She was by now a connoisseur of headaches, a seasoned expert in knowing just how far she could go, when to back off and fetch the dolly rather than lifting a heavy object, how a change in the weather would affect the nerve endings inside her skull. Two weeks after the injury now, and she was beginning to resign herself to a permanent degree of ache. It was bearable, however, if she took care not to push herself.
Except for the other headaches, those bolts of pain that came out of the blue like slow lightning, rippling across her brain and turning her stomach upside down. Those sent her straight for the powerful tablets the doctor had given her, left her groping up the stairs, blind and retching and seeking the dark sanctuary of the bedroom. They would pass, after four or five hours, as suddenly as they had come, although the combined dregs of pain and painkillers in her body meant that she was worth nothing for the rest of the day. Kate had had three of these since leaving the hospital, and she would have given a great deal to avoid having another one, but the doctors said there was no knowing what triggered them or how long they would be with her. What they did tell her was that she could not go back to active duty until she was free of the threat.
This headache that was now settling in seemed to be somewhere in between the basic nagging kind and the bullet-in-the-brain sort, which all in all might be a hopeful sign, Kate thought as she pulled off her muck-encrusted shoes against a boot scraper and walked through the house to the front door.
Any change was for the better, and any visitor a welcome one. Kate was thoroughly fed up with sick leave. The first two days home she had spent in front of the television, falling asleep over the large collection of unwatched videos Lee and Jon had taped for her over the months. On the third day, boredom had set in, and she found herself wandering through the house cataloging the unfinished jobs she found there, until eventually she went downstairs for a screwdriver and replaced the switch plate that had cracked back in September.
In the five days since then, interrupted only by an afternoon when she had to put on her official clothes and go in for a hearing about the shooting, she had trimmed and rehung two sticking doors, replaced the broken sash cords in the upstairs window, fixed the drip in the bathtub, finished grouting a patch of tile in the under-the-stairs bathroom that she and Lee had put up two years before, climbed a ladder to replace a cracked pane of glass and touch up the paint around it, and shifted everything in the living room to wax first one half of the inlaid wood floor and then the other.
The floor had been the worst, because having her head down made her skull pound so horribly that she could only bear an hour at a time, whereas with an upright job she could stretch it to two hours before she had to lay down her tools and take herself trembling to bed for an hour or two. On the whole, however, physical work, done with care, seemed actually to help, particularly in the fresh air. Today she had been digging and weeding for nearly three hours before the doorbell interrupted, she saw as she glanced at the clock on her way through the living room. It looked as though she was going to pay for the exertion.
Kate picked up the loose knit cap she had taken to keeping on the table in the hallway and pulled it on as she went to answer the door. At first she saw nothing through the peephole; then, with a growing and fatalistic sense of déjà vu, she looked down, and there she saw the top of a head of black hair, neatly parted. She slid the bolt and opened the door.
"Morning, Jules."
"Uh-oh, you're not feeling well."
"I'm okay."
"Are you mad at me, then?"
"Why would I be mad at you?"
"It's just that you usually say, 'Hey, J.' 'Good morning, Jules' sounds so formal."
"So I'm feeling formal. Don't I look formal?"
Jules examined her muddy, sweat-stained clothing and grubby bare legs. "No, you don't. We tried to call, but we kept getting your machine, so we thought we'd come by anyway. Can I come in?"
"Who's 'we'?"
"Al." Jules turned and waved at the road. Kate bent to look and saw Al's car pull out from the curb and drive away. She cursed under her breath as Jules continued. "He has to pick something up from the office. I wonder why you call it an office when it's just that big room you guys share. Anyway, I wanted to say hi, so he said he'd drop me and come back. He won't be long. Are you sure you're feeling okay? You don't look like it."
"I'm fine. Come on in, Jules."
"I like that hat," Jules said, looking over her shoulder as she headed for the kitchen. "Where did you get it?"
"A friend made it for me. It hides the stubble."
"Can I see?" Jules asked, turning to face her, going suddenly serious.
"Not much to see," Kate said, but she pulled the cap off anyway and dropped it on the table. Rosalyn's partner, Maj, a woman of many talents and with a recipe for killer tiramisu, had come by the house with it and a pair of electrical clippers the week before. The resulting haircut was not all that much shorter than Kate's last one, though slightly lopsided, but it necessarily revealed too much of the still-clear lines where the surgeons had cut a flap in the skin to give access to the bone below. Maj's hat was pretty, but there was angora in it, and the damn thing itched. She pretended not to feel the girl's eyes on her as she reached for two glasses and took a bottle of juice from the refrigerator.
"You like cherry cider?" she asked.
"Sure, I guess. They didn't have to put a metal plate in your head, did they?" Jules demanded.
"No. They thought they might, but it wasn't that bad."
"That's good. A friend of mine has an uncle with a big plate in his skull. He has to carry a letter from his doctor around with him, because he sets off metal detectors."
Kate came near to laughing at the thought of the number of detectors she went through in the course of a week, all of them going off madly in her wake.
Jules absently accepted the glass of cider that Kate handed her, but her mind was still on the topic of the consequences of metal plates. "That must be a real pain," she reflected.
"It must be," Kate agreed seriously, and sat down. "It's good to see you. How've you been? How's Josh? Have you seen Dio since he got out of the hospital? And why aren't you in school?"
"It's a half day, for finals week. Dio's fine. And I haven't seen Josh in a while, except in school, of course. He has a girlfriend." She sounded disgusted.
"I thought you were a girlfriend."
"I was a friend. Am a friend still, but he's busy. He'll get over it," she said, as if talking about the flu, which Kate thought reasonable enough.
"What's your shirt say today?" Kate asked. Jules held the lapels of her windbreaker open so Kate could see the writing, and when she saw the words, she began to laugh.
"Good, huh?"
"It's great." Kate did not tell her she had seen it before, worn by women who intended a rather different take on the message, but it was still a fine shirt: A WOMAN WITHOUT A MAN IS LIKE A FISH WITHOUT A BICYCLE.
Kate was about to ask about the word for the day when the girl blurted out, "Can I come and stay with you when Mom and Al go on their honeymoon?"
Kate opened her mouth, then shut it again.
"They were going to take me with them to Baja, and at first I thought it sounded great, but then I realized it was impossible. Talk about spare wheels." Kate wondered if she was hearing the voice of a friend behind the girl's words, that devastating peer criticism that could reduce even a self-contained person like Jules to a quivering mass. "Taking the kid along on a honeymoon," Jules said dismissively, her demeanor cool but with a clear thread of discomfort through it, and Kate stood up to take a random plate of food from the refrigerator in order to hide her smile. Jules, she guessed, had belatedly connected the traditional activities of a honeymoon couple with her mother and the amiable cop she was marrying; the mortification when her friends pointed this out must have been extreme.
Still. "I don't know when I'll be going back to work, Jules. I couldn't have you here alone while I'm out. They can
be long days."
"Do you know when you'll be going back?"
"I see the doctor tomorrow afternoon. What were you planning on doing if I wasn't available?"
"Staying with Rosa, I guess."
"Or have Trini the airhead stay with you?"
"Not her. She's in trouble. She got caught shoplifting the day after Thanksgiving, and Mom won't have her in the house."
"Don't you have any family?" Kate hoped she hadn't sounded too plaintive, but Jules seemed not to have noticed.
"Mom has some relatives in Hong Kong, but nobody here. My father's dead," she said in a tight voice. "I don't know if there's anyone on his side, but Mom says they all hated her. Anyway, there's nobody to stay with."
"Have you met Al's kids? Not to stay with. I just wondered if you'd met them."
Jules relaxed suddenly and grinned. "You mean my sister- and brother-to-be? I met her - she's really cool. Him - Sean - I'll meet this weekend."
"They're coming up for the wedding?"
"Sure."
"I'm glad to hear it."
"It's important to Al, I know. Kate, do you think I should keep calling him Al if he's my mother's husband? I don't know if I could call him Daddy."
"Give it time," Kate suggested mildly. "Dad may feel comfortable after a while."
"I guess. Maybe he'd rather be just Al."
"I think, if you're asking me, that Al Hawkin would burst with pride if you took to calling him Dad, but I'm also sure he wouldn't want to push it. He loves you very much."
Jules became very interested in the trace of cider in the bottom of her glass. "He must be nuts," she muttered.
"Nuts because he loves you? Jules, you're one of the greatest people I've ever met."
"You don't know me," the girl said darkly.
"I know you better than you think I do." At this, Jules shot her a hard look composed of equal parts suspicion and apprehension, with a dash of hope thrown in. However, Kate had done about all she could just then. All the time she had sat talking, the ache in her head continued to build, until it could not be ignored. Hating the display of weakness, she went to the cupboard and took out the pill bottle, shook a tablet out onto her palm, and swallowed it with the last of the juice in her glass.
"You aren't okay," Jules said with concern.
"I have a perpetual headache. I'll live."
"I should go." Jules stood up.
"Not until Al comes back."
"I'm sorry, Kate, I shouldn't have bothered you with all this."
"I'm glad you came. Did I ever thank you for the flowers, by the way?"
"Yes. Twice."
"Good. Those tiny white ones - what are they called? Baby's breath, I think. They dry well - did you know that? I have a sprig of them upstairs." Jules began to look positively alarmed at this uncharacteristic show of sentimentality, and Kate, peering at her through the distance of the headache and the onset of the painkiller, would have laughed if she hadn't known how much it would hurt. "It's okay, Jules, I'll go to bed and sleep it off. It comes and goes. You stay here until Al comes. Promise?" And what was it Jules had come here for? Oh, yes. "And I'll talk to him tomorrow, when my head is straight, about having you here. Bye, girl. Take care."
She did not hear Hawkin come, but when she woke five hours later, refreshed and ready to start the next cycle, the house was empty. Whistling tunelessly, she went to put in another hour with the hoe before dark.
TEN
"So what do you think, Al?" Kate was on the phone to her partner, the following evening.
"You're on workman's comp now?"
"Sick leave is just as boring as suspension."
"Must've been a relief, though, to be cleared."
"God, yes."
"Pretty hairy?"
"Oh, not really. The worst part was anticipating it. Have you ever…?"
"No. I fired my gun once, though I didn't hit him, but that was in the old days, not even forms to fill out. But about Jules; you'll be out for another couple of weeks, you said?"
"At least that. The doctor wants to see me then, before he approves me for even light duty."
"You sure you want her? It's a long time, when you're not used to having a teenager around."
"Two weeks is nothing. We'll go sit on Santa's lap, have turkey with all the trimmings while you and Jani are so sunburned that you can't touch each other and have the squits from drinking ice in your margaritas."
"God, you're such a romantic."
"It's a talent. Jules and I will have a good time. If anything comes up, I'll call Rosa, have her come and pick Jules up."
"If you're not up to it, dump her. Promise? It's her own damn fault she's not going. The reason we chose this date in the first place was that she's off school for the holidays, and then she says she'd rather stay home."
"She wants to give you two some privacy, Al."
The phone was silent for a long time.
"Did she tell you that?" he said at last.
"More or less."
"God, I can be a damned fool sometimes. Why didn't I think of that, instead of assuming she was just being — What a sweetheart. She's nuts, of course. This is a vacation, not a honeymoon. I'll talk to her, see if I can get the other room back at the hotel."
"Al? Don't. Just leave it."
"But —"
"Jani might prefer it this way, and I know Jules will. Baja will be there next year. You two go away and relax; Jules and I will stay here and wrap presents."
"If you're sure."
"I'm sure, Al. So, how are the wedding preparations coming along?"
"Why didn't we elope to Vegas?" He groaned. She laughed.
"Let me know if I can do anything. Otherwise, I'll see you at the church on Sunday, and I'll bring Jules home with me then. I won't be on the bike," she reassured him.
"You're okay for driving?"
"No problem. There's no danger of blackouts or blurred vision, just these migraines; they don't know what's causing them or when they'll stop. But I will say, I'm getting a hell of a lot done on the house."
The next interruption caught her again working outside, two days after Jules's visit. She was in the bottom of the garden, a place nothing human had ventured into for at least two years, and she seriously thought of ignoring the doorbell. However, she was thirsty, and the compulsive rooting out of brambles would be waiting for her anytime. She dropped her tools on the patio, pulled her rubber boots off against the scraper, and went to answer the door.
This time, it was Rosa Hidalgo, looking cool and neat in linen pants and blouse, every hair in its place. She looked startled at the apparition in front of her, and Kate looked down at herself: tank top and running shorts dark with sweat, ingrained dirt to the wrists and in a line above where the rubber boots had covered her calves, and red welts, some of them dotted with dried blood, where first the roses and then the blackberries had had at her.
"I was gardening," she said in explanation.
"I see."
"Come in." She gestured down the hallway toward the living room and followed her guest through the house. "I don't know if you can call it gardening, really. "Gardening" always makes me think of Vita Sackville-West in her jodhpurs and floppy hat. What I was doing was committing assault on the weeds. What would you like to drink?"
"Whatever you're having."
They took their tall glasses of iced tea onto the brick patio, which was cool and would allow the earthy fragrance Kate knew she was exuding to dissipate in the open air.
"I never really thanked you for everything you did for me when I was in the hospital," she told Rosa.
"You did thank me, and it was nothing."
"How've you been? How are the herds of small children?"
"One at a time, they are very appealing," she answered brightly, swirling the ice around in her glass.
"And Angelica, how is she?"
"Angél is fine, thank you."
Shallow conversation was tiring, Kate reflected. "Was the
re anything I could do for you, or did you just stop by to say hello?" she asked, knowing full well it was not the latter. Saying hello did not cause women like Rosa Hidalgo to be nervous.
"Ah, yes, I did have a reason to talk to you. Actually, Jani and Al asked me to come."
"This is about Jules, isn't it?"
"It is. There are some things they thought you ought to know, before you have her under your care for a number of days." Her accent was back.
"I told Al I didn't want to know. More than that, I think it's a bad idea."
"I know that is what you think. I presumed that was why you did not return the call I made a few months ago."
"Jules thinks of me as a friend, not a therapist, not an authority figure."
"I am aware of her feelings for you."
"Then, pardon my rudeness, but why are you here?"
"I am here because you are nearly the age of Jules's mother, and because Jules has chosen you, her soon-to-be stepfather's partner, to confide in, and because I feel I can trust you to use your knowledge of the child's past with care."
"I don't want to know," Kate said forcibly.
"Of course you don't. But you must. Because you won't know Jules unless I tell you about her."
Kate put her face in her hands. The woman was not going to leave without telling her what she thought Kate had to know. Kate might forcibly eject her, or lock herself in the bedroom until the woman went away, or plug her fingers into her ears and hum loudly, but by this time she was undeniably curious. She was, after all, a policewoman, to whom curiosity - nosiness - was both nature and training.
"Okay. All right. If you have to, then let's get on with it." Kate sat back in the chair and crossed her grubby legs in the woman's face. The body language of noncooperation, she thought with an inner smile.
"It begins a number of years ago. In the years after the revolution in Russia. To put it simply, Jules's mother and her grandmother were both born as the result of rape."
Kate's crossed leg came down.
"Both of them?"
With Child km-3 Page 12
