by M. A. Lawson
She glanced at her watch. It was only six. Assistant U.S. Attorney Meyer would certainly still be in his office, eager beaver, overachiever that he was. She excused herself from the deputy and called Robert.
“You have to go home right away?” she asked—meaning Would you like to come over to my place and play with me? She instantly regretted that she sounded needy.
“Aw, jeez,” he said. “My youngest daughter’s in a play at her school tonight. I, uh—”
“Yeah, I get it. I’ll talk to you later.”
She thought for a moment about taking the deputy home and playing with him, but then thought: Aw, behave yourself.
—
She knew she didn’t have anything to eat in her refrigerator—she hardly ever cooked—so she stopped at a Ralph’s and bought a microwave dinner and a bag of cinnamon rolls so she’d have something to eat in the morning. As she was driving, she thought that maybe she’d get started on installing the shelves in the laundry room.
The laundry room was her current home-improvement project. She’d put in a stacked washer and dryer to provide more space and had her guy—the Mexican illegal who did almost all the work on her house—put in a slate floor to replace the linoleum. But she was going to put in the new shelves herself, and maybe she’d do that tonight. You didn’t have to be a master carpenter like the Mexican to put up shelves; all you needed was a drill, a screwdriver, and a level. Or maybe she’d just have another martini when she got home, put her feet up, and watch whatever mindless drivel was on the tube. Yeah, drivel and another martini sounded better than putting up shelves—but not as good as rolling around in a bed with Robert Meyer.
When she turned onto her street, she looked over as she always did at the house on the corner. The place was a mess, the lawn a field of dandelions and other knee-high weeds, the paint peeling off the siding. It was bringing down property values in the entire neighborhood, which might have been tolerable if an old lady who couldn’t do the yard work lived there. But an old lady didn’t live there. A young, skinny, scraggly-haired guy missing a few teeth, who didn’t ever get up until about three in the afternoon, was the homeowner. He looked like a meth addict. Kay had been too busy with Tito Olivera in the past year to do anything about him, but now she thought she might make him her next home- improvement project, get his ass arrested and out of the neighborhood.
She turned into her driveway, and the first thing she saw was a girl sitting on her porch, and next to the girl was a small suitcase, the wheeled type you take on an airplane. The kid stood up when Kay stepped out of her car, and she looked apprehensive, as if she was afraid of Kay.
She was a pretty kid, maybe thirteen or fourteen, although Kay wasn’t good at guessing kids’ ages. She was slim, had short blond hair, and was maybe five foot four, four inches shorter than Kay. She was wearing a blue polo shirt, jeans, and hiking boots. Then Kay noticed there was a ski jacket on the porch next to her luggage, which was weird. Hardly anyone wore ski jackets in San Diego, not even in February.
“Who are you?” Kay asked.
The girl didn’t answer. As Kay got closer, she could see that the girl had blue eyes and there was something familiar about her face, but Kay couldn’t figure out what it was. She was sure she’d never seen the girl before.
The girl looked like she was about to cry and was making an effort not to. Then the look on her face changed to something else. Determination? Anger?
“Who are you?” Kay asked again. “And what are you doing here?”
“I’m your daughter,” the kid finally said.
16
Kay Hamilton had done two really stupid things in her life.
One of those was marrying another DEA agent when she was twenty-three. Her husband, she realized later, was basically a male version of herself: a risk taker with a sense of humor who was good-looking and great in bed. Unfortunately, he thought that when Kay became his wife she was going to do all the things he saw his mom do for his dad: clean the house (by herself), cook, launder his clothes—basically, take care of him. He adjusted poorly to Kay’s notion that being his wife wasn’t the same thing as being his maid. She also learned that he wasn’t like her dad, a guy who was always working on some project around the house, remodeling or fixing something. When her ex-husband wasn’t at work, he primarily liked to sit on his ass and watch sports on TV, he’d never used a tool in his life, and he planned all his vacation time for hunting season. Shooting unarmed animals had no appeal for Kay.
She suspected he cheated on her the first time six months after they were married. She caught him cheating two days after their eight-month wedding anniversary—and that was that. She discovered she really didn’t care that he’d slept with another woman—she just wasn’t about to let him think that he could pull that kind of crap because he thought she was too dumb to catch him at it.
The most stupid thing she did, however, was not her eight-month marriage. It was getting pregnant when she was fifteen.
The father of her child had been a golden-haired, seventeen-year-old football star, and Kay thought at the time that he was the most gorgeous creature God ever created. Kay gave him her virginity; she could hardly wait to do it. She had no idea why the birth-control pills didn’t work, and never trusted pills again after that.
She wanted to get an abortion, but her parents were Catholic—and her mother, unlike her father, was a true believer. She also went to a private Catholic school, and naturally there wasn’t a kid in school who didn’t find out that she’d been knocked up. Since her parents wouldn’t let her get an abortion, she refused to leave the house—she said there was no way in hell she was going to let people see her with a belly the size of a watermelon—and her parents finally relented and sent her to live in Maryland with an aunt until the kid was born.
She had no idea what she was going to do with the baby when it came, but that turned out to be no problem at all. Her aunt had a daughter who lived in Nebraska, was almost forty, and who’d been trying to get pregnant for years. Kay had met the woman only twice. So Kay signed the kid over to her cousin. She agreed to give up all rights to the child and agreed never to contact her unless she received permission from her cousin. Maybe one day her cousin would tell Kay’s daughter she was adopted and who her real mother was, or maybe not.
And that was all fine by Kay. She didn’t want a baby at the age of fifteen; she didn’t want to be a mother. She wanted to pretend the pregnancy had never happened and get on with her life. She saw her daughter for maybe ten minutes the day she was born and never again after that. She never wanted to see her again after that.
In the fifteen years that had transpired since she gave birth, she never—not ever—made any effort to get in touch with her daughter. When Kay’s mother was alive, she tried a couple times to tell Kay how the kid was doing, but Kay made it clear that she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to be reminded of what she’d done; she didn’t even want to know the kid’s name. When her mother tried to show her pictures of the little girl, she refused to look at them.
The child was a part of her life that she simply wanted to go away.
The last she’d heard, which was almost ten years earlier, the kid was doing fine with her adoptive parents.
It looked as if something had changed.
—
Not knowing what else to do, Kay invited the girl into her house and offered her a seat in the living room.
“Uh, would you like a glass of water or something?” Kay asked. “A Coke?”
“No.”
“Okay. What, uh . . .” Shit. “Why are you here?”
“My parents are dead,” the girl said. Again she looked like she was going to cry, but again she didn’t.
Kay’s family had never been a close bunch. They didn’t hold family reunions or get together at Thanksgiving. Kay’s aunt—the one she’d lived with while she was pr
egnant—had been her mother’s much older sister and she was dead. Kay’s parents had been killed ten years ago when a truck driver fell asleep at the wheel, and with her mom gone, Kay lost the only source she had for updates on her cousin and daughter.
“My dad died four years ago,” the girl said. “He had a heart attack; he was only fifty. Mom died two weeks ago. Breast cancer.” Then she added, “Thanks for coming to the funeral.”
Sheesh. “I didn’t know she’d died,” Kay said. “I’m sorry.” What she wanted to say was But why are you here? What do you expect me to do?
When the girl didn’t say anything else, Kay finally said what she was thinking as diplomatically as she could. “What do you need from me, uh . . . I’m sorry. What’s your name?” She knew her mother must have told her the kid’s name, but she couldn’t remember it to save her life; she wondered if she had subconsciously forced it out of her memory as a way of coping with an event she wanted to forget ever happened.
The girl shook her head and smiled—not a friendly smile, but one that made Kay feel like crawling under the couch. “My name’s Jessica.”
“So, Jessica, what do you need from me? How can I help?”
“I want to live with you for a little while.”
“Oh,” Kay said. She didn’t know what else to say.
“I was told that because my folks are dead and because of my age and because I don’t have any other relatives, I’ll have to go live with someone, like a foster family. I told the social worker I didn’t want that. I just want to live alone. I’m fifteen and—”
Kay knew that but thought she looked younger.
“—and I don’t need someone to look out for me. I’m not a baby. I can take care of myself. But this social worker said I wouldn’t be allowed to live alone and that I need a legal guardian until I’m eighteen.”
“But don’t you want to stay in your hometown until you graduate from high school?” Kay said, already thinking she had to find a way out of this. “I mean, you must have friends there.”
“We just moved to Cleveland a year ago, and I hate it there. We had to move, because my mom got laid off and we had to relocate from Lincoln.”
Jesus. It didn’t sound like her cousin had had any luck at all. Her husband dies, she loses her job, she moves to a shithole like Cleveland, and then gets breast cancer. And now her kid—Kay couldn’t think of the girl as her kid—was all alone. Except for Kay. Her mother.
“I’m not going to let them put me in a foster home or group home or whatever the hell it’s called,” Jessica said.
When she said this, her lips compressed into a thin, unyielding line—and Kay realized that Jessica looked exactly the way she herself did when she dug in her heels.
“I see,” Kay said.
“Look, I know you don’t give a shit about me. All I’m asking is that you let me live here for a little while. I need you to sign whatever you have to sign to become my guardian and then let me stay here until I sell my mom’s house in Cleveland. I basically just need an address to give this social worker, and I’ll pay you rent until I sell the house. I’ve got some money left over from my dad’s life insurance, and as soon as I sell the place in Cleveland, I’ll rent my own apartment.”
The girl made her feel like a monster.
“Does anyone know you’re here?” Kay asked.
“No. I split. The social worker’s probably got some kinda missing-kid bulletin out on me by now.” She smiled slightly—Kay had yet to see her really smile—then added, “I doubt I’m on a milk carton yet.”
“How did you know about me?” Kay asked.
“You mean, how did I track you down? My mom told me about you before she died. I never knew I was adopted. I always thought Mom was my real mom. I even look a little bit like her. And she was my real mom. You were just a . . . an incubator.”
Kay almost said Will you knock off the attitude—but didn’t. The kid deserved some compassion, with everything that had happened to her. “Look,” she said, “I know you’ve been through a lot, but I’m having just as hard a time as you are adjusting to all this.”
“Anyway, Mom told me about you,” Jessica said, sounding somewhat mollified. “She said you worked for the DEA and lived in San Diego, but I don’t know how she got your address. So I bought a plane ticket and flew out here. Like I said, I have a little money. But I didn’t know what I was going to do if you didn’t show up today. I probably would have gotten a motel room and then found out where you worked and showed up there tomorrow.”
Kay could imagine that scene: the daughter whose name she didn’t know until five minutes ago showing up at the DEA office and asking if anyone knew where her mommy was. She could just see that little shit Wilson laughing his ass off.
“Uh, have you eaten?” Kay said, just to change the subject. She needed some time to think. The idea of having the girl living with her was overwhelming.
“No, not since this morning.”
Then Kay realized the only thing she had in the house to eat was the Salisbury steak frozen dinner she had bought at Ralph’s.
“Well, I don’t have much food here in the house. Let’s go someplace and get dinner.”
“Are you going to let me stay here tonight?”
“Yeah, of course. What did you think I was going to do?”
“I don’t know. You abandoned me once before.”
—
They went to a place on Harbor Island. The sun had set, but there was still some light in the sky and they could see the soaring curve of the Coronado Bridge and the silhouettes of two big Navy ships in the harbor. The downtown area was blazing like electricity was free. It was about sixty degrees outside and it wasn’t raining, so Kay asked for a seat on the outside deck, where they had propane heaters near the tables.
“God, it’s gorgeous here,” Jessica said, letting the shield around her drop for just a moment. “When I left Cleveland, it was twenty degrees and snowing.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty nice here most of the time,” Kay said.
Talking about the weather beat talking about what she was going to do next.
Jessica ordered a cheeseburger and wolfed it down when it came; Kay had a Cobb salad she barely touched. She wanted to order a martini—if there was ever a time she needed a drink, this was it—but she ordered iced tea instead. For some reason, she didn’t think it would be appropriate to have a drink, even if it was only one, then get into a car and drive home with her daughter. She couldn’t remember the last time she was in a social setting and didn’t do what she wanted because she was afraid of making the wrong impression.
Dinner was mostly silent, neither of them knowing what to say. All Kay could think about was that having a kid living with her was going to totally screw up her life. By the time they finished eating, she’d decided that she was going to have to do what the girl wanted and become her guardian. She really had no choice. But no way in hell was she going to let her move into a place of her own at the age of fifteen.
“Uh, I need to excuse myself,” Kay said. “I need to call my boss.”
Jessica looked at her for a moment with those eyes that were just like her eyes, and Kay wondered if the girl was thinking that Kay was going to ditch her. “I’ll be right back,” she said.
“Yeah, whatever. Take your time.”
—
Jessica wondered—for about the hundredth time—if she’d made a mistake.
It was obvious this woman wanted nothing to do with her. Maybe she should have just stayed in Cleveland—but she hated Cleveland. She couldn’t move back to Lincoln where her friends were, either—not if Hamilton became her guardian. She’d have to live in California, someplace near Hamilton in case the social services people ever checked up on her. And California, now that she’d seen the place, would probably be a great place to live—provided she didn’t have to stay
with Hamilton.
She had about twenty grand left from her dad’s life insurance money—her mom had ended up spending most of the money when she got laid off and then spent more on her cancer meds—but even as bad as the real estate market was in Cleveland, Jessica was betting the small house there would sell for at least a hundred and fifty grand. So she’d get an apartment, maybe in San Diego, maybe someplace nearby, enroll in a school, and get on with her life. What else could she do?
At least for a little while, however, she’d have to live with her so-called mother. She knew she was emotionally blackmailing Hamilton—and she didn’t care. She needed access to her own money and to be free of the social service dragon back in Cleveland, and if that meant laying a guilt trip on Hamilton, so be it. Hamilton deserved to feel guilty.
She couldn’t imagine what it would be like living with Hamilton, though. She’d never met anyone like her before. Her parents—she couldn’t think of them as her adoptive parents—had both been teachers. Her father taught physics at a junior college, and her mother lectured in political science at the University of Nebraska. After her mom got laid off in Lincoln due to budget cuts, they moved to Cleveland because her mom wanted to continue to teach at the university level and Case Western was the only place she could land a job. But her mom and dad had both been gentle, softhearted people; they were liberals who cared about social issues and fanatics when it came to gun control. They also read a lot and encouraged Jessica to read, and they took her with them all the time to listen to lectures by famous people.
Hamilton was no doubt a conservative, card-carrying member of the NRA, and when Jessica was sitting in her living room, the only books she saw were how-to books on home repairs. She suspected Kay Hamilton was about as liberal as George W. Bush. And she’d never met anyone before who carried a big black gun into a restaurant. She imagined cops and federal agents were expected to carry their weapons at all times, but . . . well, the gun just blew her away. The gun also made the stories she’d read online about what Hamilton had done in Miami and how she arrested that Tito guy seem more real. Hamilton had actually killed people in Miami—and Jessica had never met a killer before.
