The Perfect Mother(64)

It’s a mug shot.

He’s a teenager in the photo. There are no lines around his eyes, no gray in the goatee. He stares into the camera, a defiant expression on his face. The nameplate he holds in front of his chest is lettered with his date of birth and place of arrest. But not what he was charged with. Not even his name.

But of course it’s him. Token.



Francie sucks in her stomach, aware of a guy approaching, but he strolls past her, taking a seat at the far end of the bar. She checks the time again: 3:32 p.m. He’s thirty-two minutes late. Maybe he lied. Maybe he’s not coming.

“Another white zinfandel?”

She tugs at the fabric of her low-cut neckline in the wake of the bartender’s gaze. “I guess so,” she says, glancing down at the text her mother-in-law, Barbara, sent a few minutes ago, with an attached photo of Will lying on a blanket in the park. We’re doing great. Hope the photo shoot is going well. Good luck!

Her hand is unsteady as she gives a ten to the bartender, thinking again about the argument she and Lowell had this morning, after he came out of the bedroom to find Francie sitting on the couch, feeding Will a bottle, trying to hold back tears.

“What is it this time?” he asked her.

“What is what?”

“You look upset.”

“I’m not.”

“Francie—”

“It’s nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.” She can’t tell Lowell what’s bothering her—how she called Mark Hoyt yesterday to inform him she’d found photographs of the guy who approached Winnie at the Jolly Llama.

“I’m disappointed I had to do this work myself,” she said to Hoyt, impressed with the authority in her voice. “But so be it. I will e-mail them to you now, unless, for security purposes, you’d prefer to send an officer over to pick them up personally?”

“Francie, listen to me,” Hoyt had said. “You need to back off.”

“Back off? Are you—”

“You heard me, Mrs. Givens. Back off. Find something to do. Take that kid to the swings. Or maybe go see your doctor. Make sure everything is okay. Let us do our job.”

“Go see my—” A laugh escaped her. “Do you have any idea what a shitty job you’re doing here? Are you even aware there is a newborn baby counting on you to bring him back to his mother? Go see my doctor? Are you kidding me? I don’t need another man—”

“Good-bye, Mrs. Givens.”

Of course she could never tell this to Lowell, who just stood there, looking at her like she was crazy, his back against the counter, his arms crossed at his chest. “I’m starting to worry about you, Francie.”

She feels sick now, thinking about what she said to him after that, how she accused him of being cold and unsympathetic as he got dressed, turning away from his kiss as he made his way out the door to pick up his mother from the airport (Lowell had, apparently, called Barbara and asked her to come from Tennessee for a few days, telling her Francie was overwhelmed and could use some help with the baby, without even discussing it with her first). Francie hates it when they fight. They hardly ever argued before, but now, since the baby, she’s annoyed by everything he does. She knows she needs to apologize to him and smooth things over, especially with Barbara staying with them, sleeping on the sofa in the living room, in earshot of every word they exchange. She reaches for her phone, but then she feels a pair of hands around her waist.

She turns, her phone frozen in her hand, stunned by how handsome he is up close: his icy blue eyes; his strong, square jaw; his dark hair under the bright red baseball cap. Before she can even say hello, he lifts her from the stool and draws her close, kissing her in a way she hasn’t been kissed in a very long time, helping her forget all about Lowell.



He pulls back. “You are the woman I’m supposed to meet, correct?”

“Yes. Hello.” Francie regrets the nervous crack in her voice.

He drops onto the stool beside her and signals to the bartender, ordering a beer and a shot of whiskey for himself, not offering to replenish her drink. “Sorry I’m late. Something came up.” He downs the shot in one easy swallow and follows it with a sip of beer. She reaches for her glass of wine, glancing at him. She was right. He’s in his thirties, the same age Archie Andersen would now be. He takes another drink, and she sees the way his hand grips the glass, the pull of his T-shirt at his biceps. He’s much bigger than she remembers from when she watched him at the Jolly Llama. “I like your style,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

She raises her eyebrows. “My dress, you mean?” His gaze travels over her breasts to her neck, and then to her eyes, framed under the false eyelashes she applied an hour earlier in the bathroom of a nearby Starbucks.

“Well, yeah. That too. But I mean that you didn’t waste any time. So many girls wanna e-mail for days before meeting.”

Francie’s proud of how quickly she was able to devise this scheme, all thanks to Nell. Yesterday, after contacting Mark Hoyt had dead-ended, she e-mailed Nell at work.

I know it’s a long shot, but I found some photos of that guy Winnie was talking to at the Jolly Llama, Francie wrote. Any chance we can use these to find out something about this guy?

It took Nell seven minutes to respond. This is all I can find. I put his photo into a face recognition app. He seems nice.