Before Cain Strikes. Joshua Corin
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German chocolate cake with genuine coconut pecan frosting. His favorite. Mother haphazardly arranged the pinky-size birthday candles across the cake’s surface, lit one and used it to light the others.
“Make a wish, sport.”
Timothy closed his eyes. He thought about Lynette. He thought about what went wrong. He thought about her blue eyes. He thought about Cain42. He couldn’t wait to send him the pictures.
He thought about his next pet.
There were so many possibilities.
With a deep breath, Timothy blew out his candles in one gust, all fourteen of them. Happy birthday to him.
2
“And that’s my point, Esme,” said Rafe Stuart. “That’s what I’ve been getting at all this time. You’re knowingly and willfully killing our family.”
Before Esme could respond, Dr. Rosen—a teensy, wrinkly pink woman in a green corduroy dress—cleared her throat repeatedly and yanked on her left earlobe. Dr. Rosen did this often. She claimed it was a combination of congestion caused by seasonal allergies and, well, being seventy-eight years old. Nevertheless, as a marriage counselor, she had come highly recommended.
Esme patiently waited until Dr. Rosen’s fit passed, all the while wanting to give the bite-size old woman something, anything, to ease her discomfort. But Esme had quickly learned during their first session so many weeks ago, when Dr. Rosen had vehemently pushed away an offered blister pack of Sudafed, that any assistance offered in this office was strictly one-way. This office, part of a three-story walk-up in downtown Syosset, twenty minutes from their home in Oyster Bay. Their home, which Esme was apparently, knowingly and willfully killing by, what, serving as a consultant for the FBI?
“Bullshit,” Esme answered.
Dr. Rosen leaned forward in her black leather chair, which, given her diminutive size, nearly swallowed her whole. “I think that statement calls for elaboration, Esme.”
Esme looked to her husband, who sat at the other end of the long divan. His arms were crossed. His jaw was clenched. If she’d had to paint a portrait of Rafe in the months since all this had begun, it would have to include this: arms crossed, jaw clenched. She supposed it was a posture of defense, but that implied she was the assailant here, and she wasn’t, was she? There were no villains in this circumstance, right?
“What I mean to say,” she added, after a calming hesitation, “is that, well, to call what I’m doing intentionally hurtful? That I would want to bring conflict into our household?”
“You brought Galileo into our household.”
And there it was. The elephant in the room. He didn’t resent her for going back to work. He wasn’t that prehistoric. He resented her because of Henry Booth, a crazed sniper who called himself Galileo and eluded national authorities until Special Agent Tom Piper, who Rafe hated, brought Esme out of her early retirement to help track him down. But at what cost? Time on the case had meant time away from home, away from Rafe, away from their six-year-old daughter, Sophie. In the end, in a bit of caustic irony, Booth invaded Esme’s home and took Rafe and Sophie captive. A bit of last-minute ingenuity ended Booth’s menace, but her husband and daughter had come so close to becoming casualties.
These were her sins.
And yet—
“Should we move to Iceland?” she asked.
Rafe raised an eyebrow. “Iceland?”
“I mean, it’s really just one city and the temperature does tend to drop into the negatives six months out of the year, but they’ve got practically no crime rate, so we should move to Iceland. We’ll have to take Sophie out of school, of course, and away from her friends, but she’ll be safer. In fact, why doesn’t everyone move to Iceland?”
“Esme…”
“Or Yemen. The crime rate in Yemen is, if you can believe it, even lower than in Iceland! There’s the whole Sunni thing, but I think I’d look good in a burka, don’t you, Rafe?”
“There’s a difference between overreacting and performing common due diligence.”
“I am performing due diligence! Do you know how many lives the FBI has saved in the six months—six months!—since I rejoined as a consultant? Do you, Dr. Rosen? No, you don’t, because if we do our job correctly, it doesn’t make the headlines. Balancing all of this hasn’t been easy, but it’s been necessary. It’s been the right thing to do. And you talk to me about due diligence. I love my family, and for you to even suggest otherwise, Rafe, makes me want to fucking clock you upside the head.”
“Okay,” interjected Dr. Rosen. “And that’s our hour for this week.”
She scooted out of her chair and held out her arms. Every session ended with a hug to each of them, and then the requisite hug between husband and wife. Dr. Rosen was a big fan of rituals. Esme and Rafe eyeballed each other. Who would stand first? It was an unspoken game of chicken that they played. But after the past five minutes, Esme was not in the mood for games.
She stood, and left Rafe in her shadow as she embraced their tiny therapist, carefully patting her potato-chip bones. By the time Esme stepped aside, Rafe was on his feet, and it was his turn. His black beard, shaggier than usual, brushed against the top of Dr. Rosen’s white scalp.
And then it was their turn.
So they wrapped their arms around each other and squeezed. It was awkward and emotionless and lasted all of three seconds. Then they turned to Dr. Rosen. Did they have her permission to leave?
Dr. Rosen sighed, sounding very much like a deflating balloon. “My mother, may she rest in peace, always taught me to be frugal. ‘Never waste,’ she said. She was a good woman.”
Rafe and Esme exchanged a confused glance.
“She raised two daughters, myself and my sister, Betty. She raised us all by herself, and in a community where women just didn’t raise two daughters alone. Our mother’s solution to every problem was always the same—preemption. Keep the problem from happening in the first place. Frugal, you see, even when it came to making mistakes.”
“Um?” said Rafe.
But Dr. Rosen continued unabated. “Betty and I developed different ideas about problem solving. Neither of us had the foresight of our mother, so our methods were more reactive. I came to believe that the best solutions were reached through compromise. Betty, on the other hand, has more of a, shall we say, scorched-earth philosophy. So I became a marriage counselor and what did Betty choose to become?”
“A lawyer,” Esme whispered. “She handles divorces.”
Sometimes she did not enjoy her gift for riddles.
“That’s right.” Dr. Rosen smiled. “Very good. And so here we are.”
Rafe raised an eyebrow. “What are you getting at?”
“She thinks we went to the wrong Rosen sister,” replied Esme. “Don’t you?”
Dr. Rosen shrugged her itty-bitty shoulders.
“So, wait, you’re giving up on us?”
“You tell me, Rafe. Why should I invest my time and energy when you and your wife are unwilling to invest yours?”
“Because we’re paying you!”
“How can I with a clear conscience continue to accept your money when I know it’s just being thrown away?”
“Is that how you feel?” asked Esme, her voice still mouselike. “We have no hope?”
Again, Dr. Rosen shrugged.
‘This is bullshit,” Rafe grumbled.
“So prove me wrong,” replied the doctor. “I’ll give you two weeks. Today is Wednesday,