With Child

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Quinn said explosively, “What if it was a setup? Goddamn it, Dickerson! Let me work this one.”

  “Go home. Go to bed.”

  A vast, terrifying emptiness swelled within Mindy. They’d both leave any minute. She’d be alone in the house. It was a big house, bigger than she liked, with a cavernous three-car garage and bedrooms they didn’t use, a den and a family room. She could feel those empty, dark rooms around her, echoing her inner fear.

  She made a sound—a sniff, a gulp. Still engaged in their argument, both men turned their heads to look at her. She looked down at her hands, clutching the comforter.

  “We can’t leave her alone.” Quinn sounded irritated. “I’ll stay.”

  That brought her head up. “No! You don’t have to.” But she wanted him to stay. He made her feel safe, and tonight she was terrified of being alone.

  His mouth, she’d have sworn, had a faint curl. “If you don’t have a friend you can ask to come over, I do have to stay.” He sounded as if he were talking to a five-year-old who had just announced that she could walk across town all by herself to Grandma’s house. His gaze left her; she was dismissed. To Dickerson, he said, “You’ll keep me informed?”

  Mindy shrank into her comforter, wishing she had the spine to stand up, say with dignity, “No, thanks, I’d like to be alone,” and walk them to the door. She’d have been grateful for Quinn’s offer if it had come from anyone but him, or even if he’d made it more kindly. He’d always had a talent for making her feel small.

  Her care settled, Sergeant Dickerson expressed his sympathy and regret one more time, then left. Quinn walked him to the door, and they stood out of earshot talking for several minutes, their voices a rumble.

  Finally Quinn locked up behind the sergeant and came back to her. “Why don’t you go back to bed?”

  “No!” She shuddered. “No. I can’t get in our bed.”

  “The guest room, then.”

  She didn’t want to go to bed at all. Did he really imagine that she’d lay her head on the pillow and fall into blissful slumber? In the dark, all she would do was imagine a thousand times what had happened to Dean. Had the shot come from nowhere? Or had he been held at gun-point, threatened, beaten? Did he know he might die? She both wanted and didn’t want to know. I’m a coward, she thought. She would lie there wondering what would happen tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

  But she also saw that Quinn wanted her to go to bed, so she nodded and put her feet on the carpeted floor. When she stood, she swayed, and he was at her side instantly, his strong hand clamped on her elbow. He walked her to the downstairs bedroom, and she felt like a child being put to bed. When she climbed in, he spread the comforter over her, then stood awkwardly at the foot of the bed.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  Mute, she shook her head.

  Quinn came around the bed, his hand out to switch off the lamp. She shook her head violently. “No! Leave it on. Please.”

  He frowned at her. “You’re sure?”

  “I don’t… The dark…”

  “Okay. I’ll be right out there. Call if you need me.”

  “Thank you,” she said dutifully.

  Seemingly satisfied, he left, switching off the overhead light and pulling the door almost closed. His footsteps receded toward the living room.

  The sheets were cold, the pillow squishy. It was like being in a hotel room. But she couldn’t seem to care enough to try to bunch up the pillow or even reach for the second one. She just lay on her back and stared at the ceiling.

  The house was Dean’s, not hers. The life his. One she’d put on like a borrowed evening gown. She’d felt beautiful and loved and fortunate, but not quite secure. Because, she saw now, it wasn’t hers.

  A broken sound escaped her.

  Dean. Oh, Dean.

  The tears came again, so easily, as if only waiting to be released. But this time she cried silently, alone.

  JUST AFTER SIX IN THE MORNING, Quinn’s cell phone rang.

  “We got ’em,” Dickerson said without preamble. “They didn’t realize Dean had had time to call in their plate.”

  “What were they after?”

  “They’re nineteen and twenty-one. They were manufacturing meth in the young one’s father’s trailer. He moved it to storage without them knowing. They’d come to get their stuff, or steal the trailer. Sounds like they were still arguing about that.”

  “And the guard that called in sick?”

  “Had a hot girl over. Dobias said when he realized he’d be dead if he had gone to work, he barely made it to the toilet to puke.”

  “He might not be dead,” Quinn said. “Maybe he’d have timed his route different. Been lazy and not gone in if the gates were closed.”

  “He’ll figure that out eventually,” Dickerson said without sympathy. “Apparently, Dobias didn’t feel inclined to point that out.”

  Quinn sank onto the couch and bowed his head. He swore. “A couple of goddamn punks.”

  “Strung out.”

  “And that’s it.” He shoved his fingers into his hair, uncaring when they curled into a fist and yanked. “Dean’s gone, and Daddy’ll probably hire a good lawyer who’ll claim they were too stoned to take responsibility for pulling the trigger.”

  “You know the D.A. will try to throw the book at them.”

  “Son of a bitch,” he said clearly, and pushed End, letting the phone drop to the carpeted floor.

  Two shit-faced punks who’d freaked, and Dean was dead.

  Quinn didn’t want to believe it. He’d dozed briefly on the couch, and in his sleep had been woken by Dean, who had punched him in the shoulder and said, “What in hell are you doing on my couch? Your own bed not good enough for you?” Quinn had met the grin with his own, and reached out for his friend’s hand. He’d woken before they touched, and opened his eyes to an empty living room.

  Down the hall, a bar of light still lay across the carpet. Mindy had never turned off the lamp. He wondered if she’d slept. Wasn’t sure if he cared. She’d known Dean for a year and a half, not a lifetime.

  Dean and Quinn had been flung together as roommates in a foster home when Quinn was thirteen and Dean twelve. Almost twenty years ago. They’d had a fistfight the first day, grudgingly agreed to a truce the second day, and by the third Quinn had lied to protect the younger boy from their foster father’s wrath. Wrath, both had realized as the weeks and months went by, that was more show than reality; George Howie was a good man, as kind in a less demonstrative way as his wife. The two boys had been lucky in more ways than one. They’d been able to stay until, each in his turn, they’d graduated from high school. And they’d become close friends. Brothers.

  As the night dragged on, Quinn had done his grieving, as much as he’d allow himself. His mother had taught him well that he couldn’t afford to be incapacitated by fear or sadness. He didn’t even know who his father was. His mother was an addict who’d progressed during his childhood from pills and pot to shooting up. She’d disappear for days at a time. He’d scrounge for food. By the time he was eight or nine he was shoplifting when the cupboards were bare. His mother got skinnier and skinnier, the tracks on her arms and legs livid, veins harder to find. He learned how to catch her at the perfect moment to get her to cash her welfare check so he could take some money before she spent it.

  He remembered the last time he saw her, her eyes hectic.

  “I feel like shit. I’ve got to score. Now, you go to school, hear? I might not be home tonight, but you can take care of yourself, right?”

  She hadn’t waited for an answer. She’d known he could. He’d been doing it since he was six years old.

  Only, that time she hadn’t come home. The police finally came knocking. She’d overdosed and was dead, they told him with faint sympathy. They’d looked at the squalor of the apartment and shaken their heads. Child Protective Services workers came to get him.

  The Howies’ was Quinn’s fourth foster home. Eithe
r he did something wrong, or the people lost interest in fostering. One family decided to move to Virginia and didn’t offer to take him. Another one got nervous when their daughter turned eleven, started to get breasts and developed a crush on the brooding boy they were collecting state money for. Each time, he shrugged and moved on.

  Until he finally found somebody to care about. Dean Fenton, a skinny boy with a copper-red cowlick and freckles on his nose.

  “My mom’s coming back for me,” he’d always said.

  Quinn tried at first telling him that she was probably dead like his mother, but Dean would throw fists and scream, “She’s not!” so Quinn took to shrugging and saying, “Yeah. Sure. Someday.”

  The adult Dean had gotten drunk one night and said, “Yeah, she’s dead. I always knew. Give me hope over truth any day.”

  Quinn drank a toast to that—hope over truth—even though he didn’t believe in fantasies. He’d have starved to death as a kid if he’d allowed himself to dream. You survived in this life by facing facts.

  But Dean…Dean had softened Quinn. Made him laugh, acknowledge that sometimes faith in another person was justified.

  They’d balanced each other, because Dean needed to be more of a cynic. The saving grace was that he listened to Quinn.

  Had listened, Quinn corrected himself, lifting his head to look at that band of light on the carpet. Dean hadn’t wanted to hear a bad word about pretty Mindy Walker. Quinn had shrugged and shut his mouth, figuring the romance would pass. He could remember his shock when Dean had come over on a Sunday afternoon to watch the Seahawks play and said, “Congratulate me. Mindy agreed to marry me.”

  They’d both said things they regretted then, but they’d patched up their friendship, and Quinn resigned himself to the inevitable divorce, something Dean wouldn’t take well after a lifetime of instability.

  Now there wouldn’t be a divorce. Instead, there’d be a funeral. Quinn wouldn’t be listening to drunken soliloquies and supporting a staggering friend home. Instead, he was left with the grieving widow. A flighty, shallow girl-woman with spiky blond hair and a pierced belly button who played at arts and crafts.

  Quinn let out a soft oath. Dean would expect his best friend to take care of his bewildered widow, the woman whose first thought hadn’t been of her husband, tragically struck down, but rather, “What will I do?”

  “Damn you, Dean,” Quinn said under his breath. “Why her?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  MINDY AWAKENED RELUCTANTLY, knowing even before she surfaced that she didn’t want to face conscious knowledge of something.

  Her eyes were glued shut and her face felt stiff. She was aware without moving that she wasn’t in her own bed. A hotel?

  She pried her eyes open, then squeezed them shut. The guest room. Dean.

  Oh, Dean.

  Grief rushed over her, wave upon wave powerful enough to knock her down if she’d been standing. She gasped for breath and turned on her side to curl into a ball as if she could resist the emotional battery by making herself compact, by covering her head with her arms.

  Nausea struck with the same force, making her shudder. She scrambled from bed and ran across the hall to the guest bathroom, having the presence of mind to turn on the ceiling fan before falling to her knees in front of the toilet and retching.

  Clinging to the toilet seat, she emptied her stomach. At length she sat on the floor and leaned against the wall, her bent head laid on her forearms braced on her knees. She breathed. In through her nose, out through her mouth. Ordering herself, as if a function so basic had become a challenge.

  Why hadn’t she told Dean? Why, oh, why keep to herself news that would have elated him? Eyes closed, she imagined his whoop of delight and huge grin.

  She’d thought maybe this weekend. She just wanted to be sure. She’d always had irregular cycles. Being late this month might not have anything to do with that morning when he’d turned to her in bed and only later did they realize neither had used protection. But she’d thrown up every morning this week, and two days ago she’d bought a home pregnancy kit and watched the little strip turn pink.

  She hadn’t told him because… Oh, she hardly knew. Because she hadn’t thought herself ready to have a baby, and she’d wanted to face what this meant to her and to her alone before she got swept up in Dean’s joy. Because she hadn’t totally trusted the kit and intended to repeat the results or get a proper pregnancy test in the doctor’s office first. Because she’d wanted to make sharing the news a special occasion that she’d vaguely seen as including candlelight and a romantic dinner. He’d been busy all week, distracted, exasperated at being shorthanded at work and unable to find qualified applicants for the position he had open. She’d waited for a better moment, a better mood.

  All week, Mindy had hugged the secret to herself, not stirring from bed until he left the house because the instant she moved the nausea hit. She’d always been an early riser, and he had teased her about becoming a sloth, to which she’d wrinkled her nose and laughed because he hadn’t guessed.

  Sitting on the cold bathroom floor, Mindy cried until exhaustion made her blessedly numb. Then she dragged herself up, peered without interest through swollen eyes at the mirror, and splashed cold water over her blotchy face. Her hair poked out every which way, but she didn’t care.

  The house was quiet, one lamp on in the living room. Was Quinn gone? She didn’t care about his presence or absence any more than she did about anything else. She put on her robe and shuffled out to the kitchen simply because going through the motions of living was all she knew how to do.

  The smell of coffee brewing and bacon frying filled her nostrils before she’d taken a step into the kitchen. If she hadn’t already emptied her stomach, she wouldn’t have been able to bear either. As it was, after a brief hesitation she continued into the kitchen, made bright by a skylight and a double set of French doors opening onto the back patio. Although she could hardly have made a sound, Quinn turned from the stove and gave her an appraising look.

  “How are you?”

  He couldn’t tell? She only shook her head and sat down at the table set for two in front of the French doors. She and Dean had loved eating here rather than in the more formal dining room. The table was just as she’d left it last night, set with woven place mats from Guatemala and a vase of daffodils.

  “Coffee?” Quinn asked.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Juice?”

  She almost said no, but she had to eat and drink for the baby’s sake.

  “Thank you.”

  He brought her cranberry juice and a plate of scrambled eggs—not fried, thank heavens—and bacon. Mindy tried not to look at the bacon.

  Quinn added a plate of buttered toast to the middle of the table and jam still in its jar. He sat down across from her with his own breakfast.

  When she didn’t immediately pick up her fork, he ordered, “Eat.”

  She complied because she’d already decided she had to eat and because she didn’t care one way or the other. Neither spoke. She managed to finish the eggs and most of one piece of toast before she pushed her plate away. Quinn’s appetite didn’t seem much better, despite the spread he’d cooked.

  “Dickerson called this morning. They’ve already made an arrest.”

  From a great distance, she stared at him. “What?”

  “Two punks. Nineteen and twenty-one.” He talked about a meth lab and two strung-out young men who had in an instant snuffed out Dean’s life.

  “How…”

  “You mean, how did they make the arrest so fast? Dean. The minute he saw a burglary in progress, he called it in. We had the license-plate number.”

  She did remember them talking about that last night. It just hadn’t sunk in.

  “Do you think he knew…”

  A nerve jumped beside Quinn’s eye. “Things like that happen fast. He probably saw that they were young, got out of his pickup to confront them, and one of them pulled a gun.”<
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  She nodded, wanting to believe he was right, that it had happened so quickly Dean hadn’t had time for fear. She hoped he’d died instantly.

  “His body…” Again, Mindy hardly knew what she was asking. Where his body was, she supposed, and what she was supposed to do to plan a funeral.

  Quinn understood. “They’re doing an autopsy today, and then I imagine his body will be released.” He suggested a funeral home and they talked about when and where to hold the funeral. It was as if they were planning a bake sale, concentrating on details so they didn’t have to think about what the occasion was really for: lowering Dean’s body into a grave.

  “Do you have people you need to call?” he finally asked.

  “Yes, I suppose… His friends…”

  He raised his brows. “I’ll let them know.”

  Mindy felt a twinge of resentment at his sense of entitlement but then felt guilty. Quinn was surely grieving as much as she was.

  She nodded and stood, picking up her plate. “I think I might lie down again.”

  Was she imagining the disdain in his eyes?

  “It’s ten-thirty.”

  She stopped in the middle of the kitchen. “So?”

  “There are arrangements to be made.”

  “Dean…” She swallowed. “Dean hasn’t been dead twelve hours. Arrangements can wait.” She continued to the sink, set her plate down hard enough it clunked and kept walking. Out of the kitchen, to the bathroom—barely pregnant, and already she had to pee incessantly—and then back to the guest bedroom, where she climbed in and curled into a fetal position on her side.

  The pillow was almost flat where her head had been when she’d awakened this morning. The sheets felt cold again and smelled faintly of fabric softener. She’d washed them just a couple of weeks ago, after Quinn had stayed over. As she’d always done when Quinn was around, that evening Mindy had tried hard to be friendly but finally made excuses and went upstairs to watch a video and then read in bed, leaving the men to their beer and basketball. She would hear shouts of laughter once she left them, and an easiness to their voices they didn’t have when she was present. Had Dean been aware how strained the relationship was between his best friend and his wife? He had to have noticed something, but he’d never said a word to her beyond, a few times, trying to explain Quinn.