Stiff Penalty (A Mattie Winston Mystery) (8 page)

“I
t sounds like it was an interesting case,” Maggie says to me.

“It was.”

“Lots of single parenting going on. Did that strike a theme with you?”

I pat my rotund tummy. “It did. For one thing, after watching the Ames boys go at one another in the car, I decided this child will be my one and only.”

“But what about Emily? If you have any plans to spend time with Hurley, you’ll also have Emily in your life, right?”

I think about that and shrug. “I suppose, but she’s practically grown already.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” says Dr. Killjoy, with a humorless laugh. “She’s a teenager, one who has undergone a number of very stressful changes recently, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she starts to act out at some point. And that can make a few years of child rearing seem like a lifetime.”

She had that right. When I first met Emily, she had seemed like a bright, reasonable, and friendly child. Her acceptance of me and, more important, of my romantic history with Hurley, had set me at ease. She had even shown an interest in what I did at the ME’s office, and she had demonstrated an outstanding ability to draw when she made a skeleton that was hanging in our office come to life. I thought we were on a good footing and was relieved, given that the circumstances under which we met had been less than ideal. But something changed after Hurley and Emily disappeared to find her mother. Ever since their return, Emily’s behavior had been the polar opposite of what it had been initially, and that made me rethink the whole idea of having kids at all. As if the child inside me registers this thought, he or she decides to act out by kicking me hard in the ribs. I wince and Maggie catches it.

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” I say, rubbing my tummy. “Sometimes the kid gets a little rambunctious.”

“Any regrets about the pregnancy?”

“No, at least not when it comes to my decision to have the kid.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, for one thing, pregnancy is not my favorite state of being,” I tell her. “Not long after I found out, it was as if someone was spinning the Barf Wheel of Fortune. I don’t know why they call it morning sickness because it knows no sense of time. I could be starving hungry and grab something to eat, and halfway through it I’d have to run to the bathroom and barf it all up. Sometimes the nausea hit me in the middle of the night, in the middle of my coffee, in the middle of an autopsy . . . pretty random. I thought things would get better once the nausea went away, but then the peeing took over, and that hasn’t stopped. It’s like I have an army of little men in my stomach stomping on my bladder all the time. Some days I can barely wipe before I have to go again. It’s even worse now than it was in the beginning because getting these pants up and down is a workout these days. And just how the hell am I supposed to be able to reach anything down there? I haven’t been able to see or trim that area for months. By now it probably looks like the Amazon jungle. And I’m going to have a cadre of people staring at it any day now. I have nightmares about doctors and nurses gathered around me dressed in surgical masks, army fatigues, and pith helmets, making comments about how hard it will be to navigate through the bush.”

Maggie bites back a laugh.

“It isn’t funny,” I tell her.

She nods and frowns as if to agree with me, but her lips are contorting as she tries not to laugh.

“I’m serious. It’s no picnic, Maggie. The other day I put on two different shoes and didn’t realize it until someone pointed it out to me. And then I thought it was a joke. Turns out it wasn’t, but I didn’t know that until I sat down and put my feet up. And don’t even get me started on the stretch marks. My abdomen looks like a GPS map of downtown Chicago. Plus, it’s not bad enough that I have to pee every half hour; things aren’t working so good on the other end, either. Sometimes I swear this kid in here has a death grip on my colon. I’m pretty sure I now have hemorrhoids the size of walnuts, though I can’t be sure since I can’t see anything. All I know is there’s something down there that never used to be there. I waddle like a frigging penguin, and I spend half the day wondering if that sensation I feel means I crapped my pants, or my hemorrhoid is moving.”

I realize I’m rambling, so I pause and suck in a breath. Maggie, who is normally such a master of the impassive facial expression that I’ve wondered at times if she’s a cyborg, has completely lost her smile. Now she’s staring at me with a slightly frightened, wide-eyed look.

“Sorry,” I say, feeling embarrassed. “That was probably TMI. I guess I went on a bit of a rant there.”

“That’s okay. I’m here for the rants just like I’m here for the other stuff.”

“Do you have kids?” I ask her, realizing I know almost nothing about her.

“No, that one wasn’t in the cards for me.” There is a hint of wistfulness in her voice that tells me this is an emotional topic for her. “But I’d rather talk about you,” she adds quickly, getting the subject matter back on course with a classic professional maneuver. “You’ve said that you always planned to have kids, but I imagine this isn’t the way you expected to go about it.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” I say with a full dose of sarcasm. “I hate to admit it, but I was as naïve and stupid as they come. All my life I’ve had this image of my perfect family: me, my doting, loving husband, our two kids—one boy and one girl—living out my days in heavenly, soccer-mom perfection.” I scoffed. “What an idiotic dream.”

“It’s one that’s attainable for many.”

“Thanks for the reminder of what a failure I am.”

“Is that how you feel, like you’re a failure?”

“Well, yeah, at least with regard to that silly-assed dream.” Maggie answers this with silence, another classic ploy. I’m determined to wait her out, but I buckle quickly and blame it on the hormones. “Being a single parent wasn’t what I had in mind . . . ever.”

“You don’t know for sure if that’s what will happen, do you?”

I think long and hard before I answer this one. “I don’t know for sure,” I admit. “But here’s what I do know. Hurley griped and carried on about how blindsided he was when he found out about Emily. I believe his exact complaint was that he was ‘hoodwinked and duped into fatherhood.’ He said he wasn’t cut out to be a father, and with the crazy hours he works, and the number of years he’s been on his own, he doesn’t have the time or the patience to be a father . . . or the desire, for that matter. That seems pretty damned clear to me.”

“Except he said those things about Emily, a daughter who was literally sprung on him overnight, a nearly grown young woman whose childhood he wasn’t involved in. She’s essentially a stranger to him, and yet now he is the only parent she has. So he was going to be a parent whether you got pregnant or not.”

“The fact that another woman left him feeling duped and trapped doesn’t make it okay that I’ve now done the same thing.”

“Didn’t you say Hurley was not only okay with this, but that he seemed delighted?”

“Sure, at first. But I don’t think the reality of it had sunk in yet. Besides, he’s probably putting on a happy face for my sake. Hurley’s too kind to say something he knows will hurt me.”

“So you don’t believe him when he says he’s okay with it?”

“No . . . yes . . . I don’t know.” I feel exasperated and it shows.

“The situation he has with you is certainly different from what he had with Emily and Kate. At least with you he’s had time to adjust to the idea. And he knows he’ll be involved with the child’s upbringing.”

I don’t say anything for a bit, and that makes Maggie suspicious. “You
are
planning on letting him be involved with the child’s upbringing, aren’t you?”

“Of course. He can be as involved as he wants.”

“Are you prepared for what will happen if he says he doesn’t want to be involved?”

I shoot her a glance, wondering if she’s talked to Hurley behind my back and knows something I don’t. “I have plenty of help available,” I say with a tone of indifference. I sound convincing enough that I almost believe the idea of Hurley jumping ship doesn’t bother me. “Dom is home all the time, he lives right outside my door, and he’s dying to babysit. My sister has offered, too, though I don’t think I’ll use her unless Dom can’t do it for some reason. She and her husband are working on their own issues with their marriage, and I don’t want to complicate things by throwing a new kid into the mix, however temporary or short-term.”

“How are things going with them?” Maggie asks.

“Okay, I guess. Desi says Lucien is behaving himself, and it’s obvious he’s a changed man. In fact, he’s like a different person when I talk to him these days. But I can tell Desi is still angry. Frankly, it’s all a little scary.”

“What’s scary, that your brother-in-law has changed, or that their marriage may be on the rocks?”

“Both,” I say, wishing a second later that I could take it back. I know where Maggie is going next, and she doesn’t disappoint.

“Your personal experience with happy marriages is rather limited, isn’t it?”

“Just because my mother has been married and divorced four times, and my own marriage fell apart because my ex couldn’t keep Mr. Turtle in his shell doesn’t mean I’m incapable of having a normal, healthy relationship.”

“What’s your definition of a normal, healthy relationship?”

For some reason, this question irks me. Maybe it’s because I’m unsure of the answer. “It’s when two people have mutual respect and love for one another,” I say, taking a stab at it. “It’s sticking together through the hard times. It’s an unconditional acceptance of one another, both the good traits and the bad. It’s sharing things, but also allowing one another room to grow. And it’s trust. Trust is a big one.”

“I can see why it would be, given your history with David. Do you feel you can trust Hurley?”

I consider this for a while before I answer. “I trust him with my life. And I trust him with our child’s life. I’m not sure if I trust his emotions, though.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I don’t know if he wants to be with me because he loves me, or if he feels a duty to be with me because of the kid.”

“You’re afraid that if you trust him he’ll turn around and leave you, the way your father did.”

I shoot her an angry look. I have a sickening feeling she is very right about this, and I don’t like it.

“Your father left when you were how old?”

“Four, almost five.”

“And you don’t know why he left.”

“I assume it was because my mother’s many idiosyncrasies drove him crazy.”

“That might be why he left your mother, but what I meant was you don’t know why he left
you
.”

Now she’s not only hit a nerve, she’s plucking it. I try to fight back the tears I can feel building and burning at the back of my eyes, but it’s a lost cause.

“You don’t feel lovable because all of the men in your life have left you for reasons you don’t understand. First your father left you, then David did the same thing. And I assume there were some stepfathers in there also?”

I nod, wiping the tears from my face with my palms.

“So who in your life serves as a strong, reliable, healthy male role model?”

“Izzy,” I say with an ironic chuckle. “I know he’s gay, but when it comes to being a strong, warm, loving, patient, understanding, forgiving man, he’s the best one I know. He’s probably the closest thing I have to a father. Not only do I adore him, he and Dom are my best friends.”

“And if this child you’re having is a boy, will Izzy and Dom be his primary role models for all things male?”

“Of course not,” I say. “And not because Dom and Izzy are gay. There are many different types of men in the world, and I would want any son or daughter of mine to be exposed to as many of them as possible. The same goes for women.”

“Do you think Detective Hurley will be a good male role model?”

“Of course he will, assuming he sticks it out and plays a part in the child’s upbringing.”

“You say that as if you and Hurley are no longer a couple.”

“It’s complicated,” I say.

“Are the two of you still seeing one another?”

“Well, we see each other at work all the time.”

“What about outside of work?”

“Sometimes, though not as much lately. Like I said, things have gotten complicated.”

“Do you still live alone?”

I nod.

“Are you still having sex with him?”

I feel myself blush. “We were sneaking it in wherever we could up until about a month ago. I’ve gotten so big I feel like I should call him Ahab. And then there’s the Boobzillas here,” I add, waving a hand in front of my chest. “They leak if anyone so much as looks at them. Not that any of that matters anymore because Hurley has become reluctant to have sex now. He’s afraid he’ll poke the kid’s eye out or something.”

“The two of you are sneaking around because of the conflict of interest job issues?”

“No, that sort of resolved itself. But there are other issues.”

“Such as?”

“Well, Emily, for one.”

“Why is she an issue? Do you resent the amount of time she has with Hurley?”

“No, it’s more the other way around. I think Hurley does a pretty decent job of splitting his time and attention between the two of us, but it doesn’t seem to be enough for Emily. And I have a feeling that’s only going to get worse after the baby comes.”

“Are you concerned Hurley won’t have enough love left over for your child?”

“Not at all. Hurley’s a kind, generous, thoughtful man. He has plenty of love to go around.”

“And yet you doubt his love for you.”

“That’s different.”

“How so?”

“I’m not his child. The love someone feels for their child is completely different from the love they might feel for a sexual partner.”