Closer Than She Knows

by Kelly Irvin

  “You look like you could use a hug.” Her revelation regarding children had left Max sucker punched, but he’d learned to bob and weave with the best amateur boxers.

  She accepted his offering with a sigh. That she allowed him to get this close was the same gift it had always been. How they would navigate the path from here remained a mystery. Of all the reasons for rejecting a relationship with him, this one had never occurred to him. “Long day?”

  “You’ll regret getting close to me.” She had dark circles under her eyes and her sleeveless blouse hung on her. “I’m sticky and sweaty and I stink. Deidre Patterson smoked like a chimney.”

  “You always smell good to me.” Her scent of eucalyptus and citrus parried with the faint stench of cigarette smoke. “How are you?”

  Teagan escaped from his arms and sank to her knees to pet Tigger, who’d patiently waited her turn. “My head is about to explode with all the impressions and reactions from these interviews. I don’t know where to begin. I feel like we’re onto something, but I’m not exactly sure what.”

  “I made supper. Why don’t we eat and you can tell me about it?” Despite the obvious wilt of exhaustion, Teagan looked excited. Involved. Determined. And never more elusive. Max dragged his gaze from her face and cocked his head toward the kitchen table. “Maybe it’ll help you to bounce your impressions off me. Unless you’d rather eat in peace and then talk. That might be better for your digestive system.”

  “Dad made me eat a hamburger for lunch. I’m not sure I can eat again.” Her apologetic smile sent his blood pressure spiking. “For you I’ll try. What did you make me?”

  “Your dad’s right. Not eating only makes you feel worse. I made my specialty—spaghetti and meatballs. They’re good, if I do say so myself.” He didn’t cook much, but his mother had taught him a few dishes “to wow the girls.” She said women would be impressed by a man who could cook. His dad claimed manhandling a barbecue grill was the quickest way to impress a girl. So Max did both. “There’s a salad, breadsticks, and I picked up a half gallon of Rocky Road.”

  “No pun intended, I’m sure.”

  “It could be a metaphor for this season in our lives.”

  “Or our relationship.”

  “Nope. Not going there.” As much as every bone in his body wanted to argue, cajole, and convince. Prayerful discernment told Max that pushing wasn’t the answer. Letting her trust grow and her fears subside held more hope of success. “Let’s enjoy the moment.”

  Max served the meal at her table set with her grandmother’s china, cloth napkins, and candles he’d found in her linen closet. Teagan’s effort to be enthusiastic was obvious. After two bites, she laid her fork down and picked up the small bowl of fresh Parmesan cheese he’d shredded. “This is excellent. Your mom’s recipe?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Because you once told me she had a limited repertoire, but what she did make was heavenly.”

  “She made her breadsticks from scratch. Her pineapple upside-down cake was incredible. So were her cinnamon rolls. We also ate a lot of microwave cuisine when she was busy with her nonprofit.”

  Max’s mother had run an organization that provided clothes to help homeless women dress for job interviews. His dad had owned an auto parts franchise until both retired to travel to Florida in an RV.

  He’d loved his parents dearly. The only want they hadn’t fulfilled was brothers and sisters. They met too late in life. He wanted a big family. He always imagined he could still have one.

  God, how could this be? I’m in love with a woman who doesn’t want children. Help me to understand. Is this about sacrificing for the one I love? Or is it about her and what she needs to learn about You?

  “I wish I could’ve met them.”

  “Me too.” He kept his gaze on the spaghetti he swirled against his spoon. That his parents no longer lived left a hole the size of Texas in his world. He wanted them to be around for their grandchildren. They would’ve played Candy Land with them, gone to their baseball games, and showered them with every good children’s book they could find. “Mom would’ve liked you a lot. Dad too. He liked what he called spunky girls.”

  “So I qualify as spunky?”

  “You’re out with your dad hunting a serial killer. I think so.”

  “While you’re here cooking. Does that bother you?”

  “No way.” Instead images of evenings spent doing exactly this for years to come had followed him around the kitchen. Images that still included burp rags and high chairs. “I love cooking for you. I could see myself doing it on a regular basis. In our kitchen.”

  Her smile faded, replaced by a sadness for which he had no salve. “Even if it was just the two of us and Tigger for company? I won’t let you do that to yourself.”

  He’d done nothing but think and pray about that question since her revelation at church on Sunday. “It’s not up to you only. It’s my choice as well.”

  “You’ll end up resenting me.”

  “That would never happen. I don’t blame you for feeling the way you do. You’ve had enough loss and worry in your short life. I just wish you would trust God’s plan for you.”

  “You should do the same.”

  “I pray about us and for us constantly. Do you take your concerns to Him? Do you listen for His voice?”

  “I’m really tired and I need a shower.”

  He kept telling himself he wouldn’t push, and then he did it anyway. He pushed too hard. “Sorry. Sorry.” He gulped his fresh-brewed iced tea and went back to the spaghetti. “Tell me about Deidre Patterson.”

  Teagan tore a piece from her breadstick and dropped it on her plate. “She was sad. She made me sad.”

  “Why?”

  The story poured out until she arrived at the part where Deidre had a child she allowed CPS to place in the foster care system. Her voice faltered. She sipped her tea and cleared her throat.

  “This bothers you more than the fact that she had a child out of wedlock with a suspected serial killer?”

  “I try not to pass judgment. She made the right choice to have the child.” Her gaze downcast, Teagan drew circles on the tablecloth with one finger. “But she waited until he was old enough to know, to remember. Then she gave him away or allowed CPS to take him away. She replaced him with an abusive drunk who eventually left her for another woman.”

  “It’s a hard truth, but it sounds like he was better off. Maybe he was fostered by a family who adopted him. At four, he was young enough. A white male child.”

  The realities of the foster care system in Texas were frequently fodder for the six o’clock news. Max’s attempt to sugarcoat it would not convince a court reporter who’d written records on cases involving children who’d been abused at home, placed in foster care by the court system, and then didn’t make it out of their new homes alive.

  “Noelle mentioned Sunday that Jana and Neil from church are fostering kids.”

  Max laid his fork down. Where was she going with this? “I respect that. It’s a tough gig. Many of these children have severe problems because of physical and psychological abuse. They end up in the foster care system through no fault of their own. They deserve better. They deserve forever homes.”

  “Can you imagine fostering a child and not becoming attached to him or her?” Her expression pensive, Teagan shook her head. “Imagine the court deciding to give that child back to his or her parents after you’ve bonded. How would that feel?”

  “Foster parents are special people. They leave a love imprint on those children designed to help them through whatever comes next. They plant seeds.” Sudden hope made Max light-headed. Getting Teagan to see the options before her—before them—might be a way forward. She would make a good mother of her own children and foster children. He could see her teaching a child to read, sharing her love of gardening with a child, teaching a child to make bread. Or was he grasping at the proverbial straw? “They let children know they deserve love. They giv
e children love when people who should’ve don’t or can’t.”

  “The ones who do it well. So many don’t.”

  “It’s an imperfect system. All the more reason for people like you and me to do it. My best friend at seminary aged out of the system. It blows my mind. They essentially are dumped out on their own. He made it because he stumbled into a church food bank one day and the pastor saw something in him. He gave him odd jobs, fed him, and helped him find a place to live. He became his surrogate father. I always wanted to meet that pastor and thank him.

  “Mark 9:37 says, ‘Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.’ These children are already on the face of what you see as a ruined world, no place for children. They’re here. They don’t have the one thing they need on earth besides a loving heavenly Father, an earthly father and mother who will train them up in the ways of the Lord and love them unconditionally.”

  “It’s a strong argument. One you’ve carefully thought out.” Her lower lip trembling, she pushed spaghetti around her plate with her fork. “Maybe too much.”

  “I try to stay open to the possibilities. I don’t know what God has planned for me, but I want to be ready.” Max slid his hand across the table and touched her thin fingers. “When He says go, I plan to go all-out.”

  “Are we still talking about fostering children?”

  “I’m praying for discernment.” Until his throat was dry and no more words came. “For you and for me. For our future, whether it’s together or apart.”

  “You’re a much better person than I am.”

  “No way. I was the one who made alcohol my best friend when the going got rough. I’m the one who tried to bail out.” Emotion caught in his throat. Not now. Not now. So much for being a tough guy. Teagan spent her days with macho cops and came home to a spongy-hearted youth minister. “I should’ve told you about that instead of letting you find out in a creepy letter from a psycho.”

  “It’s your past, and you decide when or if you tell people.” Teagan grasped his fingers and held on. “You had the guts to fight your way back and keep fighting every day. You’re my hero.”

  “The truth is I love you and I beg God to give me my heart’s desire all the time. I know He’ll do what’s best for us, but I still want what I want. Which is you.”

  “Max, please.”

  “I know. Back burner. We’ll save this conversation for later. I better clean up. We can sit on the back porch and eat our ice cream. I bought chocolate syrup.”

  Teagan had a thing for chocolate. She pushed away her still-full plate and stood. “You cooked. I clean. That’s the rule at O’Rourke houses.”

  “Or we do it together. It’ll go faster.”

  He turned on the SAC jazz station and they cleaned up in companionable silence.

  Once settled into beach chairs on the porch with bowls of ice cream drowning in chocolate syrup, the silence continued. Not uncomfortable, more measured.

  Fireflies flickered as dusk fell.

  “You know what it means when they light up?” Max took another small bite of his ice cream. The cool sweetness eased the ache in his throat. “The males are seeking mates.”

  “You do have a one-track mind, don’t you?” She leaned her chair back, using her feet against the porch banister to balance herself. “Romance among the fireflies?”

  Let me in. Please let me in. “Do you think you could give foster parenting some consideration?”

  “Back burner, remember?” She patted his hand. “Eat your ice cream.”

  If eating ice cream on the back porch with the woman he loved was as far as it went, Max would live with it. It was better than not having her in his life—far, far better. “Yes, ma’am.”

  The best-laid plans. Sleeping in her own bed in her own house seemed like such a good idea. Yet Teagan had marked every hour from midnight to five in the morning on the bright-red numerals of the alarm clock she used as a backup to her phone alarm. Max’s words ping-ponged inside her head.

  “Promise me you’ll think about foster parenting.”

  Every child should be wanted. Kyle Patterson deserved to be wanted.

  Surely no one would dispute that.

  Think about something else. Anything else.

  The trip to Corpus had been worth it. They knew more than just Leo Slocum’s favorite kind of eggs, didn’t they? Between the interviews with Rayburn, Chase, and Deidre, they’d painted a much more detailed portrait of Leo over the thirty years he’d been living a double life. On the other hand, they knew so much about his “normal” life and so little about his secret life. The guy liked seafood. He liked Frank Sinatra and dancing. He had good teeth and smelled good.

  They needed to translate this feigned normalcy and use it as a key to finding the real Leo Slocum’s secret life. He’d left clues, dropped hints, made mistakes.

  Everyone made mistakes.

  Leo Slocum hadn’t made many until he got sloppy. According to Dad, studies showed serial killers who didn’t get caught when they were younger tended to settle down. Sometimes they would go years without killing or stop altogether. The BTK Killer killed at least ten people between 1974 and 1991 then went dormant for twenty-five years. Then he started taunting police with what he’d done.

  Leo Slocum couldn’t let it go. He kept killing. Even in his own backyard.

  Let this new information lead somewhere, please Lord.

  Tigger woofed, yawned, and snuggled closer. Her heavy, muscled body rested against Teagan’s thigh. She felt solid and formidable. The rule about sleeping on the bed had been temporarily suspended due to unforeseen circumstances. That being a serial killer on the loose in the neighborhood.

  Was that why Teagan couldn’t sleep? Or was it knowing Max slept in the guest bedroom at the other end of the hallway in her cozy fifteen-hundred-square-foot cottage?

  “That’s not it, God.”

  Yeah, sure.

  His good-night hug had been brief, but the barely banked fire in his eyes left her tossing and turning.

  And imagining. And thinking. And debating.

  She sat up and rearranged her pillows. A few punches made them decidedly less fluffy.

  I’m not a hormonal teenager. I’m not a hormonal teenager. I’m a chaste, godly woman.

  If only she could run seven or eight miles. Dad had assured her he would put her under house arrest in his house if she so much as ventured around the block.

  Tigger’s head came up. An ominous growl deep in her throat, she rolled and jumped from the bed in one graceful bound.

  Sudden adrenaline spiraled through Teagan like a waterspout on steroids. “What? What is it, Tigger?”

  Still growling, Tigger pawed at the door.

  Teagan hopped from bed and grabbed her SAC sweats from her glider rocker and donned them standing up. Her Texas Rangers T-shirt came down to her knees. Suitably modest, she tugged her phone from the charger and rushed after Tigger who’d shot from the room like a dog on a mission.

  Maybe Max couldn’t sleep. Maybe he was hulking around the house.

  Tigger wouldn’t growl at her best buddy.

  Her heart beating in her ears, Teagan edged along the hallway toward the front of the house and the foyer. Sweat beaded on her forehead and nose.

  Tigger slowed as she approached the foyer.

  “Max?” Teagan whispered. “Are you there?”

  No answer. The front porch light hadn’t come on. No motion detected. She scooped the Taser from the basket where she kept her keys, pepper spray, and courtroom ID by the front door. “Come on, Tigger, come on, girl.”

  Tigger’s stance stiffened. She didn’t move.

  Teagan grabbed her collar and tugged. “Let’s go talk to Max.”

  The growl would send a bad guy running, no doubt. It even made the hair on Teagan’s arm stand up. “Let’s find your buddy Max.”

  Tigger made her disdain for this suggestio
n apparent, but she did as she was told. Back to the wall, Teagan edged away along the hallway. She breathed in. One, two, three, four, hold, breathe out, one, two, three, four.

  At the kitchen door she halted a second time. “Stay with me, girl.”

  Tigger whined.

  I feel your pain. Teagan tiptoed forward and peeked around the corner.

  Max loomed over her. With a baseball bat held over his head like a flyswatter.

  Teagan screeched. Tigger barked.

  Max dropped the bat. “What are you doing out here?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I heard something.”

  “So did Tigger. She’s totally on edge.”

  Max scooped up the bat. “I’m getting my gun.”

  “No. No gun.”

  “Seriously? Then call 911.”

  “For what? You heard a noise? Front or backyard?”

  “Front.”

  “All the way from the guest bedroom?”

  “I wasn’t in the bedroom.”

  “Not in the bedroom. Why?”

  Max’s bruised face flushed. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  That makes two of us. “So where were you when you heard the noise?”

  He hesitated.

  “You know if you lie to me, I’ll know. I can read every nuance in your face.”

  “Standing in front of your bedroom door.”

  Teagan put her hand over her mouth and tried to stifle her chortle. Not possible. “Max Kennedy.”

  “I wasn’t coming in. I swear. I was debating knocking to see if you were awake. I figured you were as wound up as I was over the case. I made coffee. We could brainstorm . . . or something. When I heard the noise, I ran to get the bat.”

  “Way too much explanation, my son.” Teagan swallowed her momentary hysteria and cleared her throat. “What did you hear?”