It was time for the smile again. “Fine. You? How’re the kids? Tamara?”
“All good. Everybody misses you. It’s been a minute.”
“Sorry. Tell them I’ll stop by soon.”
His eyes held. They’d danced this dance many times over the past five years. He always asked how she was doing, and she always answered the same way. He’d learned not to push it, usually.
“First day back. How was it? Don’t say fine.” The last bit came out in a rush before she had a chance to give her standard answer.
She picked at her dinner. “It was long. My new partner is . . . well, he’s a lot. It felt like the first day of school, only I had a little more to worry about than finding my locker.”
Felix finished his bottle, then tossed it into the trash can beside him. “Like?”
“Today, I had to tell parents their daughter was dead,” she said. “I’ve had to do it before, of course . . . but it was different this time. It’s me that’s different, I guess.” She could tell he was listening. She knew that he’d heard every word she said but had also picked up on the things she hadn’t. “And since you’re a psychologist but not my psychologist, and you’re my big brother, that’s all I’m going to say.” She forked a morsel of microwaved chicken something into her mouth and even managed a playful grin. “So we good?”
Foster knew he wasn’t going to let it go that easily. “Your partner,” he said, the words slow and easy. “What’s his story?”
She put the fork down, pushed the tray away. “He’s an old-school cop. His words, not mine. He’s a rock to paper. Like in the kids’ game? He’s . . .”
“Not G,” he finished for her.
“I’m not an idiot, Fee. I knew I’d have to work with someone else. Adjust.” She looked up, watching him peer at her through their father’s brown eyes. “I can do hard.”
Felix glanced over at the vase, the bowl of marbles on the table. “Who knows that better than me?”
He looked worried, though, as she watched him look around her place again. Was he remembering how things used to be when she’d had more, when she’d been happy and a different person? The big glass vase was a calendar of sorts. She’d dropped the first marble in the day Reggie was killed—absently, not really thinking about it—but then she’d dropped a marble in every day since. She also marked the days with coins and buttons and little found things slipped into a pocket. Every marble, every pin, was another day, another hour, forward.
Felix leaned over and pushed her dinner back toward her. “Eat that. It’s crap, but it’s better than nothing.”
She flicked him a look. “You’re not the boss of me.”
“Am too.” They smiled at the brief reversion to childish ways; then he got serious. “Really. Harriet.” Their eyes locked. He really looked, and she let him. “Okay. I believe you,” he said. He fished his keys out of his pocket and opened the door, pausing halfway out to take another look over her shoulder at the vase of marbles.
“How many now?”
“Eighteen hundred and twenty-five.” The finality in her voice signaled there would be no discussion about it.
“The day’s coming up. We’re all going to the cemetery, release some balloons. I realize the ritual helps some people but not everybody.” He stared at her. “I promised Ma I’d let you know anyway. No pressure.”
Balloons? Even the thought made her anxious, angry. What was there to celebrate? Her kid was lying dead in a hole. “Don’t look for me.”
He leaned down and gave her a peck on the cheek. “I won’t. But you know when I’ll know you’re really fine? When that vase goes and you move out of this house. You have people, Harriet. You know that, right?”
She straightened, pulled herself in. She strengthened the face, put fake sunshine in the practiced smile. “I know. You don’t have to worry, Felix.”
He let a moment pass, then nodded. “I’ll always worry.” He gave her a wink. “Call me. Come by and see the kids.”
She watched him trot down the steps and away, then shut the door and double locked it. She eased down again in the chair facing the front window. It was just a maple tree. The police report, which she’d memorized, said that Reggie had been accosted on the street, this street. A seventeen-year-old thug pointed a gun at him and demanded his new bike. A witness saw Reggie hand the bike over and raise his arms in surrender, right before he heard the gunshot and saw him fall to the ground. Her son, her baby, somehow managed to crawl to the tree, bleeding, dying. Foster had been there when her son took his first breath. It haunted her that she hadn’t been there to protect him or cradle him when he’d taken his last. Here. Outside her front window. On the block where the neighbor’s dog howled and she fed a feral cat. Eighteen hundred and twenty-five days ago.
CHAPTER 17
Bodie walked around Amelia’s loft, just not getting it. How could Am live like this, surrounded by pieces of art that were supposed to serve as furniture? To him, furniture was functional, useful, something you needed but didn’t give too much thought to. A couch was a couch, a chair a chair. The TV remote went on the coffee table. A lamp or two somewhere else. But Amelia’s place was like an Andy Warhol painting somebody had vomited up. He eyed the yellow canvas spread over thin wires that was supposed to be a chair and the tall coatrack-like thing in the corner with bulbs all over it that was supposed to take the place of a good old-fashioned lamp. Amelia didn’t even have drapes for the high, wide windows overlooking the condo building across the street, the illuminated Chicago skyline twinkling behind it.
Looking around at all the avant-garde pretentiousness—the exposed brick, the fancy furniture, the arty accent pieces—he was afraid to sit or touch anything for fear of breaking something that cost more than he did. Curtains, of course, would be too pedestrian, too normal. Amelia had dimmable glass, manipulated from light to dark by the touch of a button. He shook his head and smiled.
“Bodie, sit,” Am called from behind him. “Dinner’s ready.”
He joined her at the table she’d set, or at least he thought it was a table. He’d never been able to pin it down. Was it a custom-made slab table or a polished plank from an old pirate ship? Were the chairs meant to be chairs? They looked to him like wine barrels someone had refashioned and plopped cushions on.
He laughed. “I’ve been here loads of times, but I still can’t get over all this weird stuff. How can you kick back in a place like this? It feels like an art museum. There should be velvet ropes along the walls.”
Amelia set the bowl of salad on the table, grinned, then looked around the space to see what he saw. “Color, lines, form . . .” She pointed at him, a playful scolding. “Life is art. Food is art. Art is everywhere. It’s all in the presentation. Now sit down. I’m starving.”
“What kind of art are we eating?” Bodie said, taking a seat on the wine-barrel-chair.
Amelia chuckled. “Lamb chops.” She went back to the kitchen for the bread, veggies, and quinoa. “You know, I could help you spruce up your place, if you want? Take some of the first-apartment decor out of there, make it look nice.”