Chapter 3 Jesse #2
It makes me wonder what Anna would be like, if she were here—-thirty--five years old. Would she be a doctor or a lawyer or a poet? Would she be a mom?
I know this much: if Anna were here, she’d jab me with her elbow and tell me to suck it up and have a real conversation with my father.
So I say: “I understand why you did it now.”
“Did what?”
“Took Anna’s side.” When Anna sued my parents for the right to her own body—-they wanted her to donate a kidney to Kate, after years of giving bone marrow and stem cells as a savior sibling—-my mom had represented the family against her.
My father had stayed with Anna, making sure she had someone to take care of her.
Now, he grimaces, takes another pull of his root beer. “There weren’t really sides. Everyone was going to lose one way or another.”
“But you stuck up for her—-against Mom.”
“That wasn’t a choice,” he sighs. “It’s more the job description. To be there for your kid when they need you, no matter what.”
I roll my head back, so my face is tipped up to the sky. There’s a sadness in my throat, like a stone. “Dad? What if I fuck this up?”
“Fuck what up?”
“Adie. Fatherhood. All of it.”
He raises his brows. “What makes you think you will?”
“I don’t exactly have a great track record with responsibility.”
My dad leans forward. “Molly might beg to differ.”
“But it’s different. I love Molly, but what I feel for Adie—-there isn’t even a word for it. I love her so much that it physically hurts sometimes. Like I don’t have anywhere to put all that feeling.”
My father reaches across the divide of space between us and pats my leg. For the first time I can remember, he seems to look at me like an equal. “If that’s the case, Jess,” he says, smiling, “then you’re doing just fine.”
My first polygraph back on the job is for an accused arsonist. It’s my favorite kind, because I already know how this guy thinks.
He’s gotten so good at evading detection that he’s cocky, and thinks he can beat the polygraph.
Ravi Banneker is slippery as fuck, but he’s the most likely suspect for three warehouse fires—-or so I was told when I was brought up to speed on the case.
He’s dressed in an oversize hoodie and jeans, and sneakers that probably cost as much as a week of my salary.
His hair is slicked back from his face, and he has a ring through his lower lip.
He’s twenty--five, same age as Molly. I’ve done three tests, mixing the order of the questions, and scored the results.
After letting Ravi sit for about twenty minutes, I join him and put a sheaf of papers facedown on the table between us.
“So,” I ask. “How do you think you did?”
He looks me in the eye. “I think I passed.”
For a long moment, we just stare at each other. Then I sigh. “You spent the past three hours telling me you had nothing to do with this fire, but that’s not what the science indicates. The chart shows it. The score shows it.”
I flip the papers over, a graph of spikes in different colors that will mean nothing to him.
“Listen, Ravi. Let’s start over. I know you’re lying; you know you’re lying.
Let’s not make this any worse. Maybe you’re panicking because you didn’t mean to start the fire?
Maybe it’s a situation where something got out of hand—-a cigarette you threw down, a spark that caught a rag, and you couldn’t put it out.
You just wanted the thrill of lighting the match, of watching something burn—-but you didn’t mean for it to go down like this.
” I don’t take my eyes off his face. “Help me help you, man.”
When Ravi doesn’t say anything, I fold my arms. “I understand what it’s like. I’ve been where you are.” I roll up my sleeve, revealing a long, shiny burn scar. “Let’s just say, I wasn’t born a cop.”
Ravi doesn’t say anything, but he slumps. And that’s it. That’s how I know I’ve got him, even before he’s said a single word.
He rubs his hand over his mouth. “I didn’t think it would get out of control,” Ravi says.
And every word, every gorgeous word, is caught on tape.
I come home from work on a high. I’ve stopped off to get flowers for Molly, and texted to say I’d bring a pizza for dinner.
When I sail through the door of the condo, Adie is lying on a Fisher--Price play mat with piano keys she can kick.
She’s babbling, happy. Molly sits on the couch with her laptop open, blue--light glasses perched on her nose. “That’s hot,” I say.
She glances down at herself. “The spit--up on my sweatshirt, or the fuzzy socks?”
I put the pizza down, hand her the flowers, and lean over to kiss her. “Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald is back, baby.”
“Yeah?” She grins. “You got your confession?”
“He folded like a bedsheet,” I tell her.
“A flat one, I assume,” Molly says, “because the fitted ones are a pain in the ass.” She closes her computer, takes off the sexy librarian glasses, and sighs. “Is it bad that I’m jealous you get to go back to work? I am currently missing a massive E. coli outbreak in Coventry.”
“Good times.” I sink down beside her. “I never expected you to give up your career, Mol.”
“I know.” She smiles at Adie. “And I love her, I do. I just feel . . .”
“Like if you hear The animals play, the animals play, the animals play all day one more time you might commit homicide?”
“Yes,” Molly says. “That.”
“Is she too little for daycare?” I ask.
“Not if I pump. But I have no idea where to even start looking.”
I rub the back of her neck, easing the knots. “I could ask Kate.”
“I already have. The place she used with Anna closed years ago. I got two names from people in my office, but Adie will be in college before she gets off the wait lists.”
“What about a nanny?” I suggest.
Molly gets up, grabbing plates from the kitchen cabinets. She takes a slice of pizza out of the box for me, and one for her, and then sits again. “Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald is really okay with a stranger being in our house all day?”
I shudder. I’ve heard too many horror stories about kidnapping and child trafficking to truly feel safe.
I glance at Adie, who has blown a bubble of spittle and is delighted to have it pop on her face. As both a teenage delinquent and a cop, I’ve always felt invincible. It’s taken a nineteen--inch human to bring me to my knees.
“What about Georgia?” I ask.
Molly hands me a plate. “What about her?”
“She needs a job, doesn’t she? What if she was the nanny?”
Chewing on her pizza, Molly considers this. “We’d have to pay her.”
“Obviously. We’d be paying for childcare no matter what.” Then I frown. “Do you think . . . Adie would be safe with her?”
Molly blinks at me. “I can’t believe you’re even asking that.”
“I mean, medically. Psychologically.”
“It’s been almost six months since I found out who she is, and I haven’t seen any behavior that’s a red flag. God, if anything, she’s more stable than I am.”
“Don’t say that,” I say, my jaw going rigid.
Molly lays her palm along my cheek. “I’m fine,” she promises.
“I can’t say for sure that if we have another baby, I’ll still be fine.
But I know what to look out for, and so do you, and Georgia, and that’s the best defense possible.
” She leans forward and kisses me. She tastes like pepperoni.
“I’ll ask Georgia if she’s interested in a career change. ”
After Adie goes to sleep in the bassinet next to our bed, I brush my teeth and shower—-which still sprays me in the face, because I haven’t fixed it.
But when I slip beneath the covers, Molly isn’t there.
Padding quietly through the dark so I don’t wake the baby, I go into the living room, where I expect to find her lit by the glowing screen of her computer, tracking empty hospital beds in Coventry.
Instead, she is sitting on the counter in nothing but a pair of underwear, the tie I wore to work today, and her blue--light reading glasses. “Took you long enough,” she says.
“Holy shit,” I manage.
She unknots the tie, letting it hang down between her breasts. “You’re not the only one who had a big day,” Molly says. “I had an ob--gyn appointment. Guess who’s been cleared for . . . extracurricular activities?”
I pounce on her. I mean, it’s been six weeks. My mouth is on hers and her legs are wrapped around me and I’m grinding into her. “Bed,” I groan.
“Absolutely not,” Molly says. “I don’t want Adie to hear.”
“How do you think Adie got here?” I grab her by the thighs and walk us to the living room couch, dumping her unceremoniously onto the cushions.
I dive into her as if she is a pool. She is just as hungry as I am and everywhere we touch is charged.
I want to kneel before her, drink from her, but she doesn’t have the patience.
She drags me up and then I’m inside her.
We trade touches like a relay race—-my teeth on her neck, her fingers pressing into my back, my moan in her ear, her ankles caging me—-and then we are breaking through the ribbon at the finish, breathless, boneless.
Molly’s skin is abraded by my stubble, her hair’s a rat’s nest. “You are impossibly gorgeous,” I whisper, kissing her forehead.
She snorts. “I have stretch marks and a spare tire, so I’m glad you feel that way.”
“For what it’s worth, you make me feel like a teenager.”
“You’re welcome, old man,” Molly says. Her smile is a flash in the dark.
I laugh. “So for the next eighteen years or so we get to christen every other surface in the house?”
“Don’t be silly.” Molly smirks. “She’ll move into her own room by the time she’s twelve.”
We tiptoe back into the bedroom, where I wrap my arms around my wife. Into her ear, I whisper, “Let’s make another baby. We’re so good at it.” When she doesn’t respond, I come up on my elbow, a brow raised in question. “No reply?”
“Sorry, I was thinking.”
“About?”
“Whether I should smother you, or knife you in your sleep.”
I burst out laughing, and Molly slaps her palm over my mouth so I don’t wake the baby. I pull her hand away, kissing her wrist. “One day?” I ask softly.
She nods. “One day.”