Chapter 4
Pete
I had another one of those days.
I knew it was going to be one of those days before I even went into work in the morning. I had court today. I hate it. Mostly because I come face-to-face with some of the people that I’ve given traffic tickets to, parking violations, and that type of thing. I hate it when they’re old, and I know they can’t afford to pay. What am I supposed to do? It’s my job to ticket people who are parked illegally or who let the meter expire. That’s my job. The police department in Mistletoe Meadows is responsible for everything, since we’re such a small town. We don’t have a meter maid, or anything like that. The department does it all. And I don’t mind doing it. I just hate the feeling that I’ve taken food out of someone’s mouth so that they could pay their parking fine. I just... Wish that they would obey the laws in the first place, so I didn’t have to give them a ticket.
Plus, I had to arrest my cousin again. I hate doing it, and it’s kind of a joke at the station. Since I’m a police officer, and my cousin is the most frequently arrested citizen of Mistletoe Meadows. He has a drinking problem, and I’ve begged him to get help, but unless the person wants to be helped, it’s impossible to help them. I’ve learned this the hard way.
Regardless, Dan and I grew up together, and he’s like a brother to me. We were the same age, with one of my brothers being older and two being younger, and Dan and me in the middle. His mom wasn’t married, and my mom ended up taking care of him a lot. But, she couldn’t overcome the demons that he had from the way he was shuffled from house to house, and the “dads” that went in and out of his place.
Anyway, I’m so happy to get home, and I’m hoping, really, really hoping, that my neighbor is working at her job. I need her voice.
“Leo and his love bunny! Leo and his love bunny!”
“Pete. My name is Pete.”
“Leo and his love bunny!”
I give Trixie a baleful glare, but it’s actually nice to have someone in the apartment when I come in. I should consider getting a pet. The apartments are all pet friendly. I remember that being billed on the advertisement, but it didn’t mean a whole lot to me. Since I didn’t have any at the time. I can understand the appeal though. After a day like today, I wouldn’t mind having a dog look at me like he loves me more than anything else in the world. A cat...? I’m not sure about that.
I sit down, and immediately I hear her voice.
I close my eyes and leaned back and let it wash over me.
“Precious. You are my precious. I do love you and worship at your feet. You're the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen, and I can’t wait to kiss your beautiful, cherry red lips.”
Okay. The writing in this book stinks, but she almost makes it sound like it’s completely feasible.
“You’re my precious, my very most precious love, and if I can’t be with you, I would rather die!”
All right. It’s getting to be a little bit much. Maybe I’m a twelve-year-old at heart, or maybe I’m just not mature enough to have any kind of romance. My love life would tend to verify that statement as truth. But, I want to giggle.
Instead, without raising my head or opening up my eyes I say, “And I feel the same way about you. Only, I think we should be eating while we talk about this.”
There is silence from the other side.
Yeah. I feel guilty already. I should have just kept my mouth shut. I was here, enjoying her voice, feeling soothed and warm the way it always does, and I ruined it with my inability to squelch my junior high kid.
“All right. I think that’s a good idea. We’ll eat while we talk. As long as you remain my precious.”
Something tells me that line wasn’t in the book. It seems a little bit better written than the rest of the story.
“That sounds good to me,” I say, hoping, truly hoping, that she went off script like I think she did. And then, I do something that if I thought about it, or if she was standing right in front of me, would have taken a lot of nerve. With the wall between us, and this little game that we seem to be playing, the words almost come effortlessly. “I’ll take you out Friday night. Restaurant of your choice.”
“Oh precious, my very precious. I would love to go out to you with you on Friday night. Let’s go to The Food Shack. It’s almost like The Love Shack, only better, my precious.”
The Food Shack is not exactly a fancy restaurant, but they have really awesome food. It’s appropriately named, and the most popular place in town.
“I’ll meet you there on Friday night,” I say, thinking that I could offer to pick her up, since I obviously know where she lives, but I’ve never even seen her. This could go very, very badly. But her voice sounds young. I assume she’s around the same age as me. And, so what if it turns out that she’s fifty years old? Will have a nice lunch together, laugh, and maybe we’ll have become friends.
“That sounds good. You sit in the corner, with a single red rose on your table.” Her voice changes for a minute. “You can get them pretty cheap at the grocery store.” Then she goes back into her regular, narrator voice, sultry, like melted chocolate flowing over my skin. “I’ll look for you, and meet you there, my precious.”
I smile at the total change in her voice. I think she has a sense of humor, and I really think I like her. But, knowing the kind of job I have, and that sometimes I don’t get off work when I think I’m going to, or sometimes I have to work doubles, I give her my phone number, “Just in case you need to get a hold of me.”
To my surprise, my phone buzzes a few seconds later with a text.
I’m looking forward to it, my precious.
To me, precious is more fitting to describe a girl than a boy. I want to be her manly hero, not her precious.
But, I guess beggars can’t be choosy. So I write back.
I think you should be my precious. And I’m looking forward to it too.
I grin to myself, stretching a bit to work the nervousness out of my body. I hear her phone ding and she pauses for just a moment, and then, she starts back in on her regular book.
The couple is soon kissing, and then it goes into a scene with the heroine Carolyn’s grandmother. Even listening to her do that is like dipping my nerve endings into a soothing balm of peace and comfort. She has a voice that’s perfect for narration.
Now, I just have to get through the rest of the week. I’ve decided that I should take drawing lessons, just in case I do end up stuck painting children’s faces. How hard could it be, right? I just never had the proper training. I mean, I had art in elementary school, but the teacher didn’t teach me to draw. She spent most of her time trying to make sure we kept our crayons on the paper, and not on the walls or desk.
My bad day starts to fade away, and I might have taken a bit of a nap in my recliner before I walk into the kitchen and start supper. I’m just about to the point where I feel like my life isn’t that bad, when my phone rings.
I blink, because it’s the police chief. It’s odd that he would be calling me when I’m off duty. That either means that there’s something big going down and he needs me, or there’s a problem somewhere.
I don’t think I want to deal with this right now, but I’m in a better frame of mind than I was earlier, at least.
I swipe my phone. “Yes, sir?”
“McKinsey. I’m going to need you.”
“All right, sir. Right now?”
“No. I’m placing you on unpaid leave.”
“What?” He just said he needed me. Now I’m going on unpaid leave?
“Yeah. Don’t flip out.”
“I’m not flipping out, but I don’t understand. You just said you needed me.” I try to still my racing heart. Sure, my job doesn’t pay much, but it’s everything I ever wanted to be. A cop in my hometown. And it pays the bills. What am I going to do with no money coming in?
“Did I do something wrong?” I ask, trying to look back at my job over last week, last month, goodness, my entire life. I can’t remember ever stepping out of bounds to the point where I would be placed on administrative leave with no pay.
“I had a request. I don’t normally respond to these requests, but I couldn’t ignore this one because of the money involved.”
“You took a bribe?” I want to punch the wall, honestly. I thought he was upstanding and upright, and —
“No. But, I had a request, for you specifically, to be a security guard for a little girl.”
“No.” I say immediately, forgetting that I’m talking to my boss. “I mean, no sir,” I say, modulating my tone just a bit, but keeping the absolute finality of it. I don’t want him to get the wrong impression. This is not something we are going to negotiate about.
“That was my immediate response too, until the woman told me that she was going to pay you twice your normal salary, plus she was making a substantial donation to the force. You know we never have enough funding.”
Yeah. I know that. Typical small town that gets zero attention from state and federal governments. We are on our own as a local community, which, it’s a good community, but we’re not rich. No one is. We help each other, and that’s part of the reason I’m here. I don’t want to climb the ladder, and make a gazillion dollars. I just want to serve my community. And that means making less money than I could make as a state trooper, or, ironically, going into private security.
“I don’t do children.” This is nonnegotiable.
“Well you do now. So it’s a little girl. She’s ten, and the mother said... Well you know, everything the mothers always say. She’s perfect. She might be a little hellion, but for the donation she is going to make to the force, you can do your duty, and watch her for a month.”
“A month?” If I had been sitting down I would have blown out of my chair like a rocket was under my butt. As it was, I totally missed the bowl I was trying to pour canned soup in. I now have a mess on my counter, but I ignore it, and go over to the table, putting my phone on speaker, and setting my hands on either side of it. This cannot be happening.
“Yes. A month.”
“I am not going to go sit in school besides some little girl for an entire month. I got out of school, and I swore I was never going back.” That was what I said on my graduation day. Everyone else was crying big buckets of tears because they were apparently sad for some reason. Meanwhile, I couldn’t get out of that place fast enough. Not that I don’t love our local school, but I felt like a caged animal in there.
“Lucky for you, she said you can drop her off at school, make sure her daughter gets past the metal detectors, and then, you don’t have any responsibilities until you have to pick her up after school. You’ll stay with her through the evening, make sure the house is locked up tight for the night and the alarm set, and then you’re off duty until the next morning at 6 AM. I think her bedtime is 9 o’clock. Basically while she’s sleeping you’re off duty. While she’s at school you’re off duty, but weekends, you’re on duty all day, and any days that she doesn’t have school, she’s yours.”
“It’s a girl?” I say, even though he’s obviously been talking about a girl this entire time. I guess I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that I’m going to be in charge of some kid for a month. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know the kids are necessary for the furtherment of the human race, and I’m all in for that. But come on, I don’t have children. And maybe there’s a reason for that.
First of all, God hasn’t seen fit to bring any woman into my life that is willing to have children with me, and the longer I live, the more I think that’s probably a good thing. I’m not cut out to be a dad, and I’m not cut out to... Babysit.
“Yes. It’s a girl.”
“Listen. I’d really love to help you out, but you need to find someone else —”
“She asked for you. She’s getting you. You’re working one more week for the force, then your unpaid leave kicks in.”
There is no room for argument in the chief’s voice.
I clamp my lips closed, but inside I have at least seven thousand arguments, and ideas of things that I can do, but none of them are feasible. I’m not going to go against my authority. That was drummed into me from an early age, and the three years I spent in the military solidified that in a cement coffin.
I’m not going to leave my home town either. And, there is no job that I could do here that would pay me what I’m making on the force. The fact that I will make double to babysit a girl does not make the job the slightest bit more tempting, but I do have to pay my rent, and I have to eat. And... Aunt Arley depends on me to supplement her meager farm earnings, and I can’t let her down.
I remember the promise I made and chuckle. I never thought I’d appreciate it. “I already promised I’d work the festival.” I am not going to tell him that by “work” I mean paint faces.
“I’ll see if she’ll let you off for that one day.” The chief makes a concession, and I know that’s all I’m going to get.
“I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll give you the details. I expect you to rise to the challenge, no matter how hard you think it’s going to be.”
“Yes sir,” I say, and we hang up.
I need to attend to the mess on the counter, although I am no longer hungry. But I stand there, my hands on the table, my head hanging down. This was not the way I expected my evening to go. I thought my day was bad, it was nothing compared to this.
I look at my chair in the living room, which I can just barely see as I turn my head. I want to go back and sit down, but I bet that she’s no longer talking. Her voice would soothe me, help push all of this away, but that’s not an option either. I do have her phone number now, and I could probably text her and ask her if she could read something, anything, a chemistry book, just something that would allow me to hear her voice.
But no. I’m not going to take advantage of having her phone number. Although I am looking forward to seeing her on Friday night. I...think I might be pleasantly surprised. While there’s a chance that things won’t go the way I think, surely the Lord wouldn’t be so cruel as to saddle me with a kid, and then make my neighbor a fifty-year-old grandmother.