Listen to the Child. Carolyn McSparren
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worries about you. I had the devil’s own time getting her into bed tonight.”
“She’s taking advantage of you. Worrying about me is a great excuse to stay up late. She managed to get to bed on time when I was with the T.A.C.T. squad. If she worried then she never showed it.”
“She was too young to realize how dangerous your job was. Small children trust that their parents will always be there—hale and hearty. First she lost her father when you divorced him, then your accident proved you’re breakable. She’s afraid she might lose you to something worse than deafness.”
“She hasn’t lost her father. She sees more of Jimmy now than she ever did before the divorce. At least he’s on scheduled visits, when he deigns to show up.”
“Not the same thing.”
“And as for Emma’s worrying about me, she’ll have to deal with it. I used to worry about you all the time when you were on the job. Every time a cop got killed I’d think, ‘That could be my mother.’ Didn’t stop you being a cop, and it hasn’t stopped you being a P.I., either.”
Catherine took a deep breath. This was hardly a new discussion. “Being a P.I. is not dangerous. I spend most of my time combing through financial records.”
“Any situation can turn dangerous,” Kit said. “That was the first thing you taught me, remember? Always keep your guard up? Anyway, Emma doesn’t have to worry I’ll get caught in a shoot-out or anything. Not anymore.”
“That’s not the point.” Catherine took the half-full bottle of beer out of her daughter’s hand, poured the remainder down the sink and dropped the bottle into the recycle bin. “Until you were hurt, losing a child was something that happened to other parents. Then when your father and I got called to the hospital, I realized I could actually lose you.” Her mother’s voice clouded.
This wasn’t the way Kit and her mother ever spoke to one another. Her mother’s sudden emotion made Kit uncomfortable. She tried to laugh. “I wasn’t at death’s door, Mom.”
Her mother raised her eyes. “You certainly looked as though you were. I’m sure you looked half-dead to Emma. Suddenly the impossible—being abandoned by her mother—became possible. You don’t get over that quickly.”
“So on top of everything else I’m supposed to feel guilty that I got blown up, because I scared my parents and my child? I know this is hard for her, Mom. At first she fell all over herself being helpful—mommy’s little nurse. Treated me as though I was some sort of invalid. Brought me tea in bed. Refused to let me out of her sight. But that gets old fast when you’re ten. Now I embarrass her.”
“Yes, you probably do.” Catherine sounded defeated. “You and I never could communicate. I don’t suppose you and Emma can actually talk all this through, can you?”
“That would just make things worse. She’s adjusting at her own pace. I’m not going to rub her nose in my infirmity. God, Mom, remember when I shot that guy and had to go to the shrink? Now every time I hear anybody say, ‘And how did that make you feel?’ I want to hit something. I’m not going to do that to Emma.”
“She’s your child.” Catherine walked to the kitchen door. “Time for me to go home.” She turned to face Kit. “I almost forgot to tell you. Vince Calandruccio called. Said to call him at the Dog Squad tomorrow morning to tell him about Kevlar.”
“Vince is a good guy. A lot of the guys I worked with on the job have stopped calling to check up on me, but Vince keeps coming over and bringing Adam, of course. He never goes anywhere without his dog.”
Catherine nodded. “You look wiped out. Go to bed. And if you don’t make it to Sunday school, don’t sweat it. I’m sure God will understand.”
“Thanks for watching Emma, Mother.”
“You’re welcome.” Catherine picked up her purse and walked through the door.
Suddenly Kit felt so exhausted she wasn’t certain she could drag herself up the stairs to her bedroom. The doctors had warned her about that. After any kind of stress and particularly after a long session of reading lips, her energy could suddenly bottom out. And sometimes she lost her balance. The doctors said that was the physical trauma of the blast and the psychological trauma of nearly winding up both deaf and blind.
She didn’t like to remember what a close call that had been. The scar that bisected her right eyebrow and touched the corner of her eye was barely noticeable thanks to a great plastic surgeon. And her vision in that eye was almost normal, thanks to an ophthalmologist in the trauma center who’d removed splinters from her eye without damaging it.
The doctors told her she’d never remember the blast itself, but she’d heard the story of her accident so many times she almost felt as though she could.
She’d come through plenty of hostage situations and drug takedowns without a scratch. It was embarrassing to lose her hearing and her job with the police department in what amounted to a comedy of errors.
Keystone Kops, Vince Calandruccio called it.
Start with one rookie who kicked in the back door of a crack house a second too early so that Kit had to cover him to keep him from getting his ass blown off. Add another cop at the front door with a flash-bang grenade who didn’t know Kit was already in the vestibule. Toss in a commander who waited a couple of seconds too long to rescind his order to lob in the flash-bang.
What do you have? Kit Lockhart standing practically on top of the damn grenade when it went off.
She still had to watch herself on the stairs. Her depth perception wasn’t perfect, but it was improving.
Unfortunately, Emma had eyes like a hawk, ready to spot the least sign of weakness in Kit.
Life was better with Kevlar. Emma seemed willing to hand over some of the responsibility she felt to him. Thank God he was going to be all right.
Kit leaned against the wall at the top of the stairs for a moment, panting.
“Oh, this is not a good thing,” she said as she bent to catch her breath. “It is high time we went back to working out, Kit, my girl. You’ve been lazy too long. You’re getting soft.” She walked into her bedroom, shucked off her sweater, then pulled off her boots and dropped them beside her.
Lord, she hoped the noise they made wouldn’t wake Emma! She slipped down the hall and peered into her daughter’s bedroom. Emma lay curled up asleep. From the crook of the little girl’s knees, Jo-Jo raised his flat head and looked at Kit for a moment before subsiding into sleep again. Kit crossed to the bed and bent to kiss Emma’s forehead, damp with nighttime perspiration.
On her way back to her own bathroom, she jabbed hard at the heavy punching bag in the corner of her bedroom. “Ow! Wimp. Next time wear gloves.” She kicked at it. “Wonder how Dr. John MacIntyre Thorn keeps up those muscles. He certainly wouldn’t risk injuring his hands on a punching bag.”
In the bathroom, she began to cream her makeup off. Then stopped and leaned both hands on the sink. Thank God for those hands of his. Please, let him really have saved Kevlar.
ACROSS THE HALL, Emma opened her eyes. It was much easier to feign sleep now when her mother couldn’t hear her breathing.
She heard the sound of her mother’s fist as she thwacked the heavy bag, then her exclamation. She couldn’t understand the rest of the words.
Her mother never used to talk to herself—not out loud. Emma wasn’t certain she even knew she was doing it since she couldn’t hear her own voice.
Weird.
Even weirder to think that she could play her stereo all night. Her mother wouldn’t know about it unless Emma woke the neighbors, and they called to complain.
At first she’d thought being able to get away with stuff behind her mother’s back was cool—her friend Jessica definitely thought so. But it wasn’t.