Close to Home

by Cynthia Baxter

  “Well, at any rate, we should all be glad this is over. The Sea Cliff murderer has been caught, and now we can all rest easy. Your life can get back to the way it was before.’’

  “The way it was before?” Jessica looked shocked. “I don’t think so, Nikki. I think there have got to be some changes.”

  Nikki had stood up from the table. She was gathering up her half-empty mug and the coffee spoons and heading for the sink. “Look, Jess, I don’t mean to cut you off, but let’s continue this discussion another time, okay? I don’t know about you, but I can hardly keep my eyes open. Do you realize it’s almost two?”

  “And Sammy will be up at seven. Hey, Nikki, I really appreciate you staying over tonight.’’

  “Well, what are friends for?” Nikki replied heartily. “Sleeping at each other’s houses, exchanging tips about hemline lengths and money-market funds, saving each other’s lives . . . isn’t that what female bonding is all about? “

  “Yes,” Jessica agreed in a soft voice. She looked over at Nikki and smiled, squinting in the bright light. “Especially that part about saving each other’s lives.”

  * * * *

  The next morning, as soon as Sammy was safely tucked away at nursery school, Jessica made a bee line for the white Victorian on Eighth Street. Terry opened the door almost before she had a chance to knock.

  “Jessica. I was hoping you’d come by. Are you okay? Come in. Listen, I want to hear all about it. The police told me you handled yourself like a pro.’’

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far. Actually, if it wasn’t for Nikki, I don’t know what would have happened. See, Lorraine and I went shopping—it was her idea, and of course I never in a million years suspected ...”

  She blinked a few times as she looked past Terry, into the apartment. “You’re packing.”

  She was taking in the cardboard boxes lined up on the coffee table, the open suitcases on the couch, the neatly folded piles of clothes lying next to them. It was then that she noticed the white T-shirt he was wearing with his jeans was streaked with smudges.

  “Well, yes.” Terry was suddenly somber. “I, uh, managed to get a reservation on a three o’clock plane.”

  “Of course. You’re done here, and now it’s time for you to go back home. I guess all the details of Lloyd’s estate are taken care of.” Her voice sounded strained.

  He nodded. “Yes. It’s time. The investigation is over, and I have to get on with my life.” With a sheepish smile, he said, “Well, we tried our best, but I guess you and I didn’t turn out to be much of an investigating team, did we?”

  “Not really,” Jessica agreed with a chuckle.

  “But we did manage to have a lot of fun.” Tentatively, he added, “Didn’t we?”

  Jessica looked him in the eye. She swallowed hard, then said. “Yes, we did.”

  Terry leaned over and gently took Jessica’s hand. His voice was strained as he said, “Are you sure that’s all it was?”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m sure. That’s all it was.”

  He considered what she had said for a few seconds. Then, with a curt nod, he relinquished her hand. “Okay. Enough goofing off. I’ve only got a few hours before I have to head out to the airport.”

  “Hey, Terry, wait a second. There, uh, is something I’ve been wanting to say to you. And it looks as if this will be my last chance.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s . . . it’s not that easy. This is something that’s been bothering me for a while, something that for a long time has just been too hard for me to admit to anybody. And that includes myself.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Do you remember that time you came over to my house? I had just agreed to help you investigate Lloyd Nolan’s murder, and you came over for coffee? That day, you asked me about why I had given up my career to become Betty Crocker. And I gave you some vague explanation about wanting to take a break from the corporate life.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, I kind of lied. I mean, I wasn’t lying to you ... I was sort of lying to myself. You see, Terry, the real reason I wanted to get out of Klinger was that I was afraid.’’

  “Afraid? You just lost me.”

  “I was afraid of really competing. Of putting myself on the line, of seeing how much I could really do. See, it was safe, up until then. I had a nice job with lots of responsibility, but I wasn’t one of the big players. In other words, I hadn’t yet risen high enough to be seen as a threat to anybody.

  “And then they started looking around for a vice president for our division. Somebody to play hardball with the big boys, if you’ll excuse the buzz words. Anyway, I knew I was a candidate. In fact, it was pretty much a toss-up between me and a friend of mine, Anne Marshall.”

  “And what happened?”

  “What happened is that I left Klinger and Anne became the vice president of marketing.’’ Jessica shook her head slowly. “I never had to find out if I could really make it. If I could do it. I had a perfectly legitimate excuse for dropping out so I never had to test myself in a way that was just too scary.”

  “It’s not too late, you know,” Terry said softly.

  Jessica nodded. “I know.’’

  He picked up a pile of books. “Well, anyway. About that packing.”

  Jessica looked around helplessly. She knew she shouldn’t be feeling this way, the same way she had felt in the eighth grade when Bobby Ames told her his family was moving to Albuquerque and she watched him walk across the hockey field of her junior high school, knowing she would never see him again. After all, she was a grown woman now. She had a husband and a little boy and a mortgage and a contract with Terminix.

  Keeping that in mind, she refrained from saying what she really wanted to say. Instead, she asked, “Is there anything I can help you with? “

  “Thanks, but that’s okay. I’ve pretty much got everything under control.” Shyly he looked over at her. “You know, Jess, I won’t forget you.’’

  And then his face broke into a wide grin as he added, “And I certainly won’t forget your great undercover work.”

  Jessica could feel herself blushing as she laughed. But she stopped laughing as she and Terry exchanged a look that said all the things they both knew they could never say with words.

  She knew that there was no reason to linger any longer. But, as she headed for the door, she couldn’t resist turning back.

  “Hey, Terry?”

  “Yeah, Jessica?”

  She bit her lip and took a couple of deep breaths of her own. It took her a few seconds before she managed to compose herself enough to speak.

  And when she finally did, her voice was thick. “This town is really going to miss you.”

  * * * *

  By the time Jessica arrived home, she was feeling both let down and exhilarated. This was an ending, she knew, but it was also a beginning. In fact, as she opened the back door, she was debating whether or not to break open the coffeepot for a celebratory round. The reason that she was holding back was the perennial problem of the lone coffee drinker: how to deal with all the leftover coffee. She discovered, however, that there in the kitchen was a ready-made solution.

  “David! You’re back!”

  “Of course. Once you called and told me all about your ordeal last night there was no way I was going to hang around Boston any longer, listening to boring engineers give boring speeches on boring topics. I got out of there as fast as I could.’’

  “I can tell you really love your work.”

  “I do love my work,” he said. “It’s just that I love you a lot more.”

  She threw her arms around him, and the two of them stood in the middle of the kitchen, glued together, for a long time.

  When they finally pulled apart, David said, “Jessica, there’s something I really have to say to you.”

  She sighed. “I know, I know. You’re going to give me one of those ‘I told you so’ speeches. And the truth is that I probably
deserve it.”

  David looked surprised. “Actually, I had no intention of saying ‘I told you so.’ “

  “Really? What were you going to say, then?.”

  “I was going to say that I’m glad you’re okay. I don’t know what I would do if anything ever happened to you.”

  “Yes, well, I intend to cut the chances of that dramatically by avoiding murder investigations from now on. Even the nice, quiet, hometown variety.

  “Now, how about some coffee?”

  “I’d love some.”

  Keeping her nose buried in the Maxwell House as she helped Mr. Coffee get ready to do his thing, she added, “Staying clear of all death-related hobbies is only part of it, David. There’s something else I intend to do.”

  “What?”

  “Basically, I’ve decided to stop pretending that I’m satisfied spending sixteen hours a day picking Cheerios up off the floor. It’s a mistake, giving up so much in the name of being a mom. As trite as it sounds, I have to keep on being a person, too. And I haven’t really been doing that.”

  “Are you going back to work?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. That’s one possibility. All I know at this point is that I have to stop buying into the myth that the only way I can be a decent mother is by sacrificing every other aspect of my life. It proved to be a bust with our mothers’ generation, but for some reason it’s back again.”

  David nodded. “You know I’ll support you in anything you decide to do.”

  “It’s not only what I do, it’s also what I am. I’ve got to start getting back my old self. The one who was strong and efficient and self-confident.

  “That brings me to point number two. Have you decided yet when you’re going to leave Stanton?”

  “Soon, I think. It’s something we have to talk about. After all, we’ll have to come up with a plan we can both live with.”

  “That sounds reasonable. You know, David, I have to admit that I’d been feeling kind of threatened by your decision to go off on your own. And it’s made me realize that I’ve fallen into the trap that I swore my whole life I’d never fall into, demanding that my lawful, wedded spouse be the great financial provider.’’

  She sat down at the table opposite David. “There. End of speech.”

  “Well, Jess, I think you’re right in that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for us to step back and take a look at our relationship, to review all the things we expected out of it and the way it’s turning out to be. But aside from all that, would you do me a favor?”

  “Sure, what?”

  “The next time you go through a period of self-revelation, could you do it without almost being clubbed to death in a parking lot?”

  “Hey, Mom?”

  Just then Sammy came toddling in, dressed in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt, a pair of Superman Fruit of the Looms, and a pair of Jessica’s knee-high stockings, pulled up so high on his tiny legs that they covered them entirely except for an inch of fleshy thigh at the top. He looked like a margin sketch in the Playboy Advisor.

  “What, is he into cross dressing? “ David asked with alarm.

  “Actually, I think it’s sort of sweet that he’s trying to be like his mom. He hasn’t yet learned that when women try to do male stuff, it’s considered social progress, but when men try to do female stuff, it’s considered warped.”

  Sammy, however, was not in the least bit interested in the sociological interpretations of his love of nylon. “Mom,” he said, grabbing a dish towel and draping it over his shoulders, cape-style, “when I grow up, I wanna be Superman.”

  Jessica and David exchanged glances that indicated that they both appreciated that they were in the presence of intense cuteness.

  “Of course, Sammy,” David replied solemnly. “You can be anything you want to be when you grow up.”

  “Dad, you’ll be Batman. And Mom, you’ll be Wonder Woman.”

  “That sounds like fun,” said Jessica. “And what will we do, the three of us?”

  Sammy’s eyes were bright. “We’ll have special powers. We’ll fight all the mean guys with our magic swords.”

  “A reasonable way of making a living,” David commented, nodding. “And the commute probably isn’t too bad, either.”

  “We’ll all fly through the air, and we’ll all be the strongest.”

  “All of us?” Jessica asked cautiously. “We’ll all be the strongest?”

  “Sure. Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman are all the strongest.”

  “Oh, really? You mean one of them isn’t stronger than the rest?”

  Sammy thought for a few seconds. “No, they’re all the same, Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman. They’re all the strongest.”

  Jessica was smiling as she stood up and poured herself a cup of coffee.

  “Gee,” she said, speaking more to herself than to anyone else, “I guess maybe I’m not doing such a bad job after all.”

  Copyright © 1990 by Cynthia Blair

  Originally published by Ballantine (0345360257)

  Electronically published in 2009 by Belgrave House

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228

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  This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.