Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(24)

She picked up her cigarette, took a long drag, and picked up her phone. Time to call her mother in New York, she thought, blowing out a plume of smoke. Time to let Amber Coughlin know that her daughter had kept her job.

Amber’s feelings would be mixed, Maureen knew, as they always were concerning her daughter’s choices. Part of Amber would be glad for Maureen; she knew how much Maureen’s new career and new city meant to her. And even if Amber didn’t understand Maureen’s love for what she did and where she did it, Amber believed that her daughter’s love for both of those things was real. But Maureen knew that another part of her mother had rejoiced at the thought of her daughter flaming out in New Orleans, because failure in Louisiana kept alive the possibility of Maureen’s return to New York.

Amber answered on the third ring. “What’s wrong?”

“Really, Ma? I can’t call to check in?”

“Sure you can,” Amber said, “but you never do. Whenever you call in the afternoon, it’s because you have bad news. When you want to check in, you call in the evening.”

This is what happens, Maureen thought, when your mother falls in love with a detective. Weird, she thought, she never considered what had happened with Nat Waters and her mother “falling in love.” Had she ever even used those words? Her mother and Waters certainly never had. But here they were coming up on a year together, and they were happy, what else could it be? What else could she name it but love? And Maureen liked thinking about the relationship that way. She had never known her mother happy. Part of her ached at being so far away while it happened. But in her own way, Maureen realized, she was in love, too.

“Your old mother’s smarter than you think,” Amber said. “So out with it.”

Not that love and happiness had changed Amber much when it came to her daughter.

“Shows what you know,” Maureen said. “I’m calling with good news. Great news, in fact. I got my badge back today. My next shift is tomorrow night.”

Maureen heard the instant’s hesitation before Amber’s answer as she adjusted her response from what she really felt to what her daughter wanted to hear. “I’m happy for you. I know this is what you wanted. And I’m glad they didn’t use what those crooked bastards did against you. I have to say, I wasn’t optimistic.”

“I was,” Maureen said.

“I know, though I don’t know why. You always see the world the way you think it should be. It’s why you’re always getting disappointed.”

Maureen set her coffee down. She lit another cigarette with the embers of the first. Whoever invented e-mail, she thought, had conversations like this one with his mother. “Ma, did you miss the part where I said I got what I wanted? That things worked out for me.”

“You need to quit smoking,” Amber said. “How can they let you smoke at that job? Don’t you have to chase people, be in shape?”

“Hey, Ma, my doctor says I have the resting heart rate—you know what, forget it. I wanted to let you know things worked out. I know you were waiting to hear. Tell Nat I said hello.”

“Maureen, wait,” Amber said, “while I have you, there’s something we should talk about.”

“Is it Nat?” Maureen asked. Please, she thought, don’t let there be a breakup. Or worse, another heart attack. The first one had been bad, a real close call, and he struggled with his weight. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine.” A long pause. “Well, do you remember Lori DiNunzio from across the street?”

Maureen sighed. She didn’t know where this was going, but she was sure Lori DiNunzio wasn’t what her mother wanted to talk about. “Yeah, of course, Ma, we walked to P.S. 42 together almost every day for years.”

“I always thought it was a shame you two drifted apart. You two played at her place every day and then you never saw each other.”

“We went to different schools after 42,” Maureen said. “You know how little girls are, everything or nothing.” Which was true, though it didn’t help the friendship that Lori’s skeevy older brother kept trying to put Maureen’s hand down his pants when Lori was in the bathroom or went to get snacks. And that Lori pushed Maureen down on the sidewalk when Maureen told her what her brother had been doing. “It was no big deal. We stayed friendly when we grew up. I’d see her around the island. She’d come in now and then where I worked sometimes. Have a drink.”

“You know, you never had another friend like that,” Amber said. “A close one.”

“I had no friends after the fifth grade,” Maureen said, “that’s right, Ma. That’s so true. Thanks for reminding me. I guess it’s why I’m so easily disappointed. And I did so have friends. Like the whole track team in high school. Just ’cause you didn’t meet them.” Maureen caught herself. She knew she sounded like she did when she was fifteen. Lying then, lying now. She took a deep breath. “Is Lori okay? Did she die?”

“Good Lord, no,” Amber said. “The morbid way you think. She got married. Finally. I was worried. She got so heavy when she moved back in with her mother. And I don’t think she works.”

Aha. There was the point, Maureen thought. Thirty-year-old, living-with-her-mother fatty Lori DiNunzio had landed a man. And I have this backwater career. “Listen, Ma, if you want me to move home and get fat so I can land a man, just say so.”