The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries) (26 page)

That Saturday ended up being a reading day. The Wednesday before, Peter had designed a little booklist of Hollywood writers who’d moved into writing comics and vice versa, and now Nate was working through the Joss Whedon X-Men series. He was so lost in the adventures of Kitty Pryde that he almost didn’t hear Peter call him for lunch.
 

At the front desk he spotted Lena, holding a big bag of tacos. She was a full three hours early to pick him up. “Hey,” he said hesitantly. He looked her over. She was wearing jeans and a billowy blue top that almost hid her swelling stomach. She seemed tired, and her eyes looked red, but her smile was as lively as ever. “Um, change of plans?” Nate asked.

“Eh,” she shrugged. “I was bored, so I thought I’d bring you guys something to eat. Don’t worry,” she continued, seeing his face. “We don’t have to go right now. We have time.”

He nodded, trying not to look too relieved, and picked through the bag, selecting a chicken taco. The three of them stood around the counter, emptying the taco bag, while Lena quizzed Nate on what he’d been reading. She nodded her approval at the titles he recited, and asked him about his favorites so far.
 

“I like everything, so far, but I think...Batman has the best stories.” Nate looked anxiously at Peter, but the older man just nodded agreeably. “I just wish so many of them didn’t end with him getting into a fight with Superman.”

Lena laughed, and the sudden movement made her drip taco sauce down her clothes. Most of it landed on the blue shirt and stayed there. “Oh, crap,” she groaned, swabbing at the stain with a paper napkin. “That’s like my second outfit of the day already. It’s supposed to be the
babies
that need to change all the time. Nate,” she said solemnly, “Don’t ever get pregnant. It makes you a klutz.”
 

He nodded seriously at her, and Lena laughed. “Come on, kid,” she said, crumpling her last wrapper into a ball and grabbing her purse, “let’s go for a walk.”

He followed her out the door and into the warm May weather. It was a sunny, windy Chicago day, and they took off down busy North Ave in silence, wandering through the crowd of people enjoying the weather. Finally, Nate asked her how the investigation was going.

“Good, I think,” she said. “Right now I’m trying to piece together a timeline for Jason.”

“You mean, like, what he did in his last few days?”

She nodded. “And also what he did before his last few days. Figuring out what his regular life was like might help me find anomalies.”

“That’s cool. So where are you right now?”

“Right now...I think I’m taking a trip back to LA. To talk to some more people. I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t think I’m
unable
to put the puzzle together. I think I’m missing a piece.”

“Like what?” he asked, then immediately realized what a stupid question it was. How would she know what she didn’t know?

But Lena just shrugged. “I’m not really sure. But there’s a lot of time in Jason’s life that’s unaccounted for. Maybe he spent a lot of time with other writers at the coffee shops he visited, maybe one of them knew something, or was trying to steal his script. Or it could have something to do with something else he was into...” she hesitated, and Nate rolled his eyes.

“Come on, Lena. Just tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Okay, um, it could be drugs, or an affair, or gambling debts that got him in trouble. Something along those lines, that Starla wouldn’t necessarily know about.”

An idea was forming in Nate’s mind, but he was trying to keep it off his face. Sounding as casual as possible, he asked, “so when are you going?”

“Probably on Tuesday, if I can get a ticket.”

Be cool,
Nate, he thought. “Will you call me and let me know, so I can figure out if I need a ride home for Wednesday?”

“Of course.”

I didn’t know what to do with the rest of my weekend. I considered going to visit Rory and the kids, but I wasn’t in the mood for any kind of “I told you so” lecture, much less Rory explaining how Toby was right and I was wrong. I called him a couple of times, but he never answered, which was almost just as well. I had no idea what I was going to say. On Sunday morning I booked a flight to LA for Tuesday afternoon. I called Toby again and left a message that maybe we could talk when I got back.

I made myself busy by taking Toka to the park, doing some laundry, and cleaning the Big Glorious Kitchen. Finally I ran out of ways to avoid thinking about my husband, and I collapsed on my bed with the dog curled up beside me. Were Toby and Rory right? Was I basically a child myself? I tried to picture myself a few months into the future, when I’d have a baby to take care of, but I just came up blank. I thought back to that day, months ago, when I’d found out I was pregnant. Had I been happy at all, or just...what? Scared? Upset? That moment, when I’d looked at the pregnancy test...it had been so important, but gone by so quickly. Then I thought about my first positive pregnancy test, and I felt...loss. I had lost so much the day Matt Cleary died.

Toka nosed my elbow, encouraging some affection, and I obliged. Then I rolled over, with some effort, and pulled my big photo album off the bottom shelf of my bedside table, heaving it onto the bed beside me. My New Year’s resolution last year had been to actually remember to develop and store my photos, and I’d compiled two of these enormous albums with the last few years’ worth of pictures. Then I’d promptly forgotten and started just piling up photos on my hard drive again.
 

I paged through the front of the book and found the shots I’d taken when Rory was in the hospital having Logan. It had been a Saturday evening, and Toby and I had taken Cassie for the day. We entertained her at the apartment for a few hours, took her for ice cream and a kid’s movie. When it looked like Rory was getting close we’d taken her to camp out in the hospital waiting room with puzzles and coloring books. That was when I’d remembered that Rory had asked me to take pictures from the whole day, so Cassie could look at them later and remember what she was doing just before her brother was born. Oops.
 

The first shot from that day was of Cassie and me, our heads bent over a Little Mermaid coloring book. She was working so hard to stay within the lines. Then there was a shot of Toby reading a newspaper while Cassie slept against his shoulder. I turned the page and saw the first photo of Logan, taken only a few minutes after he was born. Rory looked exhausted and serene, ready to burst with satisfaction. There were pimples on her face and sweat plastered her hair to her head, but Mark was looking at her like she was Helen of Troy.
 

The opposite page had a photo of Toby holding the baby. His face was full of wonder and longing, and I remembered seeing him there and thinking, maybe we could do this. Maybe
I
could do this, if for no other reason than for him.
 

My eyes started to tear up, and I closed the book carefully, no slamming. Way to go, me.

It wasn’t like I was incapable of recognizing that sometimes I was wrong, and needed to accept the consequences. There were things I’d been wrong about–the way I’d first handled the whole Matt Cleary situation came immediately to mind, but smaller things, too. I’d been wrong plenty of times. But now I was stuck in this situation where I couldn’t figure out for certain whether or not I was right. Did I owe Toby the mother of all apologies, no pun intended, or did he owe me? Did I have the right to do what I wanted with my body, including taking it into gunfights, or did I have a responsibility to keep the baby safe?
 

I couldn’t stop thinking about the moment when Toby had accused me of being a bad mother. If I was really convinced that I was right, why had that stung so much? But if Toby was right, then I should basically retire and resign myself to child-rearin’ at the homestead. I couldn’t think of any other options, except to have the baby and leave it. And that thought made me want to curl up under my desk and die.
 

So that was something, I guess.

I remembered how badly I had always wanted to be a cop, and Cristina’s dreams for me to apply for the FBI. Then I felt a great swell of displaced ambition and longing, suddenly overwhelmed by what could have been. How had I gotten to this moment?

The next day was a Monday, not Nate’s usual day at Great Dane, but I’d called and arranged for him to spend that evening there, since I wouldn’t be around to drive him on Wednesday. Rory and Dad were both parked in their spots, so I had to park the Jeep a few blocks away when I went to pick him up. As I made my way toward the store, feeling like I was carrying a sack of potatoes near my midsection, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned my head to check with a no-eye-contact-half-smile prepared, the kind that city dwellers have been administering for generations: it’s an expression that says “I’m non-threatening, but I have no interest in engaging with you in any way.” But when I turned, there was no one there.

The weather was warm and muggy, but goosebumps prickled on my skin. Was someone following me? I stayed still, openly staring in the direction I’d come from. I could see a couple walking with a stroller, two different people with dogs on leashes, and a pack of kids being led by a very harried-looking mother. But there was no one directly behind me.
Maybe this really is all in my head,
I thought. What if nobody was after me at all? I’d been so afraid Toby would try to convince me that there was no menace, but what if my gut was off the whole time?

The thought scared me. But for the moment, there was no point in standing in the middle of the sidewalk glaring at nothing. I shook it off and went into Great Dane.

 
When I walked through the door I said hello to Nate, who was curled up in one of the armchairs in the back, and waved at my father, who was talking to two enthusiastic-looking teenage girls who were both wearing t-shirts that said “C2E2 2010.” I wandered over to the independent section and started paging through some Dark Horse novels. What hadn’t I read?

“Falling off the wagon?” I jumped at the voice by my ear, and turned to glare at my father.

“Dad! Your customers aren’t gonna buy stuff if you creep up on them!”

“Sorry, honey, I thought you heard me. I see you’re upset about something.”
 

I looked down at the Hellboy compilation in my hands. “How can you tell?”
 

“You always read the independents when you’re really upset.”

“I read them when I’m not upset, too,” I said skeptically.

“Yes, but I took a shot, and I’ve already gotten you to admit it.” Crap.
 

“You’ve been reading too many evil plots, old man,” I grumbled. “It’s giving you ideas.”
 

He smiled at me, not taking the “old man” bait. “So, Firecracker,” he continued, guiding me back to the register and pointing to the empty stool next to him, “what’s on your mind today?”

I hauled my oversized ass up onto the stool. “Daddy...I’m pretty sure I’ll be a shitty mom.”

“Selena! Why would you say that?” He sounded truly shocked, and I was grateful for it—and a little surprised. There was actually someone who thought I could do this? Like, to the point of
defending
me?

“I’m not patient...or mature, or basically Rory-like in any way. I’m angry a lot.”

“Oh, honey,” he murmured, squeezing my shoulder.

“Wait, I’m not done. The bigger problem is...I like all that. I like who I am.”

“And you think you have to change in order to be a mother?” I nodded. “Says who?”

“Toby, Rory, my friend Delilah, Dr. Spock, like a thousand mommy blogs–”

“Selena, honey, stop,” he interrupted, starting to look a little misty. “God, you have so much of your mother in you.”

That brought me up short. “What do you mean?”

He waved his arm, gesturing around the store. “Look around, Firecracker. What do you see?”

“Books. Really, really short books about superheroes.”

“Baby, people like Rory and me, we love these stories, but we’re not like them. We don’t charge in to save the day. You and your mother, though...at heart, you are both heroes, and like all heroes you worry that you won’t be enough, that all your gifts – and there are so
many
, Firecracker – won’t be good enough.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“Nobody’s perfect, Lena, not any character in this store. And your mother missed more than one of Rory’s dance recitals. She sometimes got stuck on the night shift and didn’t get to tuck you in, and that ate her up inside. But real or not, you don’t just stop being a hero because you’re not a perfect one. You don’t just quit who you are because you have to face a new challenge.”

“But Toby-”

“I don’t know about Toby,” he interrupted. “Maybe you two are having problems right now, but if he loves you, then he loves who you are. And he can’t really want you to stop being that person. Give him a little time to realize that.”
 

“I guess.” I wiped at my eyes. “I’m just so afraid of messing this up. That I’m just not wired right to be a mom.”

He sighed. “Selena Kyle Dane, I know you are not a stupid girl. Look over there.” I followed his nod to the big comfy chair in the way back, where Nate was curled up, intently turning the pages of a thick graphic novel. “You can’t look at him and tell me you could be a bad mother, Selena. I know that you love that boy, and would give anything to make things better for him. And he
knows
that. It’s changed who he is.”

Just then, Nate glanced up at us from his seat across the store and grinned, holding up three fingers and mouthing “three more pages.” He pointed to his stomach and raised his eyebrows, asking me how I was feeling today, and I shrugged and smiled back at him, saying I was fine. Then he crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue before looking back down at the page. He
was
different from the boy who’d walked into my office months ago.
 

My dad saw the exchange. “You see what I mean, Selena? You can’t tell me that boy is just another client.”