ONE SMALL VICTORY Read online

  “Unfortunately, we do need to take care of some details.”Again he paused and Jenny knew she should say something. Anything. But her mouth refused to obey. She heard him clear his throat, then speak again. “I wondered when would be a good time to come over and make arrangements.”

  “I don’t know.” Her throat was so tight she could hardly push the words out.

  “Well,” Hobkins continued in that soft, well-modulated tone. “There’s never a good time. Perhaps we could try in, say, an hour?”

  “Fine.”

  Jenny replaced the receiver and stood immobile. God. How am I going to do this?

  Carol walked in, one arm draped over a still drowsy Alicia. Scott trailed behind.

  “It was a man from the funeral parlor,” Jenny said in response to the question on her friend’s face.

  “Oh, Mommy!” Alicia broke from Carol’s side and ran to her mother’s arms. Jenny held her tight, burying her face in her daughter’s long hair that carried the sweet little-girl smell of sleep.

  “It’s okay,” Jenny murmured. “We’re going to get through this.”

  “Is he coming over?” Carol asked.

  Jenny looked over the top of Alicia’s head and nodded. “In about an hour.”

  “Well, you, uh, go get yourself ready,” Carol said. “I’ll fix something for the kids to eat.”

  Jenny released her daughter and wiped the tears from the girl’s flushed cheeks. “You okay?”

  Alicia gave a slight nod, belying the sadness brimming in her amber eyes. Such a unique color. In Jenny’s estimation the only good thing that her ex-husband had left her. That’s not true. He left you three children, and like it or not, there’s a piece of him in each of them.

  Jenny gave Alicia a kiss. “You go on with Aunt Carol. I’ll be out in a jiff.”

  Carol put her arm around the girl and reached for Scott, but he pulled back from the contact. Jenny understood. Touching might break the fragile wall of strength.

  In her room, Jenny was struck by the absurdity of what she was doing. Choosing an outfit to meet with the man who would bury her son. Does one dress up or down for an occasion like this? Make-up? Jewelry?

  Sudden, manic laughter overtook her.

  “You’re crazy,” she told her ravaged reflection in the mirror. “Fuckin’ certifiable.”

  Jenny’s laughter turned to tears as she remembered yelling at Michael to watch his mouth the first time he’d said that.

  It happened last fall, a month after his eighteenth birthday, and Michael had been testing new waters. It was like he was saying, ‘I’m an adult now. Let’s see how much I can get away with.’ He’d told her about this goofy old man who yelled and screamed about his pizza order getting screwed up. “He was the one who was screwed up,” Michael had said. “He was crazy. Fuckin’ certifiable.”

  Jenny could still feel the hesitation before Michael said the last two words, could still see the question in his eyes. ‘Am I going to get away with this?’

  And she could still remember the immediate regret at reacting too much like a mother, not realizing what it meant for him.

  “Mom! I’m not a kid anymore,” Michael had protested, the force of his words stopping her mother instinct long enough to see that he was right.

  With another stab of agony, Jenny realized it wasn’t just her child she’d lost last night. She’d lost his whole future. There would be no daughter-in-law from him. Or grandchildren.

  She sank to the edge of her bed, the pain threatening to drag her into the dark abyss. Her blood pounded so loud in her ears it took a minute to realize someone was knocking on the door.

  “Mom?” Scott’s voice called from the hallway. “Can I come in?”

  Jenny took a deep breath, then rose and opened the door.

  “I was wondering...uh,” Scott’s eyes had difficulty resting on hers. “Has Dad called back yet?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, uh...do you want me to call him?”

  Again, she shook her head. “It’s something I should do. I’ll try again as soon as I’m finished here.”

  Scott hesitated a moment more, then backed out of the doorway. Jenny quickly closed the door. Better that he not see the flush of anger that warmed her cheeks. She’d tried to call Ralph last night, sometime during those hours of agony between leaving the hospital and finally collapsing for a brief period of fitful sleep, but there’d been no answer.

  Last night she’d been too numb to care. It was just so typical. He had never been there for her or the kids. Not while they were married, and not in the years since he’d left. Most of the time she just accepted it and tried to ease the disappointment for the kids as much as possible, but even though little was said, the message was clear. Ralph wasn’t involved with the kids. Not like a father should be.

  His excuse for missing Michael’s first football game had been a project for work. The excuses were always something to do with work. He justified his decisions with the standard, “This is what the man does. He provides for the family.” But she’d always sensed that he welcomed the excuse for not being there because even when he was home, he really wasn’t.

  And Jenny often wondered why it had taken her so long to see that. It wasn’t until after Alicia was born that she faced it square. After she’d been home for a week with their baby she had to ask him if he wanted to hold his daughter.

  So it wasn’t such a big shock to either of them when their marriage ended in divorce court. It was particularly painful for the kids for the first year, but life became easier after he moved to California. Then she didn’t have to deal with the shattered hopes that this year he would show up for a birthday, or Christmas, or just because he missed seeing the kids. Distance became an acceptable excuse for his absence because the truth was too harsh to face.

  But the truth was like a kick in the gut this morning.

  “You stupid, sorry, son of a bitch,” Jenny said, running a brush through her dark hair with quick, angry strokes. “Why should I care how you find out? I should just clip the obituary and send it to you.”

  It gave her a perverse rush of pleasure to consider doing that, but she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Out of respect for the fact that he was Michael’s father, she would call again.

  Jenny crossed the room and picked up the phone on her bedside table. Still no answer after ten rings, and she started to worry. Maybe it wasn’t even his number anymore. He had a penchant for moving and not getting around to giving them the new number for weeks. She could try him at work later, but she wasn’t even sure that number was current.

  Longevity, either professional or personal, was never one of his strong suits.

  She slammed the phone down. “Couldn’t you be there for me? Just once?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Lieutenant Steve Morrity pulled the report from his printer, the force of his anger almost causing it to rip. The emotion was a holdover from last night when he’d been called to an accident scene after drugs had been found. Two young men. Kids really. One dead and the other barely hanging on. When was the nightmare ever going to end?

  “You talked to the parents yet?”

  The question belonged to Linda Winfield who stood in the open doorway of Steve’s office. He was always surprised at how unlike a cop she looked. Tall and lithe, with a face that could have been carved out of fine porcelain, she should have been a model or an actress.

  Today, that perfection was ravaged.

  The residual effects last night’s ordeal of extricating what was left of two victims from a tangle of wreckage were evident in the grim set of her mouth and the tightness around her blue eyes. It brought to mind painful pictures of his first accident scene as a rookie patrol officer ten years ago. A mangled car. A young mother almost cut in half by the dashboard. The husband in the driver’s seat, flattened like some bloody paper doll. And the baby in back... God, he didn’t want to remember the baby in back.

  He shook his head to chase away the i
mages and asked, “What brings you in on your day off?”

  Linda shrugged and stepped into the office. “Couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

  Steve understood. He’d noticed the signs of distress last night after the winch had pulled the car out of the culvert and they’d had their first glimpse of the horror inside. But she’d appeared to steel herself and concentrate on the details of the job. Her ability to flip that switch had impressed him. There were times he still had difficulty doing that, and when he did, the emotions always caught up with him later. He wished he could tell her it would get easier.

  Horrible, bloody accidents with bodies as twisted and bent as the steel that trapped them were the hardest, especially when they involved kids. And Steve could never decide if the deaths were more senseless when it was just a case of recklessness, as they’d first assumed last night, or when the accident was tied to booze or dope.

  “Can I do anything?” Linda asked, leaning a blue-jeaned hip against his cluttered desk.

  “You want to follow up with the driver? Go by the hospital and find out if he’s able to talk?”

  Linda nodded.

  “Then you could check with McKinney and Lewisville. See if they have anything on him. Check the sheets on the Jasik kid, too.”

  “Was the Brennan boy dealing?”

  “Possibly. There’d been some suspicion when he was in school. But if he was, he was slick enough not to get caught. Then he disappeared for a while. Franks has been watching him since he came back but hasn’t been able to get anything on him.”

  “You think the other boy was doing it too?”

  Steve shrugged. “Won’t know till we get the results of the tox screen.”

  Linda slid off the desk and rolled her shoulders. Steve heard a vertebrae snap. He eyed her. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked. “You look like you need the closest bed.”

  “I tried that.” A flicker of a smile touched her face, then was gone. “It didn’t work.”

  He laughed and waved her off, turning back to the mess littering his desk. He had to get the paperwork in gear for the toxicology lab in Dallas. Put a hold on the body at the hospital morgue. Make sure all the reports were signed.

  The endless paperwork. Should have been a freakin’ office clerk.

  ~*~

  Dressed in her good tan slacks and a silk blouse the color of cream, Jenny opened her bedroom door and heard snatches of conversation punctuated with the clatter of dishes drifting from the kitchen. People, possibly lots of people, had arrived. She winced and considered closing the door and never coming out again. Then some long-forgotten sense of propriety told her she shouldn’t be rude.

  When she stepped into the kitchen, the first person she saw was her mother. Time warped for one brief flash, and Jenny was a child rushing to the comfort of her mother’s arms. The older woman held her and crooned, “There, there. It’ll be okay.”

  Jenny allowed herself to be the child for a moment, savoring the security of being taken care of. Then she pulled back and looked at Helen, struck by how much the woman had aged in the past twelve hours. Anxiety deepened the furrows on her forehead and her hazel eyes were dull and lifeless.

  “You okay, Mom?”

  Her mother bit her bottom lip and nodded.

  A touch on Jenny’s arm drew her attention and she turned to see her neighbor, Millie, so impeccably proper in her hat and gloves. Today’s black hat was topped with a small sprig of red, silk roses, perhaps chosen to reflect the dignity of the occasion.

  “I’m not going to bother you now,” Millie said. “Just wanted to bring something by. There’s nothing else we can do.”

  That simple statement spoke volumes and Jenny was grateful for the kindness. It broke a chink out of the wall of reserve she’d been trying to erect. The wall was a necessary part of survival for a time, but she knew the danger of building it too thick. It would be too easy to block out more than she’d intended.

  Her impulse was to hug Millie, but the older woman had her own wall of reserve. In the six years Jenny had known her, Millie had always been friendly but had avoided intimacy at any level, so Jenny kept her distance as they moved toward the entryway.

  “Don’t be afraid to call if you need anything,” Millie said.

  “Thank you.”

  Jenny closed the door and then walked back to the kitchen. “Where’s Alicia?” she asked Carol who was busy washing dishes.

  “She went to get dressed before the man from the funeral parlor gets here.”

  “I don’t think I want to stay for that,” Helen said, picking up her black leather purse from the table. “I’ll come back later and see if Alicia would like to come to my house for a while. Keep me company.”

  For an instant, Jenny wanted to revert to childhood again. Then she could run away with her mother and wouldn’t have to do this. Not that she blamed her mother for leaving. Jenny took a deep breath, remembering that lost look of pain her mother had worn last year when they’d buried Dad. She couldn’t ask her to replay that scene again so soon.

  She kissed Helen’s cheek, which felt cool to the touch of her lips. “That’s okay. I’ll call you later.”

  ~*~

  Fred Hobkins was a tall, thin man who carried an air of consolation along with a cashmere coat and a briefcase. Jenny found his gentle manner and soft-spoken voice comforting as he greeted her and wondered briefly if that was something he learned at mortuary school. Are there classes in soothing and sincere?

  Jenny took his hat and coat and hung them on the coat tree in the foyer. Then she led him toward the living room, using the mundane task to chase that crazy question away. Would she ever get control of her mind again? She motioned for him to sit on the straight-back occasional chair where he could use the corner of the coffee table for the folder he pulled out of the leather case. She sat on the sofa, clutching a blue throw-pillow to quiet her nervous hands. Alicia, wearing a dress for the first time in months, sat beside her, and Scott slumped at the other end of the couch.

  Other than running a brush through his hair that was so pale it was almost white, she couldn’t see that Scott had done anything special for this moment. He still wore his gray warm-ups and the black Nike tee shirt he’d put on earlier. Jenny tried to catch his eye, to offer some gesture that would connect them, but he kept his gaze averted.

  She turned to face Hobkins when he cleared his throat.

  “We can be ready for the family viewing tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “Then it’s up to you.”

  “What is?” Jenny asked, her voice coming out in a croak.

  “Whether you want an open casket for public viewing.” He paused as if choosing his words with care. “It is possible... considering that there were no injuries above the neck.”

  The picture that Jenny had successfully kept at bay for the past few hours flashed vividly into her consciousness; Michael laying cold and dead on the gurney. Her first thought had been that they were wrong. He couldn’t be dead. His face looked so complete. So whole. Surely he was just asleep. But then her eyes were drawn to the horror that had been his chest.

  Without warning, the dark abyss yawned before her, and she fought to stay out of its control.

  “This is a breakdown of our various costs,” Hobkins said, his voice like a lifeline. He slid a paper across the coffee table while she took a deep, ragged breath, her mind again going down a crazy path. Did he learn this in school, too? Deflecting The Outburst 101.

  “These are some of our more popular caskets,” he continued, pulling a brochure out of the folder. “You don’t have to decide now. Let your family look them over, and we can settle it after we talk about a few other things.”

  Jenny picked up the booklet and offered it to Scott. “You want to look at this?”

  He turned away so quickly she only caught a glimpse of a pained expression.

  “I will,” Alicia said.

  Jenny looked at her daughter. “You sure?”

  “Uh, hu
h.”

  “Now.” Hobkins settled back in the chair. “Have you given any thought to the service? What you’d like? What you think he would have wanted?”

  Jenny shrugged and looked from Scott to Alicia, then back to Hobkins. “It’s not, uh-”

  “Flowers,” Scott interrupted, his voice gruff with emotion. “He definitely wouldn’t want flowers.”

  When Jenny glanced at him, Scott softened his tone. “At Grandpa’s funeral. He said they were a waste. And the smell made him want to puke.”

  Hobkins cleared his throat. “Flowers are optional, of course. Although people might send them. That’s something we can’t control.”