The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(83)

“Maybe someday you and I could be a team. You hook ’em and I cook ’em.”

“That sounds like fishing.”

“Speaking of fishing, is that what you came down to ask me about?”

Bosch drank more coffee before answering. He caught a further break when the handsome lad from the counter delivered their food and Maddie over-thanked him. Bosch looked at her plate. It seemed like everybody was eating avocado toast lately. It looked awful to him.

“Is that dinner?” he asked.

“A snack,” Maddie said. “I’ll eat at the D. The guy with the grill outside has the best veggie dogs. It’s probably the thing I’ll miss most about this place.”

“So if it’s law school, not here?”

“I want to get back to L.A. Uncle Mickey went to Southwestern up there. I think I could get in. It’s a good feeder school for the public defender’s office.”

Before Bosch could react to that, the handsome server came back to the table and asked Maddie if she liked her toast. Maddie enthusiastically approved and he went back behind the counter. He hadn’t bothered to ask Bosch how his sandwich was.

“So that guy, you know him?” Bosch asked.

“We had a class together last year,” Maddie said. “He’s cute.”

“I think he thinks you’re cute.”

“And I think you’re changing the subject.”

“Can’t I just come down and hang with my daughter a little bit, drink coffee, eat a sandwich, and learn new words like foe-moe?”

“It’s an acronym, not a word: F-O-M-O. What’s really going on, Dad?”

“Okay, okay. I wanted to tell you something. It’s not a big deal but you always get mad when you think I intentionally don’t tell you things. I think it’s called FOLO—Fear Of Being Left Out.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Plus FOLO is already taken: that’s Fear Of Losing Out. So what’s the news? Are you getting married or something?”

“No, I’m not getting married.”

“Then what?”

“You remember how I used to have to get chest X-rays because of that case I had where radioactive material was found?”

“Yes, and then you stopped when they said you had a clean bill of health.”

The concern was growing in her eyes. Bosch loved her for that.

“Well, now I have a very mild form of leukemia that is highly treatable and is being treated, and I’m only telling you this because I know you would scream at me if you found out later.”

Maddie didn’t respond. She looked down at her coffee and her eyes shifted back and forth as if she was reading instructions on what to say and how to act.

“It’s not a big thing, Mads. In fact, it’s just a pill. One pill I take in the morning.”

“Do you have to do chemo and all of that?”

“No, I’m serious. It’s just a pill. That is the chemo. They say I just take this and I’ll be okay. I wanted to tell you because your uncle Mickey is going to bat for me on this and he’s going to try to get some money for it. It happened when I was on the job and I don’t want to lose everything I have set up for you because of it. So he said it could make some news, and that’s what I wanted to avoid—you reading about it online somewhere and then being upset with me for not telling you. But, really, everything is fine.”

She reached across the table and put her hand on top of his.

“Dad.”

He turned his hand over so he could hold her fingers.

“You have to eat your snack,” he said. “Whatever that is.”

“I don’t feel like eating now,” she said.

He didn’t either. He hated scaring her.

“You believe me, right?” he asked. “This is like a formality. I wanted you to hear it from me.”

“They should pay. They should pay you a lot of money.”

Bosch laughed.

“I think you should go to law school,” he said.

She didn’t see the humor in that. She kept her eyes down.

“Hey, if you don’t feel like eating that, let’s take it to go and then go over to that ice-cream place you like, where they cold brew it, or whatever it’s called.”

“Dad, I’m not a little girl. You can’t make everything right with ice cream.”

“So, lesson learned. I should have just shut up and hoped you never found out.”

“No, it’s not that. I’m allowed to feel this way. I love you.”

“And I love you, and that’s what I’m trying to say: I’m going to be around for a long while. I’m going to send you to law school and then I’m going to sit in the back of courtrooms and watch you send bad people away.”

He waited for a reaction. A smile or a smirk, but he got nothing. “Please,” he said. “Let’s not worry about this anymore. Okay?”

“Okay,” Maddie said. “Let’s go get that ice cream.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

She waved the cute guy over and asked him for to-go boxes.

An hour later Bosch had dropped his daughter back at her car and was heading north on the 5 freeway toward L.A. It had been a double-whammy of a day: John Jack Thompson injecting pain and uncertainty into his life, then Bosch doing the same to his daughter and feeling like some sort of criminal for it.