the way she stiffens, her head tilting minutely and her brow creasing. For two years, she’s shared a city with her estranged daughter, and she didn’t know. How? Instinctively, Joanna can tell impossible things about her children without them uttering a word, she’s no witch but she has magic of her own, fully capable of knowing when her children were near and when they were in trouble… did that not apply to Laurel? Was it because they had never bonded like she had her eldest and her youngest? Because there was no connection between them bar blood, and the necklace she spies hanging around her neck? Just a glimpse of the chain is a relief, a gentle exhale expelling from her lips as she briefly glances at it. She hadn’t been certain if Lawrence would pass it on. It was the only thing she asked of him at the time, the only contact she had made. And Joanna stressed the importance of Laurel wearing it.
“I had no idea…” and why would she? She wasn’t involved in Laurel’s life, and Joanna was well aware of it. It’s clear in the comment she makes that she knows it too, that she doesn’t know what else to say. She’s still processing her reality, her daughter in front of her just out of reach, for the first time in twenty-six years. But Joanna is the wife of a politician, a politician herself. Her natural instinct is to compartmentalise her emotions until she can express them in private. She won’t show much else now, out here, for anyone to see.
Hesitating, Joanna quickly ran through her commitments for the day, before she nods quietly. “Do you mind?” She asks, holding up her cell, but she doesn’t wait for a response. Turning sideways, but keeping Laurel in the corner of her eye, she quickly calls her assistant and, after a minute or so of avoiding questions, cancels her plans for the day. Moving to face Laurel, she offers a small, weak smile even as she holds her breath and prepares herself for the inevitable. “– did you have anywhere in particular or… shall we walk?” There’s no avoiding this, and in all honesty, Joanna’s tired. This secret… Laurel… it’s been weighing on her shoulders for years, chipping away at her and so far, she’s managed to keep it together, despite what her family may think. If there’s one thing Joanna’s good at, it’s putting up a front. She would rather suffer in silence than upset those she loves and cares about. But giving up Laurel was, and remains to be, Joanna’s biggest regret in life. It hurts, knowing that her daughter could very well loathe her. But this won’t go away… and Jo doesn’t necessarily want it to.
Laurel bit the inside of her cheek, she needed to do something to bite back her words. She didn’t want to do this in public because it would feed into the narrative that she was here for some public or financial gain which wasn’t what she was after. So she held in what she wanted to say to her mother; Laurel wanted to call her out on not knowing that her other daughter was in the city. Was it a lie or did she truly have no idea? Laurel couldn’t tell, Joanna gave nothing away but it seemed insane that she would have no idea when her husband clearly did. He knew a lot and knew about her letters but her mother didn’t? Laurel had no idea if she read the letters, ignored their existence, or if they were being hidden from her. It was something she needed to know but she also needed to wait till they could go somewhere more private talk.
Laurel simply shook her head once to say that she didn’t mind when Joanna motioned to making a call because it meant that this talk was happening. She wasn’t being pawned off or given false promises of being able to talk about what happened but for nothing to ever happen. She had been left in the dark for twenty-six years now and she only just learned what little she knew.
“I work a few minutes from here. We could talk there,” Laurel offered. Her apartment pretty far away and she didn’t want to share an awkward taxi ride that would be filled with silence and they’d likely be stopped in traffic which would prolong the awkwardness even further. Nor did she want to go to Joanna’s house and risk running into Clayton or one of her other kids. She was getting along with Derek more than their previous interactions but the last time she spoke to Clayton ended poorly. Laurel was injured, in a lot of pain, and so tired so she pushed back when he had tried to force the issue. It wasn’t her proudest moments but there wasn’t anything she could do to fix that nor did she want to at the present time. “They’ll be gone for the next couple hours so we should be able to talk freely.”
