June 2019
It all started with pounding on my door at four fifteen in the afternoon.
Normally, I’m not even home at that time, but I got off work early because I met a client at a restaurant in Oak Park and decided to call it a day after that.
If you were talking to a whole team of people about marketing their online coloring app, you would need a break too.
I mean really, what is there to it? How are you supposed to make that any more than what it is—a great way to zone out for hours?
It’s like that game where you feed the koi to make them bigger.
It’s for turning off your mind, and I’m the king of that, but come on.
Anyway, I was in the kitchen, talking to the cat, asking questions about his day because, well, he was blue, so clearly, he’d gotten into something, when somebody started pounding on my front door.
Upon answering I found Angie Gleason. At one time, back when Kola was ten and her daughter, Ella, was the same age, we had been friendly.
Now, with Kola sixteen and her daughter the same, we were no longer close.
Things had changed between us when she showed her true colors at a parent-child pancake breakfast and said that no, she didn’t believe that my husband and I had any right to raise children.
Two men shouldn’t have been able to, and it was, and I quote, an abomination.
So that killed the friendly-acquaintance thing right there in its tracks.
It was a surprise to find her on my doorstep looking frantic.
“Angie,” I said in greeting.
“Is Kola here?” she snapped at me.
“No,” I replied, not adding that he was at an internship at the Field Museum until six. It was none of her business. “What can I do for you?”
She took a shaky breath. “I—Janet Pomeroy called me a few minutes ago and said that he was going to a clinic with Ella because her daughter, Marlo, wouldn’t go. I need to know where she is, Jory, right the hell now!”
I squinted at her because she was making zero sense. “My son is at an internship, and he doesn’t even talk to your daughter anymore—you made sure of that—so the two of them being at a clinic together is not even remotely possible.”
“She’s underage, Jory!”
“So is he,” I reminded her, hearing my voice rise, the prickle of anger washing over my skin. “Get off my porch, Angie,” I snapped, turning and walking back into my house, slamming the door behind me.
She started screaming through the door that she was going to call the police, and I yelled at her to go ahead. And no, it wasn’t mature, but how dare she question my kid.
Taking a few quick breaths to calm down, I started walking around the house in search of the source of the blue that had made my normally white cat a lovely, albeit odd, shade of periwinkle.
There was nothing out of the ordinary downstairs, except that people had left their cereal bowls in the sink for the maid that we’d never had, so whether they were in a hurry or not, that was not acceptable.
We’d have to have a talk about that over dinner.
Upstairs, it hit me, and I realized that the only reason I hadn’t gone to my daughter’s room first was that Angie had rattled me. It hadn’t even seemed odd to me at the time that the dog didn’t greet me when I got home, as the blue cat had.
Jogging down the hall to my daughter’s room, I found our Chihuahua, Dobby, on the floor chewing on a large plastic tube of paint.
The second he saw me, he got up, abandoned the tube, and trotted over, tiny tail wagging.
My eyes filled instantly, because I thought, yeah, this is it, the dog’s dead, but when I picked him up, there was no blue on him anywhere.
On closer inspection of the mutilated tube of watercolor, the words NON-TOXIC were a relief to see.
Additionally, from the cat-sized smear of azure blue, Dobby had enjoyed chewing on the tube, but it didn’t look like he ate any of the paint.
He was simply the facilitator of the puddle that Chilly had, for whatever reason, rolled in.
“You two!” I yelled before my phone rang in my pocket.
“Hey,” I sighed happily, because talking to Sam Kage normally put me in a great mood and alleviated whatever other crap was going on at the time.
“Wait one sec,” I told him before I shooed both animals out of Hannah’s room.
I had no idea what the paint was going to do to the hardwood floor, and I didn’t want to try and figure it out at the moment.
“Jory, what’s going on? Why is Ella Gleason at our house?”
“What? No, she’s not. Her mother’s here, but not Ella.”
“Her mother’s there? Angie’s there?”
“Yeah. And how do you know?”
“Because Duncan just got a notice, so he—wait.”
“Sam?”
“Just—okay, stay on the line and don’t open the door,” he instructed, and I was suddenly treated to on-hold information regarding the US marshals’ office.
His instructions made zero sense. Don’t open the door for whom?
But of course right then there was a bang on the front door, and when I went downstairs, as soon as I hit the living room, I could see policemen on my lawn out my front bay window, and there were shadows clustered around the front door that told me there were many more waiting.
“Okay,” Sam clipped out the word. “Put me on speaker and then go to the front door and give the phone to the first officer you see.”
Crossing the room, I took a breath and opened the door.
“Jory Harcourt?” the officer there barked at me.
I thrust the phone out.
He gave me a dismissive wave. “Sir, are you––”
“This is Chief Deputy Sam Kage of the Northern District of Illinois. Who am I speaking to?”
It was sort of fun to watch all the officers clustered around my front door look at the phone at the same time.
I took it off speaker and passed it to the man who’d spoken to me.
He turned away, talking on my phone, and at the same time a car pulled up behind the last police car and Ian Doyle, who I’d gone to dinner with on Valentine’s Day two years ago, got out of the driver’s side door, and another man I didn’t know, tall, lanky, had a kind of almost cowboy look about him, got out of the passenger side.
They began up the sidewalk to my front gate, which was open from when all the officers came through.
Angie Gleason was standing in a circle of three officers, shrieking at them.
The officers parted like the Red Sea for Moses as Ian came up the steps, slipping around the guy still on the phone with Sam, and stepped in front of me, basically shielding me from all the officers.
I had to tip my head back to meet his gaze, as close as he was to me, and I was struck, as I was the first time I ever met him, by how clear blue his eyes were. He was handsome, even with the furrow of his brows I was getting.
“Are you all right? Did anyone try and force their way into the house or touch you?”
“No,” I assured him, smiling.
He nodded, taking a quick breath before he turned, still in front of me, making it impossible to see over or around him unless I moved.
“Gentlemen, you need to disperse,” Ian told them, his voice with that same thread of warning Sam’s had at times. It was the “don’t push me or ask questions” tone that I was not at all a fan of. “Unfortunately, you weren’t given all the pertinent information.”
It wasn’t “swatting.” Angie Gleason wasn’t guilty of calling in to say that I had kidnapped her daughter or was holding her hostage, but she had deceived CPD into coming to my house to investigate me. It was still a false report, and I wondered how much trouble Angie was in.
Ian stepped aside suddenly, and the officer who’d borrowed my phone passed it back, saying he apologized for the misunderstanding.
“Not your fault,” I assured him.
He nodded and turned just as a pale pink Volkswagen bug rolled into my driveway.
Kola got out of the passenger side as Ella Gleason put the car in park, killed the motor, and got out as well, standing with the driver’s side door in front of her.
The second Kola reached the fence, Angie lunged at him, but before I could even yell, the guy who came with Ian was there, stepping in front of Kola, shielding him, so that Angie sort of bounced off his chest and into the female officer behind her.
“What did you do to my daughter?!” she screamed at Kola. “Did you knock her up, you disgusting piece of filth?”
Ian turned to me then. “Maybe I should bring everyone inside, huh?”
Apparently, this was the only solution. “That would be great.”
Ten minutes later, me, Kola, Angie, and Ella were in my living room sitting down around the coffee table.
Ian and Deputy US Marshal Josiah Redeker had left after Angie promised not to assault me.
It was funny that they patted her down and searched her purse to make certain she didn’t have a weapon before they departed.
“I don’t know why you’re––”
“You understand that Mr. Harcourt is being very accommodating,” Ian had told her in a commanding tone that was so icy it was a wonder she didn’t freeze right there. “He is not filing criminal charges against you, which would have resulted in you being taken to jail.”
“I––”
“Furthermore,” he had continued, all business, again using the scary-ass tone, “you have threatened the spouse of the chief deputy, and that, in and of itself, can be construed as a federal crime.”
I wasn’t sure about that, he might have been fudging that a bit, but maybe not. Either way, Angie shut up about him going through her bag, and seemed much calmer after he and Redeker left.
Angie turned to her daughter then, surprised me by taking both of her hands in hers, and then asked her what the hell was going on. After some hedging, Ella confessed that she was having sex with someone named Brad, who was a boy from church.
“Brad Carlson?” Angie gasped, glancing over at me and Kola before returning her focus to Ella. “Dani and Mark’s son? Our minister’s son?”
I didn’t laugh, because for one, it was petty, and for two, just because clearly, it was a surprise to Angie. I knew from experience that ministers’ sons were just as horny as any other boys. Plus, my son looked worried, and that was occupying my mind.
“I…” Ella stammered, biting her bottom lip, glancing over at Kola, who gave her a wan smile of support.
“I asked Kola to go with me to get a pregnancy test because I was scared, but he just bought it for me like it was no big deal, and after it came up negative, we went to the clinic so I could get an exam and get some birth control pills.”
Angie looked at Kola again and then back at her daughter. “So you and Brad are sexually active, but you and Kola––”
“Kola’s the only one of my friends who would go with me,” she said, starting to cry. “Everyone else was too chicken.”
Taking her daughter into her arms, Angie looked at me. “I’m so sorry, Jory.”
I tipped my head at my son.
She turned her gaze on Kola. “I’m so sorry for what I said, Kola.”
He nodded and then turned to me, taking my hand like he didn’t do much anymore.
Nowadays, he hugged me a lot, and put his arm around me, and kissed me on the cheek.
The hand-holding had been missing for years.
“I’m sorry I didn’t let you know I wasn’t at the museum, but Ella called and said she might be pregnant, and I figured she needed me.
” His voice was low and grave, serious and somber as he apologized.
“If anything like this ever happens again, I’ll be sure to call so you know where I am.
I didn’t mean to put you in a bad spot.”
“Your heart was in the right place,” I said, squeezing his hand as we both heard the sound of Sam’s monster SUV out front on the street. He couldn’t get into our driveway, because Angie’s car was in the way. “Oh, hurricane Kage is on the horizon.”
“Oh man, he’s gonna murder me,” Kola groaned, slouching against the couch, head back, eyes closed, the dread rolling off of him.
“For what, being a good guy?” I asked him. “No, love, it’s fine.”
“You were a kind and loyal friend, Kola,” Angie said softly, comforting her daughter with her arm around her shoulders. “I’ll tell your father that.”
But moments later when Sam Kage stalked into the room, seeming even bigger than usual as we were all sitting down, all dark glower and massive shoulders, looking like he was carved out of granite, she didn’t say one word to him.
She just sat there, eyes wide as Ella shivered and Kola held his breath.
I stood, stepped in front of him, and put my hands gently on his hips. “You would be so proud. Kola was a real friend today to a very scared young woman.”
He calmed after that, and then there was pounding on the front door a few minutes later, because of course, Angie’s husband, Robert, had come right over as well.
The second Sam opened the door; the man yelled and drilled two fingers into Sam’s collarbone and accused his son of defiling his daughter.
“Defiling?” I repeated as Sam grabbed the man’s wrist and put him on the ground in front of him. “What year is this?”
Angie and Ella gasped, but when Sam told them to stay where they were, both of them stuck to the couch like they were glued there.
He then explained to Robert that putting his hands on a federal marshal was NOT a good idea.
Once he calmed down and took a breath, Sam helped him to his feet and walked him over to the couch.
Everything was explained all over again, and then Robert was apologizing, first to Sam, then to Kola, and finally to me for yelling.
When Sam was back in front of me, I gave him a smile before he bent and I got a kiss. It was quick, but he leaned his forehead against mine afterward and just stood there and breathed me in. It took me a second to realize the room had gone silent.
Turning, I saw all three of the Gleason clan staring at us. Kola was smiling before he got up and walked over. I moved because I knew what he wanted. Slipping in front of Sam, he wrapped his arms around his father’s waist and leaned in, closing his eyes, his face in his chest.
“I think we’ll be going now,” Angie announced.
Ella put her hand on Kola’s arm as she walked by and promised to call him later. He nodded but didn’t move and turned his face away from her as Sam patted his back. Clearly, he needed his father at the moment.
Robert reached out to touch Sam’s shoulder as he walked by, thought better of it, and went out the front door with his family in tow. After a moment of quiet, Sam reached for me and put his hand on my cheek.
“I love you,” I said softly, choked up seeing him and our son together.
“I love you back,” he assured me, clearing his throat as Kola stepped free, wiping at his eyes. “But really, why the hell is the cat blue?”