Mother May I(24)

I hurried toward the exit, shoving her phone back into my purse and grabbing for my own so I could summon a Lyft. I went blind around a corner and barreled into a man. We had to grab onto each other to keep from falling.

“Excuse me,” I said, and at the same time, he said, “Sorry.”

A familiar voice.

Marshall Chase stared down at me, surprised, and then his eyebrows pushed together and his steadying hand clamped onto my arm in a squeeze.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he said.





7




A woman banged into Marshall, throwing him off balance. His arms went around her, he inhaled sharply, and he knew instantly that it was Bree. He smelled her roses, not heavy or overly sweet. Roses undercut with earth and herbs that deepened the scent, the way good bitters deepened whiskey.

He’d had a few, so when they steadied, he wasn’t altogether sure who had caught whom. He stared down into her shocked, pale face.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” The words popped out. He’d been thinking about how not to think about her, and here she was, in his arms.

She pulled free, surprised and maybe angry, tottering on precariously high heels that put them almost eye to eye. “Are you following me?”

Marshall blinked. “Am I what? I came in to get out of the crowd for a minute. What are you doing here?” Right exactly here, bowling him over.

She swiped a hand through the air, as if shooing him, then pushed past him, heading out of the building. “I can’t talk to you.”

He fell into step beside her, a wobble in his turn. He wasn’t drunk, but he sure as hell wasn’t sober. Now that there was a safe distance between her body and his, he remembered she’d told him she was sick. So sick that just this afternoon she’d cussed and yelled and threatened him to make him drive her girls. Now here she was at the party.

“Okay, well, can I do anything else for you today? Shine your shoes? Clean out your litter box?” He was ragging on her a little, buzzed enough to revert back to the old friend that he was.

She sped up, saying, “I have to get home.”

Why was she here? He’d come because it was expected, and the food was always good, and it would fill the time with Cara out of town. It was better than sitting home alone thinking about Bree’s odd behavior, and the curve of her hip, and the way her face had lit up with love today when she saw Cara. He’d assumed she would be home in bed. But here she was.

“Did you get the kind of flu that comes in waves?”

Again he was razzing her, but she wheeled instantly to face him. She put both hands on his chest, and then she shoved him. Hard. It rocked him back a step.

Marshall wasn’t sure what shocked him more, the underlying unkindness of the jokes he’d made or that she’d laid such furious hands on him. He rubbed at his mouth, as if his words had galloped out without permission and now he didn’t want to let out more.

“That was offsides,” he said. And stupid, because he hadn’t minded driving her girls at all.

Bree glared at him like she wanted nothing more than to punch him in the face. “Yes, it was.” He started to apologize, but angry words came pouring out of her, unstoppable. “Why are you being such a shit to me?” Her voice was raw, a forced, furious whisper. “For weeks now you’ve cold-shouldered me, and you have no idea the unending hell this day has been. When I called you this afternoon, I treated you badly, I know, but God . . . I’m . . . I . . . I feel so fucking terrible.” He felt the curse words like more shoves. Betsy had had a filthy mouth and a wonderfully filthy mind to match, but even in high school Bree only cussed in extremis. She stepped in so close that her earthy rose smell enveloped him again. “I’m a person, Marshall. Full of blood and organs and feelings, and I don’t live my whole life trying to make yours suck more. You think I want to be here? I want to be home, with my kids. All three of them. That’s all I want. That’s all I want.”

She stopped abruptly and turned away, shoving open the exit door. There was a moment of discordance, the cello moaning behind them and the torchy singer crooning along with the piano on the lawn ahead. The warm spring air felt cold as he followed her out of the humid orchid house.

He was thinking about Cara now, at the start of third grade. She’d been cute as a Muppet, all snappy brown eyes and skinny legs and corkscrew hair. A boy who sat behind her kept pinching her arm when she wouldn’t talk to him in class.

“He probably likes you,” Marshall said, and Bets had surreptitiously pinched the back of his arm, her face gone fierce.

She told their daughter, “If that’s how he shows he likes you, Cara, then that right there is a little turd boy who thinks the world owes him a girl who likes him back.” Cara wanted to move seats, and Betsy had shut that down, too. “You don’t move. He moves. I’ll go with you, but you have to talk to your teacher. We will sit down with her, and you will tell her what is happening. That boy has to learn that if he lays hands on a girl, there are consequences.”

Then she’d stopped talking, her eyes so angry. Not with him. With the world. She was mad that she’d lied to their daughter. They were both cops. They knew how often boys laid hands on girls, consequence-free. Only a few months later, a man who believed he had the right to beat his wife to death had taken Betsy from them.