Sunset Bridge (8 page)

For her birthday two years before, Felo had given her a special GPS unit to carry along when she went hiking or kayaking on her own. He was a cop, always sure trouble was around the corner, and the unit was small and ingenious, able to pinpoint her location anywhere in the world by satellite. She had accepted the gift, but it had never pleased her. To Maggie, the GPS signaled a lack of faith in her ability to take care of herself. Like almost every male cop she’d known, there was a part of Felo that still thought she was weaker and more vulnerable than he was.

Weaker, and in need of a man’s control and opinions.

In addition to summoning professional help in an emergency, the GPS unit allowed her to signal a contact—and of course, Felo had been that contact—to let him know that she needed assistance. The unit worked where cell phones would not, and it was waterproof, with a long-life battery, particularly long-lived for someone like Maggie, who rarely turned it on.

Unfortunately, yesterday she
had
turned it on when she found it deep in the pocket of the cargo pants she’d taken camping with her. She’d turned it on for a quick system test, and apparently she had pressed the wrong button while she was at it.

“Well, I hope they don’t put me in charge of the witness protection program,” she said.

“Not much chance of that, now, is there?”

She didn’t wince. “No, I suppose not. Law enforcement isn’t exactly knocking down my door for new jobs these days.”

“You brought that on yourself.”

She was glad to feel anger replacing what had been raw nerves at seeing him again. “Maybe I did, but you know what? Somebody had to point out what was going on, Felo. Not all of us are willing to just turn our backs on corruption.”

He took a long drink before he answered. “You left without a word to me. You left, after all our years together, and you didn’t even tell me where you were going. I had no way to contact you and settle this.”

“I got every message you left with my parents. The fact that I didn’t call should have told you something.”

“You know what it told me, Mags? That you were the same old Maggie Gray. Communication’s never been your strong point. You’re the only one who knows what’s right, and you don’t see any reason to share that with the rest of us. You quit your job in a blaze of self-righteous glory, and the rest of us, who stood firm so we could change the system from the inside out…? We weren’t worth a conversation.”

“A conversation? You had plenty of conversations about what was going on, Felo—but not with me. With your best friend. You and Alvaro found plenty to talk about. And Alvaro had plenty of reasons to tell you to stay out of the whole mess and leave me twisting in the wind by myself.”

“Alvaro?”

Felo never got loud when he got angry. He’d grown up in a family of shouters and learned early that the only way to be heard was to speak so softly that everyone else had to stop and listen. Now his voice was as soft as a cobra’s hiss.

She tilted her head to examine him. “Most relationships have two people. Ours had three, maybe more. Alvaro was one of them. Remember your boyhood friend, the one who’s slated to be one of the richest men in Miami if he continues along the track he’s walking now?”

“Alvaro had nothing to do with anything.”

“No? I heard you on the phone discussing this with him. More than once.”

“He’s my friend from way back, and an ex-cop. We were partners before he quit the force. I talk to him about a lot of things.”

“He’s also a friend of Paul Smythe and Jorge Famosa.”

Famosa was the drug lord Maggie had so diligently collected evidence against. Jorge, Alvaro and Felo had grown up in the same neighborhood, and while Jorge chose a life of crime, Alvaro and Felo had gone to the police academy, served together and were bonded in a way only men in a job like the one they had chosen ever could be. Bonded forever, with little room for the women they worked with—or loved.

To her knowledge, Felo had never had any connection with Jorge as an adult, but Alvaro and Jorge often attended the same parties and had mutual friends. Alvaro had come up more than once in her investigation—so frequently, in fact, that she had considered taking herself off the case. But Felo had never listened to any of her suspicions.

Surprisingly, Felo didn’t defend his former partner or himself. He put the half-empty bottle down on the nearest counter, then faced her. “Maybe more?”

She shook her head to show she didn’t understand.

“You said our relationship had three people in it, maybe more. What did you mean?”

She debated whether to answer. She wished that part hadn’t slipped out. Yet wasn’t that one of their problems? The very charm that had so attracted her had attracted other women, as well. And Felo loved women. Particularly women who needed him, the way Maggie never had.

“All those late nights, Felo. You think I didn’t notice? You think I didn’t see the…intimacy in the way you treated other women on the force and in the neighborhood? How many sinks or windows did you fix on our block? How many times did you sit in on interviews at the station house, just to be helpful? How many drinks did you have with how many women?”

A muscle worked in his jaw, and his expression hardened, but he didn’t answer right away. He just considered the question, the way he might have considered a menacing reptile in the swamp.

“How long were you suspicious?” he asked at last. “How long did you silently accuse me of being unfaithful?”

“That would be hard to say.”

“So what set off the big explosion? The one I never even heard until now?”

She realized there was nothing to hide. They were no longer a couple, and she had nothing else to lose. “The day I was told to drop the Famosa case, I came back to the station to find you. I thought I needed to talk to you, to get your opinion. Somebody told me you were in an interview room down the hall, so I went to find you, only the door was closed. I looked through the glass to see who you were with, because I didn’t want to interrupt if it was important. I saw you sitting with Sal Freepoint, patting her hand, heads together like lovers.”

He gave a short nod and waited.

“I’d been suspicious of her, of you, before that. She was always asking you for advice, getting you off to one side for who knows what. I told myself not to pass judgment on what I’d seen, that you’d tell me what was going on when we talked that evening. But you never mentioned her.”

“What chance did I have? We fought about your decision to quit the force. We fought about what you should do about Famosa and Smythe. What chance was there to tell you that Sal just found out that her boyfriend was going to Iraq—the same boyfriend whose unit dismantles explosives, by the way, and who has a better-than-average chance of getting his head blown off while he’s there?”

“Don’t make me sound like some kind of shrew, Felo. By the time we called it quits—”

“
We
never called it quits. Don’t pretend I was part of that.”

“By the time
I
called it quits, then, you were hardly ever home anyway. How long did it take you to realize I was gone? We’d stopped spending time together. Are you really trying to tell me you were faithful?”

“I’m not trying to tell you anything.”

She shrugged.

“But for the record?” he said. “I was. Have been. Still am, although God knows why. And if I’d stopped spending time with you…? It’s because you were never there, Mags. Oh, the physical Maggie Gray came home sometimes. But your head and your heart were on the Famosa case. You lived and breathed it. I wanted someone to look at me and see me. I wanted a wife, a woman who wanted a husband and children to help round out her life. And every time I looked at you, looked through you, that woman was moving further and further away.”

“I was a cop. You know what that means. At least, you know what it means for a
man
.”

“No, I know what it means to
me.
What it meant to you? Apparently everything, but in the end, nothing. Because you threw it away. And you know why? Because you don’t think
anybody else’s advice is worth anything. You don’t trust anybody except Maggie Gray.”

“I don’t pander to other people, people who ought to be locked away forever, no!”

“Mags, you don’t listen, and you don’t ask questions. You’re sure every male cop in the world, including me, is going to stomp on you again. But all you ever had to do was ask what was going on and listen to what I said. You could have asked if Sal and I were going to bed together, or who I was out with in the evenings when you were preoccupied. But that was beyond you. Just like telling me you were leaving was beyond you. Like telling me where you’d gone was beyond you!”

“
This
is not beyond me,” she said carefully. “I’d like you to leave.”

“You know what? I don’t believe you. But I’ll do it anyway. Because I don’t want to be here anymore.” He set the cat down carefully, and Rumba, who had picked up the tension between them, fled toward Maggie’s bedroom.

“What do you want me to do with the rest of your stuff?” he asked.

“I’ll come for it. Just tell me when you’re not going to be there.”

“I’ll look at my schedule. Try opening my next email for a change. It’s easier than a conversation. I’ll let you know.”

He turned and started through the house. She heard the door slam. The noise shuddered in her head long after she’d gone to bed, and kept her awake for most of the night.

J
anya was pleased Rishi had made friends with Harit Dutta. Her own friends were so important to her that she had wished the same for him. The only thing that didn’t please her was that Kanira was bundled into the relationship. She didn’t really dislike Kanira, she only disliked the woman’s complaining.

“I know that you would rather not go this evening,” Rishi told her on Monday, as they prepared to leave for a picnic at the Duttas’ house. Janya had been surprised at the invitation, since Kanira had made no secret of her inability to cope. Janya hoped there would be food on the table.

“Friends are important,” Janya said carefully. “And perhaps these friends will benefit from our company.”

Rishi was tying his shoes and didn’t look up. “Their marriage is not happy.”

Had she been there, Tracy would have said “duh” to such a statement. Thinking of that made Janya want to smile, although the subject was too serious. “It is hard to be so far from home when children are small and need so much.”

Rishi finished and stood. “I suppose she’s made her bed and must lie in it.”

Janya thought Kanira had been in that particular bed at least two times too often. She had conceived her children with little thought of anyone’s happiness, conceived them solely to make her husband give up his dream of writing. She found that kind of manipulation hard to accept, and she had not mentioned it to Rishi, who would find it harder.

“I should not judge,” she said, “but the children exist, and so does the marriage.”

“Harit has not said so, but I know he feels trapped. How can things go so wrong for two people who were once in love?”

Janya thought this conversation was extraordinary. She and Rishi talked of many things, but rarely love. “Perhaps arranging marriages is better,” she said. “Perhaps if Kanira’s family had convinced her to marry someone with prospects more to her liking, she would be happier now. She, too, is trapped. She can’t abandon the children or Harit.”

“Women do.”

“Not women like Kanira. She would never be able to face her family or friends again. She would certainly never be able to go home.”

“Marriage is many things, but never simple, no matter how it comes about. Perhaps it’s saddest, though, when love existed at first. Losing what we’ve found is harder than never finding it at all.”

She was surprised he had thought so seriously about something that had not flashed by on a computer screen. She knew Rishi had hidden depths, but encountering them always unsettled her, as if, after more than two years of marriage, she was still living with a stranger.

She wondered what he would say next. “I worry less about whether Kanira and Harit are in love and more about those babies. Growing up is difficult enough, but doing it with discord in the home…? It poisons the air.”

“Children are affected by everything around them.” Rishi nodded, as if in emphasis. “They sense when they are wanted and when they aren’t.”

Rishi knew better than most how it felt to be both, having been a beloved son, then an orphaned and unwanted nephew. He was speaking from his heart, and she heard the sadness in his voice.

She thought about what Kanira had told her. “Children who are brought into the world for the wrong reasons have a difficult time making their way through it. Perhaps we can find a way to help these two.”

“What are the right reasons for having children?” he asked.

She looked at him, surprised. “Children brighten a home.”

“Children are often ill. They cry and whine. They make much work and cost much money. There are already too many of them in this world. So why do people insist on having them?”

She touched her forehead. “To carry our love into the next generation.” She touched her heart. “Because love is not simply a fatality waiting to happen. It is what helps us move forward.”

“But it takes love to create love.”

She thought of Kanira and Harit and knew they were back at the beginning. “We must do what we can to help. Let’s find a way to lighten their load so they can give those children what they need.”

On the trip to the Duttas’ apartment they chatted of other
things. Their first glance of the former motel showed peeling paint and rusting railings. A pool green with algae occupied the center of the complex, and the apartments hugged its narrow boundaries. Janya hoped Kanira kept a close eye on her little ones, since the gate leading to the murky water was wide open.

Vijay opened the door, but he didn’t speak. Behind him Janya saw Kanira in a short skirt and T-shirt sliding an overly fussy dress over a squirming Lily’s shoulders. The living room was small and cluttered with children’s toys. Harit greeted them, immediately volunteering to show Janya and Rishi the park where they would eat their picnic dinner, as if he hoped for a few minutes of fresh air and quiet.

“Janya will want to help me. Take Rishi and the children,” Kanira said in a stern voice. “Don’t leave me here to watch them
and
make the food. You, Jay,” she said, pointing at little Vijay, “you must work. Work is not just for women, although one might think so around here. You will carry some things when you go.”

The little boy didn’t look surprised at his mother’s tone, which indicated to Janya that he was used to it. Vijay resembled Harit, and Janya wondered if Kanira often addressed her husband’s faults by disciplining the child. Her heart went out to him.

The men did as ordered, carrying Lily and what supplies they could. Vijay clutched paper plates and plastic cutlery against his narrow chest. He walked like an old man. Janya wondered if he ever ran or played, and if he did, where. She could not imagine Kanira simply taking the children to the park to let them behave like children.

“I would like to have entertained you at a restaurant,” Kanira said once the men and children were gone. “That is
what I suggested to Harit. But we have no money. So I am afraid the meal will be simple. I have no time to prepare food the way our servants did in Kolkata. I never realized how hard they worked, not until I came here.”

“You were from the city, then? Not a village?”

“Me? No. That was Harit. A poor village, too. No, my family was rich and much different from his. A generation ago we would never even have met. But he was a gifted student, and given scholarships and chances well beyond his caste. We were introduced through friends. My family was appalled and told me I must cut all contact. Instead, I married him.” She looked away, as if watching that sad scene unfold.

Janya knew the consequences of such a marriage and hoped she was wrong. “Did your parents learn to accept him?”

“We are dead to our families. Mine because Harit was not good enough to be my husband. His because my family refused to provide a dowry and insulted them many times over. His father expected Harit to offer the family support, and now Harit cannot, since he hardly supports us. Our parents have not acknowledged the children and never will.”

“Perhaps in time.”

“We send photos of Lily and Jay, and they come back unopened. They will not take phone calls. There is no hope.”

“You are very much alone.” Despite a growing dislike of Kanira, Janya felt a stab of sympathy. She, too, had once disappointed her parents, but in the past year, her relationship with them had improved. Now her mother even talked about visiting Florida one day.

“I am strong, and I have resources.” Kanira smiled a little. “Perhaps I will change my life one day soon, and for the better.”

There was something about the smile, secretive, even a
little arrogant, that put Janya on guard, but not enough to keep silent.

“I know this life must be hard, Kanira, but you have many things other women might envy. A handsome, talented husband who is trying to publish an important novel. Two beautiful children. A new life in Florida stretching out in front of you.”

Kanira gave a derisive snort. “Indian women are taught to ask for so little.”

Janya did not point out that Kanira had so much more than most women in the country of their birth. She remembered words her paternal grandmother had often repeated when the child Janya was unhappy.

If you think you are free, you are free. If you think you are bound, you are bound. Indeed, child, always, you are what you think, so you must think only the best.

Now Janya was afraid that if her grandmother’s saying was true, Kanira would be unhappy the rest of her days.

Tracy had been blessed with boundless energy and a strong constitution. She had never been seriously ill, and she had never had a problem getting out of bed, unless she’d been plied with too much alcohol the night before. Those evenings were, for the most part, history, since she was well past the age for frat parties and well under the income level for socialite free-for-alls. She wasn’t particularly sad about either.

Unfortunately, since the pregnancy, getting out of bed and getting to work on time had become as tough as hauling herself to the post office to mail her annual property taxes. In both instances she really wanted to pull a pillow over her head, block out reality and sleep right through the event.

On Tuesday she dragged herself to work with the same
enthusiasm she had on Monday, because she was a big girl and pregnancy was not a life-threatening illness. She’d checked her calendar before going to bed and figured if she worked a ten-hour day today, she might be able to do everything she needed to. And if she didn’t, the next day would be even worse.

While she hadn’t yet seen her doctor, she had read an online dos and don’ts list and learned that every morsel of food or drop of liquid she could conceivably put in her body was lethal to a growing fetus. Using common sense, she had whittled that down considerably, but she was avoiding coffee and tea, and drinking juice and water instead. She had a prescription for prenatal vitamins that the nurse had called in when Tracy explained why she wanted to move up her annual exam. Now she took one with a glass of water from the cooler beside the rec center’s welcoming coffee urn, and wished she could follow it with something suitably high octane.

Gladys Woodley, the rec center’s receptionist and wife of Woody, the director, rambled into the coffee end of the corridor and stopped at the sight of her. “Are you okay?”

Tracy glanced down to be sure she had pulled on the usual items of clothing. Pregnancy also seemed to be interfering with her short-term memory. She wouldn’t be surprised if she’d forgotten to put on her jeans and was wearing pajama bottoms. But from what she could tell, all was well.

“Why?” she asked.

“You’ve been looking pale. You didn’t lose too much weight, did you? After the contest ended?”

The center had held a weight-loss fundraiser over the summer, and Gladys and Woody had dropped an astonishing forty pounds. Tracy had lost the ten she’d needed to shed.
Unfortunately, the pregnancy diet plan was now in full gear, and she was dropping more.

“Tummy problems,” she said, managing a bright smile. “Best diet plan out there.”

Gladys tilted her head, a newly styled head at that, with a sleek chin-length bob that, along with the weight loss, made her look ten years younger. “Are you pregnant?”

Tracy could fudge the facts, but she knew better than to lie to Gladys. Gladys
was
the rec center, and a stickler for good behavior. A lie would come back to haunt Tracy when she slid from tight jeans to maternity clothes.

“I’m not telling anybody,” she said softly. “And Marsh doesn’t know, okay?”

“Tracy!”

“I just need to figure this out, that’s all. But I’m not quitting my job. I’ll need it more than ever.”

“Are you and Marsh fighting again?”

Tracy wondered. “Nothing like that.”

Gladys didn’t say anything for a moment; then she nodded. “So how can I help?”

“Just cut me a little slack if I need it. Until I’m over the nausea. I’m not moving as fast as usual.”

“You have time off. You’ve earned vacation days. You should take some and get a little extra rest.”

“I’m going to save them to add to my maternity leave. That’s when I’ll need them most.”

“Marsh loves children. You’ve seen him with Bay.”

A change of subject was in order, but before she could come up with one, Gladys took pity. “We’re one class short for our Christmas-crafts segment,” she said. “The woman who promised she’d do papier-mâché angels is moving to South Caro
lina. The program’s about to go to print. Do you have any ideas for a replacement?”

Tracy felt she owed Gladys something for taking this news with only a minimum of angst and advice. An idea condensed from the hormonal fumes fogging her brain.

“Alice,” she said. “Remember when my neighbor Alice taught the youth-camp kids to crochet? Before her son-in-law interfered? Well, good old Lee’s not around these days, and I bet she’d teach snowflakes. She crochets all different shapes and sizes, and hangs them in her windows and on her tree.”

She thought about her own suggestion and realized how perfect it was. “All that transportation for Olivia’s wearing her down, so maybe we can time the class so she can pick her up after school and save two trips. Maybe early enough so she can enjoy the pool or even get involved with the shuffleboarders. She needs some fun.”

“Perfect. You’ll ask?”

“Right away.”

Gladys turned as if to leave, then turned back. “You’ll tell him, won’t you? Eventually?”

Despite the change of subject, Tracy didn’t have to ask who Gladys meant. “Just getting my head straight. Marsh will know when the time is right.”

The time was not right late in the afternoon when she ran into Marsh and Bay in the hallway. Marsh was talking to a blond man Tracy didn’t recognize. The guy was a little younger than Marsh, broad shouldered and a few inches taller, with three days of stubble ten shades darker than his shaggy hair. She approached warily, not in the mood for more subterfuge, but she managed a smile for Marsh before she gave his son a more genuine version.

“Hey, kiddo,” she said, leaning down for Bay’s inevitable
hug. Now that he was ten, Bay was beginning to resemble Marsh more and more. He had his father’s sandy-brown hair and both his parents’ intelligence. Last year he had been one of her biggest challenges in the youth program, but now that they’d worked through the worst of their problems, they had a special bond.