PJ HADN’T SEEN HER son since early in the morning, and that was only a quick glance into his room, where he was sprawled across his bed. As usual, Megabite had claimed his pillow, causing Thomas’s upper body to hang off the bed to avoid disturbing the cat. That was the image of him she’d retained all day.
She pulled her faded blue VW Rabbit convertible into the driveway of her home. It was a story-and-a-half on Magnolia Avenue, one of the smaller homes in the Shaw neighborhood. That made it affordable for a newly-divorced professional woman. PJ had started out renting the place, but fell in love with it and bought it when the owner decided to sell. It had wood floors, stained glass windows, a fireplace, and two bedrooms upstairs. The private yard had an intimate feel and beautiful perennial plantings that PJ had maintained. She could walk to Tower Grove Park, and often did when the pond lilies were in bloom.
And there was that driveway, allowing her off-street parking.
The house was dark, but a porch light had been left on for her around back. She touched the pane of glass in the back door out of habit, the pane shattered by a bullet that saved her from a psychopathic killer. Some people would have moved to get away from the reminder of an event like that, but in PJ’s case, it strengthened her.
Track lights in the kitchen bathed the space in light. The smells of pizza and popcorn greeted her nose, and she smiled. The smells of normality.
Megabite appeared from nowhere and rubbed against her leg, meowing and showing off her honey-gold eyes. Obediently, PJ bent down to pet her. The cat rose on tiptoe and arched her back under PJ’s hand. The young cat looked like different cats depending on the angle of viewing. Seen from the top, she was gray tiger-striped. From the underneath, she was pure white. Seen from the side, there was a horizontal band of orange fur on all four legs that neatly divided gray and white. The white tip of her tail was very expressive, and at the moment, it was expressing Food.
“Oh, Meg, I’m sure you’ve been fed a dozen times today,” PJ said. Thomas loved the cat as much as she did. Being a teenager, he assumed that the cat needed to eat every hour, like he did. PJ put down a bowl of remnants of a roast beef sandwich. Megabite purred her approval and went to work.
PJ walked further into the house, looking for Thomas. The study door was closed, but there was a line of light underneath the door. She knocked and opened it, to find Thomas bent over the desk, working on the homework that was due the next day. Obviously he’d played around all day and left his schoolwork for the last minute. Typical, but she wished he’d get the important things done first.
Not that I did any better at his age. Then along came the to-do lists that run my life.
Feeling old and stodgy, she went over to him and tousled his straight black hair.
“Hey, you’re messing up my look,” he said.
“No, I’m creating a new look. You can be the first one in school to have it.”
“Yeah, right. We’re out of soda and frozen pizzas, and there’s only one bag of microwave popcorn left.”
PJ sighed. Sometimes her relationship with her son boiled down to a grocery list.
“I’ll be back when I smell better,” PJ said. “We can talk about the school week coming up.”
Thomas grunted, but at least it was a social grunt.
The hot bath was wonderful, but PJ didn’t linger. She tossed on a clean sweater and jeans over fresh underwear. She made a phone call and then went back downstairs with her hair dripping from a thorough scrubbing. Thomas joined her at the kitchen table. He was eating a granola bar.
“I’m going to be really busy the next couple of days. I just called Mick’s mom,” PJ said. “She said you could spend tonight and Monday night at her house and she’d take you to school with Mick. Megabite’s going, too.”
PJ found that having Thomas attend Jamison Academy had a side benefit. There was an active and supportive group of parents who looked out for each other’s kids, called simply Parents Care. She’d thrown herself into it, because she liked the way others were concerned not only about academic success but the whole well-being of their kids. Mick was in some of Thomas’s classes, and his mother Lilly Kane was a divorcée like PJ. The two women had gravitated together. The boys often spent the night at each other’s houses, and usually Winston made it a trio. It was like having a co-mom, a tremendous relief for PJ, who had once had to ask her boss to recommend a babysitter.
“Okay by me,” Thomas said, around bites of granola bar. “She makes eggs and bacon for breakfast.”
“Do you make all of your decisions based in what kind of food is available?”
“Pretty much, yeah, unless there’s girls involved. Mom, when are you and Schultz going to get married?”
So much for discussing the school week.
Schultz wanted to get married, and she wasn’t ready for it. He’d surprised her with a ring, and when she didn’t immediately say yes, Schultz assumed that she thought he wasn’t good enough for her. As he put it, “Good enough to fuck, but not good enough to commit to.” They’d talked it over, but she couldn’t get him to see her reasoning.
She still hadn’t left behind the pain of her divorce. It didn’t help that her ex-husband Steven married a woman two decades younger than PJ before the ink was dry on the divorce decree. A few months later, Steven and Carla had a baby. PJ had wanted another baby, but Steven kept putting her off. Apparently, Carla was more suitable to carry the offspring of his loins.
That hurt.
Schultz had gone through major changes, too. His separation after thirty years of marriage had come as a shock to him, and was followed by divorce and his wife’s remarriage within a couple of months—nowhere near Steven’s record, but still a blow. And then the biggest blow of all, the murder of his only son.
PJ felt they needed time to work through those life-altering things on their own. From years of experience as a psychologist, she knew that decisions made right now might be rebound ones, to be regretted later. Schultz didn’t worry about that. He just wanted to move on to happier times together.
She loved him. She loved his dedication, his caring for the victims and their families, his search for justice, his desire for her. Schultz had a hot core, even if the surface was chilly at times. He was a great father to Thomas, and that meant a lot to her. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Just not yet.
If they got married, she couldn’t be his boss. That meant either he left CHIP or she did. It was wrong already, just having the relationship that they did. She was probably breaking regulations every time they made love.
“It’s complicated,” she ventured, her eyes not meeting her son’s.
“C’mon, Mom, that’s bull. Do you love him or not?”
I just came home to take a shower and change clothes.
“Yes. I mean, I think so.”
“So you should get married and we should move in with him. His house is bigger, and it’s got this neat room on the third floor. I could live up there. You guys would have more privacy, too. I know you’re having sex.”
You do? What, I glow or something?
“Thomas, that’s none of your business.”
“In a way it is my business, Mom. Haven’t you always told me that sex is for committed relationships, for marriage?”
Cornered.
“Yes, I strongly feel that way.”
“So that’s the rule for me, but not for you?” he said.
Redirect.
“Don’t you have packing to do if you’re spending the night at Mick’s?”
The front doorbell rang. It was Lilly, to pick up Thomas and the cat and take them to her house. PJ had been saved by the bell. She enticed Megabite into the cat carrying case with a couple of treats, while Lilly talked silly baby talk to the cat. Megabite was a regular visitor at Lilly’s house too, where there was company in the form of a couple of burly male cats, Peanut and Butter, brothers rescued from a shelter. Megabite had them wrapped around her paw, and Lilly too.
Thomas grabbed a duffle bag, dashed around collecting books and clothing, and was out the door into the winter night. He turned around on the front porch and smiled. It was the smile of someone older, of her son as the man he was on the verge of being. The smile of his gentle soul. She felt a surge of love that brought tears to her eyes.
I’d die for him. I’d kill for him.
“Love you, Mom. I studied for the math test.”
A few minutes later, PJ went out to her car to retrieve a stack of notes. With the house to herself, she was going to work until her eyes wouldn’t stay open, catch a few hours of sleep, and be back in the office before 6 a.m.
When she opened the door of her car, the dome light illuminated the interior. She froze. On the passenger seat was a box wrapped like a gift, complete with a red bow.
It looked so cheery sitting there. It might also blow her to smithereens.
Her hand still on the door handle, she hoped she hadn’t done something already to trigger a bomb. Her heart beat against her ribcage like a bird fluttering its wings. Air slipped gently in and out her open lips, and she didn’t dare blink. She pulled her hand away from the handle and stepped back, planting her right foot firmly, then drawing her left level with it. She moved backward across her yard that way, like dancing with an invisible partner. Her eyes were glued on the package she could see through the open car door. Ten steps back she stopped and took a deep breath.
Her hand moved to her pocket and retrieved her cellphone. She used it to call 911 and describe the situation, and then to call Schultz. Then, as calmly as she could, she walked down her driveway to the curb. No one was on the sidewalk, and there were no cars on the street that she didn’t recognize as belonging to people who lived nearby. Her breath rose in frozen puffs as she waited. The house was between her and the car—was that enough protection, if the box was a bomb? What about her neighbors? There was nothing to do but wait.
A patrol car got there first, followed a couple of minutes later by a first responder from the bomb squad, who called for a removal unit. Schultz arrived like a bowling ball, knocking aside like pins anyone who got in his way until he reached PJ.
It took the squad only a few minutes to determine that the box wasn’t going to explode. PJ was vastly relieved, and at the same time, a little embarrassed. Her street was lit up with flashing lights and men with protective suits were trampling her perennial beds and holding mirrors under her car, checking for bombs attached to the underside. The box was removed and sent off to be examined in the evidence lab. At Schultz’s insistence, PJ’s home was in the process of being swept for bombs.
PJ waved to Mr. and Mrs. Bickwallace across the street, standing at their front picture window looking like Grant Wood’s American Gothic in pajamas.