The Bitter Season Page 4

  “That’s funny,” she said on a bitter laugh, “because I’m pretty sure you never listen to anything I say. Or is it that I just sound like the teacher in a Peanuts cartoon to you: Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.”

  “That’s about it,” he agreed. “If Kyle wanted to stay home and study, why didn’t he? He could have said no.”

  Nikki slapped a palm to her forehead. “Oh my God, you are so fucking obtuse! First, why should Kyle be the adult in the equation? That’s supposed to be your job. Second, of course he wants to spend time with you more than he wants to study algebra. You’re his father. He loves you at least as much as he resents you.”

  “Ouch! Fucking low blow, Nikki!” he said, cringing. “You’re such a bitch since you changed jobs. Don’t take it out on me that you left Homicide—”

  “I did that for the boys,” she shot back. “It’s called making sacrifices for your children—a concept completely unfamiliar to you, I know.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m an asshole and you’re Supermom.”

  “I do what needs to be done. You do whatever you want.”

  “Then you won’t be surprised when I leave.”

  “Why would that surprise me? You do it all the time.”

  R.J.’s voice came down the stairway. “Mo-om! I don’t feel good!”

  Nikki gave her ex a nasty look. “That’s your cue to leave anyway—parental duty calling.”

  “Suck it, Nikki.”

  “Go home,” she said, tired of dealing with him. She pushed past him on her way to the stairs. “I don’t need another child to deal with. Two is my limit.”

  * * *

  NIKKI SAT ON THE BED BESIDE R.J., his head on her shoulder as they waited for the antacid to soothe his upset stomach. He was already bigger than she—taller and heavier, and stocky like his dad—but that didn’t stop him being her little boy when he didn’t feel well.

  In the shadowed amber light of the lamp on the nightstand, she took in his room. Posters of sports stars, a pennant from a Twins game, a shelf with trophies and awards he had won in football and hockey. His new passions were wrestling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu—also one of Kyle’s sports. Several family-room lamps had paid the price for witnessing their matches.

  Kyle was her neat freak. Everything in his room was just so, bed made, clothes put away. R.J.’s armchair was overflowing with laundry—dirty, clean, and borderline. Athletic shoes littered the floor.

  R.J. had inherited his father’s blond cowlicks. His dimpled smile was all Speed. He was going to melt a lot of hearts. Unlike his father, R.J. was utterly lacking a talent for lying. Everything was right on the surface with him. If he did something to get in trouble, he was the first one to say so, telling Nikki the story in great detail, admitting any and all culpability. He didn’t have a devious bone in his body.

  Nikki hugged him tight.

  “Feeling any better?” she asked quietly.

  “A little,” he said. She could sense the weight of gravity in his pause. “I wish you and Dad didn’t hate each other so bad.”

  Nikki winced internally. “I don’t hate your dad, R.J. We just push each other’s buttons, that’s all.”

  “I hate it when you guys fight,” he said with a hint of little-boy whine in his voice. “And you fight all the time.”

  Speed wasn’t around enough to qualify for “all the time,” Nikki thought, but she didn’t say this. She didn’t want to call attention to the obvious. At any rate, that would only open the “But you made us move away from him” argument.

  She had moved them away from their dad, leaving St. Paul for Minneapolis on the excuse of a shorter commute to work and Kyle’s scholarship to a top arts high school. In truth, she had not moved to keep Speed away from the boys, but to keep the boys from noticing that their father didn’t give a shit most of the time. The list of times Speed had disappointed them by not showing up was long. Nikki had decided it was better if they blamed her for moving than thought about how many times their father had let them down.

  “You fight because of us,” R.J. said, a little tremor in his voice. “Because of me and Kyle.”

  Nikki wanted to crawl in a hole. She and Speed at least tried to keep their voices down when they were fighting, as if that would keep the boys from feeling the pall of bitterness between them. Kids were so much more astute than adults ever gave them credit for.

  “Your dad and I love you both so very much. Don’t ever think we don’t,” she said, holding him close, wondering how much of his upset stomach was junk food versus the stress of hearing his parents argue. “We just don’t agree on how to show it.”

  “Well, I wish you’d figure it out,” he said with just enough petulance that it was almost funny. Almost.

  “I promise we’ll work on it,” Nikki said. “You know I lie awake nights worrying about screwing you guys up for the rest of your lives. I’m trying not to. You get that, right?”

  “You do okay, Mom.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And Dad does the best he can,” he said. “His best just isn’t the same as your best, that’s all.”

  Out of the mouths of babes.

  “I’ll try harder to remember that,” Nikki said, closing her eyes against the sudden rise of tears.

  “Good. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. You’re pretty darn smart, you know.”

  “I try hard,” he said. “That’s the most you can ask from a guy.”

  She thought her heart would burst with love for him.

  He drifted off to sleep not long after. Nikki stayed, sitting on the bed beside him, watching him sleep, listening to him breathe. She had always loved this part of motherhood when they were small, just being with her boys as they slept, when the house was quiet and dark and she could pretend that their lives could be perfect and free of hurt or trouble.

  Unwilling to make herself get up and leave, she dozed off, propped up against the pillows beside R.J., to the tic tac, tic tac of sleet tapping against the window.

  5

  The whispers came in the night, seductive and sinister, like snakes sliding into bed beside her.

  Trust me. Let me help you . . .

  Trust me. Let me comfort you . . .

  Trust me. Let me touch you . . .

  In the dream, she was eight, she was twelve, she was seventeen, nineteen—all at the same time. Her reaction was instant: fear, dread, her heart rate doubling, a terrible chill running through her like the blade of a sword. She woke with a gasp, a cold sweat drenching her. But she made no overt movement. Out of old habit, she lay as still as possible as she took in her surroundings, just in case she had awakened into a nightmare.

  She made a visual inventory of the room in the glow of the nightlight: the bedside table draped in soft blue fabric, the chair with her robe tossed across the seat and arm, her slippers, the blue drapes that flanked the window . . .

  As the roar of her pulse subsided, she became aware of the tic tac, tic tac of sleet against the windowpane.

  She was home, in the present, safe. Her husband, Eric, sighed and stirred on the other side of the bed. Evi held her breath, hoping she hadn’t disturbed his sleep. He turned over and settled, and she relaxed a little.

  As many times as he had told her he didn’t mind waking up with her in the night, she still hated doing that to him. It upset him to know she was upset and that there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t erase her bad memories. He could only help her try to make better, happier ones. Every day they were together accomplished that.

  She slipped from the bed like a wraith, barely disturbing the covers, and moved soundlessly out of the room. The house was cold. She wrapped her robe and her arms around herself and went down the hall to her daughter’s room.

  The same amber nightlight as in her own bedroom glowed in Mia’s room—and everywhere else in the house, for that matter. She couldn’t tolerate absolute darkness. The light just kissed Mia’s cheek as she slept, letting Evi see her daughter
’s long eyelashes and rosebud mouth, her small hand curled beside her pillow. At five years old, Mia declared herself no longer a baby, but her thumb was always at the ready as she slept, just in case.

  Evi crept into the room and carefully rearranged the blankets around her daughter’s shoulders, making sure the nose of her teddy bear poked out above the covers. Her heart swelled with love as she watched her child sleep. And just at the edge of that love lay the familiar fear that this couldn’t all be real. She couldn’t have such a perfect life with such a perfect family. How could she have met a man as good and kind as Eric? How could she be lucky enough to have him love her? How was it the universe had given her this beautiful child to call her own, to raise and love?

  “Too good to be true” was the theme of her daily existence.

  She and Eric had been married six years now. Maybe when they had a decade together she would start to let her guard down, stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Doubt was the last and biggest hurdle she circled around and around, never quite brave enough to attempt to clear it. At least the pace at which she ran around it had slowed from frenetic to familiar over the years. Her therapist was satisfied with that much. She didn’t share Evi’s disappointment in herself at her inability to be completely happy.

  She had the perfect husband, the perfect child, the perfect home, the perfect job. Why could she not be perfectly happy? Was she ungrateful? No. Nothing could be further from the truth. Was she weak? Did she know deep down that she didn’t deserve any of it? That was her greatest fear—what if that one remaining voice of criticism was right after all?

  “You have to convince yourself that voice is wrong,” Dr. Price had told her so many times over the years. So many times that Evi had long ago become too embarrassed even to bring up the subject anymore.

  Leaving Mia’s room, she went downstairs to the living room and curled up in a corner of the sofa with her knitting, and turned the television on to keep her company and distract her from her anxiety.

  The nightmares left an emotional aftertaste that lingered. She didn’t have them every night, or even every month. When she had gone without one for a long time, she could almost convince herself they would never come back. And once they returned, she despaired of their ever letting her sleep in peace.

  A local channel was rerunning the ten o’clock news, showing the weather advisories and preemptive school closings. Temperatures were hovering just at freezing, with precipitation coming in a mix of rain and sleet. The only vehicles advised to be on the road overnight were the trucks from the Department of Transportation that were out laying down sand and salt in anticipation of intrepid morning commuters.

  Mia would be disappointed not to have school. Unlike Evi, her daughter was a social butterfly, friendly and confident. Those were traits Evi had to work at. She loved her job and the kids she worked with. She was proud of the work she did and the accomplishments of the Chrysalis Center, but none of it came easily to her. Her daughter, on the other hand, had the confidence of a child who had never known what it was not to be loved completely. Mia would always have that. No matter what else happened in her life, she would always know that she was loved absolutely.

  That had to be one of a mother’s greatest accomplishments, Evi thought. She wondered how differently her life would have turned out if she’d had that kind of unconditional love as a child.

  No matter, she told herself, because her life had turned out like this: perfect. And as she thought it, and as she smiled wider, she felt the residual anxiety from the dream fade away.

  She focused on her knitting: a winter scarf in shades of pink. She had a stack of scarves in a variety of colors and textures already stashed away in the gift closet, Christmas presents for the girls she worked with—her extended family of troubled teenagers.

  “Isn’t the news depressing enough the first time around?” Eric asked as he came into the living room in red plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a faded black T-shirt that had been through the wash too many times. He slouched down onto the sofa beside her, blond hair tousled, a sleepy smile on his handsome face.

  “I missed it the first time around,” Evi said. “I was doing your disgusting hockey laundry.”

  “You are so beautiful,” he said. “Have I told you in the last two minutes how beautiful you are?”

  He smiled at her like he was trying to pick her up, like he was sharing an inside joke, shining brown eyes always ready with a wink.

  “You are the perfect husband. But your hockey laundry still stinks.” Evi chuckled. “FYI: Mia doesn’t have school tomorrow.”

  As a firefighter, Eric was twenty-four hours on and forty-eight hours off. He took full advantage of his days off to be the househusband and be involved in his daughter’s life. He was, in the opinion of all Evi’s friends, the perfect modern man.

  “If this sleet keeps up, we’ll all have the day off,” he said.

  “I’ve got a big meeting—” Evi started.

  Eric narrowed his eyes. “I don’t want you driving if the roads are bad. Never mind that you’re a safe driver. These first bad weather days leading into winter, people lose their minds. You’d think they lived in Miami and had never seen snow.

  “Stay home and play Frozen with us,” he suggested. “Mia might let you be Elsa. Once. Only once. I get to be Kristoff and Olaf.”

  “I’ve been informed I don’t sing well enough to be Elsa.”

  “I love you anyway.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Trouble sleeping tonight?” he asked, trying to slip that in casually.

  “I’m fine,” Evi said. “I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. A little TV, a little knitting . . . I’m fine.”

  “It’s the pressure of being a local celebrity,” Eric said teasingly.

  The Minneapolis Star Tribune had recently run a weekend feature story on Chrysalis and its work with victims of sexual abuse, domestic violence, and sex trafficking. In her capacity as the center’s senior social services case worker, Evi had been pictured and quoted, speaking out about the difficulties faced by victims who had aged out of the foster care system but didn’t meet the requirements for most women’s shelters.

  “I’m last Sunday’s news,” she said.

  She had been a little uncomfortable with the spotlight, brief as it had been, but publicity for the center was always welcome. The article had generated interest from several local TV and radio stations in the week that followed, but media attention had since moved on to new stories.

  Evi dropped a stitch in her knitting as one of those new stories filled her television screen with photos and graphics. Her heartbeat quickened. A strange cold flush ran over her from head to toe.

  NEW COLD CASE UNIT TARGETS UNSOLVED HOMICIDES

  The photograph took her back in time. Ted Duffy in a suit, looking authoritative, his face set in stern lines as he accepted an award, his wife, Barbie, and his twin brother standing in the background clapping.

  “Using half a million dollars in federal grant money, the Minneapolis Police Department, in conjunction with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, will launch a dedicated cold case unit this week . . .”

  The unit’s first case would be the unsolved murder of decorated sex crimes detective Ted Duffy.

  Eric looked from Evi to the TV and back. “What? Do you know that guy?”

  “No,” she lied, setting her knitting aside. She turned back to her husband with a smile. “A dedicated cold case unit will be a godsend for a lot of victims’ families from back when. Kate Quinn will be knocking on the door of that unit first thing tomorrow.”

  “While we sleep in,” Eric said, getting up from the couch. He held his hand out to her and pulled her up and into his arms. “Let’s go back to bed, Mrs. Burke. We’ve got some serious snuggling to do.”

  Evi pressed her cheek into his shoulder and hugged him tight. “That’s the only place I want to be.”

  In the here and now with the man of he
r dreams. But when she closed her eyes, she saw only the faces of her past.

  6

  Sleet began to pelt the windows at around one thirty in the morning. The sound woke Professor Lucien Chamberlain from a shallow sleep. He fumbled for his glasses on the nightstand and checked the time on his phone.

  Beside him, his wife slept on, undisturbed by the rapid tic tac tic tac of the ice pellets striking the glass. Of course, she had taken to wearing earplugs to bed because she claimed he snored. Ridiculous. He didn’t snore. She snored. She snored especially when she had been drinking, and she had been drinking more than usual lately.

  She thought he didn’t notice. She thought she had become so adept at hiding it over the years that she could fool him. The truth was he didn’t care anymore. As long as she didn’t embarrass him in public or in front of his peers or their neighbors, he ignored her.

  That was, and had been, the state of their marriage: tolerance and cohabitation. He had no interest in her as a woman any longer. He never really had. His life was about his career. She had her committees and charities. They were companions for social events.

  She had never been a beautiful woman, he thought as he looked at her in the dim light from the bathroom. She had started leaving a nightlight on after stumbling into the shower stall by mistake one night, injuring herself badly enough that she had needed to go to the emergency room.

  The hospital staff had jumped to the conclusion that Lucien had beaten her, and had called the police. It still made him furious to remember how shabbily the police treated him, and how the neighbors reacted when Sondra’s eye blackened and her bruises ripened—the surreptitious stares and quickly averted eyes. As if they could believe he, a highly respected member of the faculty at the University of Minnesota, would ever have been so stupid and brutish as to punch a woman in the face.

  He had resented Sondra for putting him in the position to be judged and gossiped about. Her overly eager attempts to explain away the bruises had only made him seem all the more guilty. And the more irritated he became, the more obsequious she became, until he questioned the logic of ever having married her in the first place.