Chapter 51 Sara Batcher
Sara Batcher
On Saturday mornings, David had watched cartoons.
Sara lay in bed and stared at the TV, flipping through the channels.
She had a moment of pain at the understanding that David would never again be in his pajama pants, a bowl of Cocoa Puffs in hand, sprawled across their sectional.
I’m sorry, she sent up to him, wherever he was, whatever he was doing. I’m sorry.
It had been a cute habit when she met him.
He was such a high-powered guy, always going a mile a minute, so to find him at ten thirty on a Saturday morning, lying on his side on the couch, The Ren & Stimpy Show on the television .
. . it had been endearing. Even more so when he had pulled her down on the couch beside him and wrapped his leg around her body, cradling her against him.
It had turned into a weekend tradition—staying in their pajamas until noon, ordering breakfast in, and being lazy until early afternoon, when they would finally get dressed and head out the door.
It had stopped being cute when he was forty and still continuing the tradition.
By then, his toned six-pack abs had turned into pale fat that hung over the top of his pajama pants.
He’d snored loudly through most of the cartoons, jerking awake at odd moments to ask what had happened, then starting the episodes over.
Her list of to-do items hadn’t stopped when Saturday morning started, and the long stretch of unproductivity only brought more stress, not enjoyment.
An afternoon round of pills would be the only thing to get David up, and then he would be wired and overly happy for the rest of the day, which only inflamed Sara’s irritation.
It must be nice, she’d often thought, to work a few hours each day and take off every weekend.
To have a job that involved wining and dining doctors and little else.
No one woke up each morning dependent on David’s performance.
No one was power-calling his phone or asking for raises or threatening to quit and hold the company’s progress hostage.
There was a rap of knuckles on her bedroom door, then it swung open. Maggie entered, a tray in hand with a glass of orange juice and a bottle of Advil. “Good morning,” she sang out. If she had a hangover herself, she was hiding it well.
Sara grunted, shaking out two pills and taking the glass of juice. “Thank you,” she croaked, wincing as her phone shrilled from the bedside table. “Shit.” She twisted and grabbed it, making a face at the name on the display. “Hello?”
“Good morning, Mrs. Batcher.” Detective Palentick sounded chipper as hell. “I just wanted to give you a few updates on the case.”
“Great.” She watched as Maggie straightened the items on her dresser. “Anything new?”
“Well, to start with, I wanted to see what you know about Brody Pitt.”