CHAPTER TWO
“You’re putting chipotle sauce on top of smoked salmon and cream cheese, and then you’re putting it in the air-fryer.”
“You should try it, mother.”
“For breakfast? Actually, I don’t know why I asked that. It wouldn’t matter what time of day it was eaten. It would still be a gastronomic monstrosity. Is that one of my good knives?”
It had become increasingly clear that, despite his incarceration in federal prison, serial killer Elijah Cox continued to inspire followers, who not only stalked and killed people in his name, but played mind-games with Kate, in the form of encrypted clues and cyphers, which she was obliged to solve and investigate in the hope of preventing any further deaths.
Put like that, it sounded almost ordinary; a struggle peculiar to Kate’s own, particular form of work, which was catching bad people.
But the emotional undertow of it all was hard to quantify.
When Cox had first entered her world, with his clues and puzzles and his warped concept of justice, Kate had already been struggling, due to her near-fatal encounter with serial killer Robert Denton, who would turn out to have been an early disciple of Elijah Cox.
Her continuing ordeal at the hands of these men had made Kate wonder if it was possible to get PTSD twice.
Could a person suffer from two cases of the condition at the same time, like a double dose of influenza?
Kate felt she was well on the way towards finding out.
In the meantime, she was doggedly doing the head-work: twice-weekly psychotherapy with a trauma specialist, fortnightly sessions in a survivors’ group.
Running – that was the best therapy in the world, in Kate’s view, because it made her feel instantly better, whereas a lot of her sessions on the couch had the absolute opposite effect.
At some point in this long hard journey back to being okay, Kate’s mom had suggested that her daughter could come and stay with her in her townhouse near the university.
It had been a short-term suggestion, extended a little further when Kate’s Mom, a linguistics professor, went over to the UK for a conference, leaving Kate to look after her mother’s vigorous, but thoroughly lovely pair of red setters, Sapir and Whorf.
Kate’s Mom had been back home for a month now, and it was becoming harder and harder to overlook one single, basic and simple truth. She and her Mom were getting on each other’s nerves.
It had been great at first. Long beach walks with the dogs.
Baking together, like they’d done when Kate was small.
Curling up on the sofa together with Spencer Tracy movies and a shipping-weight of popcorn.
Home had been the perfect antidote to work.
Not that Kate didn’t enjoy her work; she lived for it, she had a close, strong bond with her partner and considered a number of her other work-colleagues as friends.
But that work was unrelentingly tough. It was demanding, mentally and physically, and often, being all about catching bad people, it was ugly.
And it never stopped. And it never would.
So it had been great to have this haven to come back to, great to stop struggling and let herself be looked after again.
It wasn’t as if anyone else was going to do it…
It hadn’t just been a one-way street, either.
She’d begun to realise that there were tasks that her Mom was no longer quite so confident about doing, like dredging the pond, going up the ladder to retrieve things from the attic space, or hauling a pair of seventy-pound doggos out of a slippery bath.
So Kate had been able to help with things like that and they shared the cooking, so that no-one came home from a long work-day to packet noodles.
But Kate was 36. And there was a reason why most people aged 36 were not living with their parents.
The main reason was that they’d moved in with a partner of some sort.
And on that particular front, Kate felt that she had better odds of becoming the next director of the Bolshoi ballet.
But that aside, she still needed to move back to her apartment.
She’d still been paying rent on it, for a start.
The question was: how to tell her Mom, without hurting her feelings, or seeming ungrateful for all the kindness she’d shown her in recent months?
Her Mom wasn’t perfect; she could be prickly and over-precise, she had a habit of jumping to conclusions, or thinking she’d understood when she hadn’t.
And she was a sulker: once, as a teenager, Kate had criticised her mother’s outfit and six days went by before she spoke another word to her daughter.
Kate knew, that if she stayed much longer, it would end up coming out in the midst of an argument.
And then there’d be the silence, followed by an achingly slow thaw, during all of which Kate would be feeling that she’d made the wrong decision, and wishing that she hadn’t said it, and probably trying to go back on it…
‘I think we need to have a chat, actually,’ said Professor Valentine. Kate turned round, startled. Was it possible that her Mom had been having all the same thoughts? Why should it be impossible? They were mother and daughter, after all.
‘Instead of getting less worried about you as time goes on,’ her Mom continued, ‘I’m getting moreso. What’s going on with that lovely bicycle boy from the other building?’
Kate flushed. She knew who her mother meant. She shrugged, moodily, reverting to the teenager she suddenly felt herself to be.
‘He’s obviously trying to get close to you and looking for an invitation. But you’re just not letting him in. I’ve seen you. You smile at him and you stop to talk, but you put up all these walls. It’s very confusing for men. Even I don’t understand why you’re doing it.’
‘I… I don’t think I’m doing anything,’ Kate protested.
‘Mike is… he’s cute, yes. And I like talking to him.
But where can it go, Mom? You’ve seen the hours I work.
You’ve seen some of what I do. He manages an uptown bookshop.
It feels like… it feels like what I do is too grubby and sordid.
He’s such a nice man, I don’t want him going anywhere near it.
And I DON’T want to have to explain about Elijah Cox.
AND he’s a neighbor. That’s worse than dating someone at work.
If it goes belly-up, we’ll still have to see each other. ’
‘You’ve come up with some very creative reasons for not making a move. You need to re-direct that energy into working out a strategy, you know, how to bag him.’
‘Bag him?’
‘That’s what we used to call it. Forgive me for not knowing what you young people call it.”
“I’m not that young.”
“I know.”
“Thanks,” Kate huffed, irrationally. The whole conversation was irrational.
“The point is, honey, this is all nerves talking. You’re inventing these reasons because of nerves. You just need some time to feel relaxed with each other,’ the Professor said, sagely. ‘Have dinner together and talk.’
‘Well…’ Kate tried not to sigh. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘No need,’ said the Professor, with a smile. ‘He said yes.’
‘Yes to what?’
‘Dinner a deux, tomorrow, 7.30 pm. Here. I will make a cassoulet and leave it for you. Give him peaches and ice-cream for dessert. I’d suggest a good beefy red for the main course and a sharp Riesling for afters. But don’t top his glass up. It can make for a disappointing conclusion.’
‘MOTHER!’ Kate took a deep breath, to calm herself. ‘Where will you be?’
‘Staying with the Mortimers,’ her Mom said. ‘All weekend,’ she added, pointedly. ‘You’ll have to have the doggos, but they’ll give you a reason to go for a nice, long walk. And, hey, if you forgot your gloves, you’d have to hold Mike’s hand…’
‘What? Look, Mom, no, wait— I don’t understand. How did you even make this arrangement? Mike is my neighbor, not yours.’
‘Yes, but you introduced us, sweetie, and yesterday, he saw me struggling to get all the shopping in my car outside Whole Foods.
Kate’s phone suddenly buzzed on the table. She had never been so relieved to see the name of her partner, Marcus, in the little green window. Nor to hear his voice.
‘I’m not finished with you,’ she said sternly to her mother, just as Marcus came on the line.
‘What did I do? Are you en route yet?’
Marcus pronounced this ‘enn rowt’, because he knew that it was supposed to be ‘on root’, and that his stubborn refusal to say it in the proper French annoyed his partner.
This, Kate thought, was one of the reasons why she didn’t need a boyfriend. She already had 24-7 access to a man who drove her nuts.
‘Sorry, that was directed at my mom. I’m about to leave. Why?’
‘We’ve got a call-out not far from you, so I’ll swing by,’ Marcus said. ‘Asshole! Steer that bucket home and get yourself a fricken’ bicycle!’
He was clearly driving.
‘Where are we heading?’
‘Byoo Cadooks.’
‘Beaux Cadeaux,’ Kate said. ‘It’s French. Meaning beautiful gifts. And it’s also a word-play. It’s that big Disney kind of castle thing on Bow Lake, isn’t it?’
‘Yup.’
‘So ‘beaux’ meaning good and ‘bow’ as in arrows are both pronounced the same way.’
‘I’m not sure how I ever lived,’ Marcus said, ‘Without access to all this fascinating information. We got a call from the sister… sorry, the sister-in-law of the guy who owns it.’
‘The tv preacher guy. Pastor Whitfield.’ Kate dimly recalled some news story about the religious leader, but she couldn’t remember the details. ‘What did she say?’
‘That he ain’t saying nothing to nobody no more. Because someone took his tongue out. I’ll pick you up in ten.’
Kate’s mom had withdrawn to the next room, as she always did when her daughter was taking professional calls.
She was a deeply contradictory woman: tactful and considerate in one moment, blatant as a bull in the next.
And she made Kate be contradictory, too.
She was touched that her Mom wanted to fix her up with Mike.
But she couldn’t let her run her life like that.
Kate had to draw a line. And more importantly, she had to move out.
But there was no point starting that conversation now. Marcus would be here, in far less than ten minutes, if he drove the way he drove when he was alone in the car. Tonight, Kate told herself. Tonight, she and her Mom would have to have the talk. Tonight, for sure.