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NO NERVOUS GIGGLES today. Susan tossed her shoulder bag onto a chair then slumped down after it. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought her eyes gleamed with tears.
“Tough day?” I guessed.
"Tough week.”
I shut off the rerun of Law and Order I’d been watching. "Jack ought to sleep another hour. How about some coffee?" universal code for "Would you like to talk?" If I was getting too personal, Susan could decline or steer the conversation elsewhere.
She agreed with a weak flip of her hand.
From the kitchen I watched my employer's shoulders shake with silent sobs.
"Cream and sugar?" I called to her, as if nothing was the matter.
"No, thanks."
When the coffee was done, I set a mug in front of her. Eyes still red from weeping, Susan took a sip then set it aside.
"What's wrong?" I prompted gently.
"Mike, of course."
"Trouble at work?" If so, it had nothing to do with me. At least I hoped not.
"Sort of. He's been missing a lot of time."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. I called the paper three times when he wasn't there. Somebody told me his boss has been complaining."
"About him missing work?"
An unhappy nod. "At first I thought it was another woman. It still might be. But maybe not. I just don't know."
"It certainly isn't me," I asserted, at least not in that way.
Susan managed a brief laugh. "I guess I knew that," she admitted. "I was just so upset. So confused."
"No worries. It was sort of a flattering mistake. Crazy, but flattering."
Susan smiled to herself then met my gaze. "You're okay, aren't you? I mean, you're really a good person."
"I try."
Her sigh was almost a yawn. "I sensed that right away. It was just that Mike..."
"I thought that about you, too." I had, but there were other issues I questioned now, like why she agreed to adopt a child if she didn't especially like kids.
I suggested that we start at the beginning. “Maybe we can figure this thing out.”
"Oh, I don't know..."
"Humor me." I set my own coffee next to Jack's puzzle of the United States, the one I'd bought to trace the family's moves. "Mike didn't want you to take the job, right?"
"Right."
"Help me understand why."
Susan shrugged as she glanced around the sparse living room. "He just likes me home with Jack."
"Is he really that old-fashioned?"
"Yes," she finally answered, drawing out the word as if there were more.
"But...?"
Her eyelids lowered. “Mike’s ex-wife, ‘The Bitch.'” She enclosed the latter in finger quotes. “Mike doesn’t want her to find us, so he doesn't trust anybody he doesn't know."
"Like me."
When Susan began to protest, I lifted my hand to interrupt. “I get that he's trying to protect his family. But would you say he does it to a normal degree?”
Susan had rubbed her eyes and smeared her mascara. Now she took a moment to clean up with a tissue before staring at me hard. "Abnormal?" she guessed, as if that was the expected answer.
I assured her it wasn’t for me to judge, “...But you did say he gets a little paranoid now and then.”
"Oh, yeah. Because of that bitch, Claire. He said she tried to stab him with a steak knife. Another time she poured hot soup on his lap—on purpose."
"And now he owes her money."
"Yes! And she doesn’t even need it! We’re just scraping by, but she'll have him arrested for back payments if she finds us. She hates him that much."
"So that’s why you move around so much."
"You know about that?"
"Your dad told me."
"Oh? Did he also tell you Mike changed our name?"
I said, “No,” casually enough, but my imagination was showing me a police line-up with Mike Swenson front and center.
"Oh, yeah. After Jacksonville."
Jacksonville had preceded Norristown, I recalled. And since missing people often rely on the help of relatives, the name change would make connecting them to Susan's father much more difficult.
"Oh?" I remarked, but now my voice sounded tight. "What was your name before?"
Susan made a sour face. "Cotaldi. Sue, Mike and Johnny Cotaldi."
I opened my mouth to ask the damning question, “Do you think...?” but controlled the impulse before I spoke.
Susan noticed. "What?" she pressed.
"Nothing,” I fibbed through suddenly parched lips. "I should be getting home to my dog." That convenient excuse.
Susan didn’t look any different; but even if she happened to be as clueless as she seemed, she might have heard my unspoken words in her head.
Which meant that one evening, maybe in a week or a month, some night when the Swenson dinner-conversation stalls, the words might come out. "Guess what, honey. Our babysitter thinks you’re a crook.”
That evening might also be tonight.