It was too late in the day, Valerie decided, to track down Tanner Riley. And since she’d neglected to get the former housekeeper Isabella’s surname from Rachel Grant, that stone, too, would have to wait another day for its turning. Besides, she was tired and famished. She’d eaten nothing since the samosas that morning. Suddenly, having slid into the Taurus’s driver seat, she felt faint. The car was chilly after the day’s warmth. There were the remains of a sunset, a few blood-orange flakes of cloud dissolving up into the dark blue, where the first stars were out. She looked at her watch: 7:38 P.M. She’d been on the go for thirteen hours. Not unusual for her—in fact below her daily average—but right now it was an entitlement to go home.
She put the key in the ignition just as a text from Nick came through:
S&L ETA 8:30. Can you pick up cilantro?
For a moment she sat without a clue. Then remembered—and wilted. “S&L” were Serena and Lou, Nick’s sister and her husband. The dinner had been arranged two weeks ago. Nick had reminded her this morning. And of course she had forgotten.
Fuck.
She didn’t much mind her in-laws (though Serena let it be known in the subtlest ways that she hadn’t yet quite forgiven Valerie for breaking Nick’s heart first time around, while Lou was one of those people drawn to provocative abstract questions despite a near complete inability to think in abstract terms) but at the moment the thought of a sit-down dinner at home with company made Valerie want to curl up in a blanket on the backseat of the Taurus.
Too bad she hadn’t declared her condition, she thought, starting the engine. She imagined the chirpy text: Have to cancel. The Pregnant Woman is NOT WELL. So sorry! Pregnancy could get you out of all kinds of shit. Yet here she was squandering hers on secrecy.
Because we still haven’t made up our mind, have we?
Hadn’t she? Was it credible that she was still genuinely considering—plain speaking, Valerie—getting rid of it? Somewhere back there had been a figurative thought of tossing a precious gold coin down the nearest drain. That word, ““drain.” Not so figurative after all. A drain was what she’d imagined the remains of her miscarriage swirling down, though of course she realized afterward that it would have been incinerated. Pre–twenty weeks, clinical waste. Or biomedical waste. Whatever they called it. At any rate, waste. In the absence of a need for lab testing, that was what happened, unless you had the wits to say otherwise. She’d had neither the wits nor the desire.
And now?
She sat with the engine running, unable, yet, to put the car in Drive and move off. She was, she knew, resisting thinking of her condition as anything other than “it.” Loss had only one lesson to teach—namely, that anything could be lost—and she had learned it. The more you cared, the worse the loss. She knew what accepting it as anything more than “it” would mean, what it would sign her up for, how madly it would raise the stakes. She told herself she wasn’t thinking about it. Superficially she wasn’t. Superficially her consciousness was elsewhere. Superficially she’d settled on running down the clock until it was too late to do anything but go ahead and Have It. But beneath the surface—beneath thinking—she was engaged with virtually nothing else. Look at the investigation, for God’s sake. These mothers and daughters. What did it matter whether Elspeth felt responsible for her father’s death? Or that Rachel claimed she would be nothing without her daughter? So what if Elspeth had been slutting around because she felt guilty about something? What did it matter whether Dina Klein had raised a good girl, or whether Julia trusted her mother? Rhetorical: None of these things mattered to the investigation. But here she was, Valerie Hart, Homicide, preoccupied by them, contorting them into lines of inquiry, warping them into leads. She’d done the relevant investigative work, yes, but on autopilot. It was all this nonsense of mothers and daughters that was really running her motor.
She hadn’t told Nick she was pregnant for the simple reason that that would be the end of thinking of it as “it.” Once Nick was in on the deal, “it” would be “he” or “she,” or some other cutesy designation of personhood, and the only way out then would be via breaking his heart, again.
Was she capable of that?
Sadly, she knew she was capable of anything, if the circumstances were right. It was one of the differences between her and Nick. He had lines drawn to keep his idea of himself intact. (It was a good idea, worth keeping intact.) She, unfortunately, did not have lines. She did not have an idea of herself, except as something that might, depending on the variables, become something completely different. She had started out—as a child, a girl, a young woman—with a quiver full of absolutes, Rights and Wrongs and Onlys and Nevers, but time had done its thing and now the quiver was empty. Being Police had given her infinite protean potential.
Oddly, she imagined Rachel Grant feeling the same—except in Rachel’s case there was only one variable: Elspeth. The fact of Elspeth, Valerie thought, could allow Rachel Grant to become absolutely anything.
Her phone pinged a second time:
And white wine vinegar.
She sighed, allowed herself a mental fucking hell, put the car in Drive, and pulled away.
The dinner did not go well. Valerie and Nick’s “trying for a baby” was supposed to be just between them, but Valerie got the impression Nick had blabbed to his sister. There was a little triumphal glint in Serena’s eye, a sly satisfaction that Valerie had, at long last, capitulated to biology. Serena’s narrative of her own motherhood was one of ditzily making it up as she went along, flailing from one screwup to the next and somehow getting away with it. As with all such narratives, it was a failed attempt to disguise her real estimation of herself, which was that she was probably the best mother history had yet produced. Valerie simmered through the evening. Sobriety ought to have restrained her. In fact it made things worse. There was nothing to dull her perception. Every nuance of Serena’s self-congratulation landed on her like a spark. Eventually, without premeditation, she found herself at the end of her tolerance. A liberating moment. Like realizing you were flat broke.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it,” she said to Serena, “how all these mistakes you make turn out not to be mistakes at all.”
Bad timing. Nick and Lou had been chuckling about something, but it petered out just as Valerie said this. That the remark had center stage made its intent unequivocal.
“What?” Serena said.
As soon as she’d said it Valerie knew she shouldn’t have. Not because it wasn’t true, but because it wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Serena’s and Lou’s life screamed domestic introversion; bright, middle-brow complacency; curtailed imagination; clan narcissism; and an indifference to anything that didn’t affirm it. Their life smelled small and cozy and dumb and smug—and Valerie was terrified hers and Nick’s might, via parenthood, end up just the same.
There was a moment of pure social horror. Fortunately, Lou was sufficiently drunk not to pick it up, and before Valerie could either try to climb out or dig herself deeper, he said: “Oh, yeah, Serena gives out like she doesn’t know what she’s doing—until you suggest doing it a different way. Then it’s like … It’s like she’s Stephen Hawking.”
“Stephen Hawking?” Nick said, happy to grab this thread since he could see how pissed his sister was, not to mention his wife.
“Like the Stephen Hawking of whatever the fuck it is. Cooking tomatoes.”
“There’s conflict over tomatoes?”
“She wants the skins off. Tomatoes don’t need their skins off. The skins are where all the nourishment is, for Christ’s sake.”
“We’re letting it go then, are we?” Serena said, to everyone. She’d had a few drinks, too, and was ready to go either way.
“Tomatoes reduce your risk of testicular cancer,” Lou said to Nick, having missed the import of his wife’s remark. “In Italy they found that guys who ate raw tomatoes every day were sixty percent less likely to develop cancer.”
“With the skins or without?” Nick asked.
“What do they do for you if you don’t have testicles?” Valerie asked.
“Perhaps I dreamed it,” Serena said.
“They keep your boobs healthy, too,” Lou said.
And so they let it go, approximately, though very shortly afterward Serena said it was time to head home.
“Do you want to tell me what the fuck is wrong with you?” Nick asked Valerie, when the guests had left.
“Nothing. What?”
“I’m not just talking about tonight.”
“Your sister’s smug. Sometimes she needs reminding.”
“I repeat: I’m not just talking about tonight.”
“Did you tell her?”
“As a matter of fact no, I didn’t. But you’re the sort of person who, if she stops drinking, people notice.”
“Wow.”
“Don’t make this into a fight. Just tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing.”
“Incredible. You’re actually going with that. Okay. Before abandoning this altogether I’ll just point out that you’ve been acting fucking weird for days. Weeks, in fact. I don’t know what it is and apparently you’ve decided I don’t need to know. Fine. But, shocking though this might be, I am, actually, here. You know, experiencing the effects of your actions.”
“Stop talking like a prick.”
“Then tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing’s going on. It’s just work. I’m sorry.”
“Only that you’ve been rumbled. And it’s not work.”
She didn’t contradict him. Didn’t say anything. Just closed herself off.
“Okay,” Nick said, starting to clear the dining table. “Forget it. Although there’s only a certain number of times saying ‘okay, forget it’ works.”
There was no limit to the perverse universe’s appetite. Perhaps it was the repetition of the word “forget.” Perhaps her guilt for taking a shot at Serena sang out in her psyche to other guilts lurking there. Either way Valerie remembered, suddenly, that she hadn’t yet told Kyle Cornell his half brother was dead.
She checked the time. Thanks to the abortive dinner, it was only just past 11:30 P.M. Early enough for a man of Kyle’s hours. He was probably at the bar. Obviously there was no reason she had to break the news to him now. It would keep until tomorrow. Doubly obviously the thing to do was get into bed with Nick and very quietly and sanely and tenderly tell him she was sorry for being such a pain in the ass, but she was pregnant and scared that she wasn’t going to be up to the job. What? Yes, you heard right. I’m pregnant. Are you happy about it?
She was very clear that this was the thing to do.
But the universe would have its perversions.
“What the fuck?” Nick said, emerging from the kitchen to see her putting her jacket on.
“I know,” she said. “Sorry. I have to. I just remembered something. It won’t wait.”
He didn’t say anything. Just stood there, watching her put her boots on. She knew she was doing the wrong thing. She could feel herself doing it. It was fascinating.
“I’ll be an hour, tops,” she said.
She got all the way to the door before Nick spoke.
“Take your fucking time,” he said.