She thought about him when he wasn’t with her. Crossword puzzles in ink. Black coffee and toast with orange marmalade. Minty bedtime kisses.

She thought about their future. Weekends at a cabin on the beach. Two kids and a chocolate lab. Cherubic grandchildren.

She never thought she would have an affair. Cheap hotels at lunch time. Frenzied groping in the elevator. Scorching guilt.

She thought his resentment and anger would fade over time. Accusations launched like missiles. Silence in the dark bedroom. Wedding band deserted on the kitchen counter.  LS

I held my eyes open because I didn’t want to see what was seared on the inside of my eyelids.  The coroner was on his way, the local sheriff fumbled with yellow crime scene tape and the chief had detailed me to canvass the area and search for the little girl. 

Get a grip, remember your training.  Discipline and work saved you before, didn’t it?  When you’d been beaten away from here?  Now do your job and find her. 

I dug in my pocket for the keys to the squad car, watched my hand insert the key into the ignition and turn it.  The engine throbbed, the sound both warm and strange.  I released the brake, twisted to the right and laid my arm along the back of the seat to back out of the driveway.  A squeal of tortured rubber was followed by a muffled explosion.  I turned back to my left, opened the door and stared directly into the face of the child I had been sent to find.  She looked at me, then toward the back of the squad car and her face crumpled like a wrinkled pink melon with pigtails.  Her shriek pierced me right through to the back of my eye sockets.  I followed her look to the rear wheel.  Splattered shreds of a red rubber playground ball splayed beneath the square-sided blackwall tire. 

A booming voice superimposed the little girl’s wail.  “What you doing to that child?  Who you think you are, anyway?” 

A bluff-bowed woman steamed directly toward me, swing fisted arms in rhythm with her stomping pace.  Dad’s old Buick came to mind. 

“Think that blue suit gives you the right to come in here and mess with folks, do you?  What you done to this child?  Where’s her gramma?  Where’s Ethel?”

I rubbed my palm against my forehead.  “The ambulance will be here in a moment, ma’am.”

“Ambulance?  What you talkin’ about, boy?”  The Buick woman was suddenly still.  Her flabby arms reached out, drew the child close and held her against her flowered apron.  “That’s all right, baby.  That’s all right.”  She looked up at me.  “Where’s Ethel?”  Then, “Don’t I know you, boy?”

I looked at the green shutters of the house.  I looked at the scar in the red board fence where I had crashed my bicycle twenty years ago.  I looked at the half-round window in the front door where I had last seen my mother smile.  I closed my eyes.  The past spun my insides, gripped me with memories, then deep red spattered across a black and white checkerboard tile floor raged in my mind’s eye.  I breathed deep and shook my head.

 “No ma’am, I don’t think so.”  I said.  “I don’t think you know me at all.”

Sunlight has already drained out of the late Sunday morning. He is still asleep, black T-shirt stretched over sharp shoulder blades. She glances at his back sometimes, over her granola with walnuts and cinnamon, to wait for the slight movement of his breath. He sleeps so easily. She, however, has been up since the windows were black. She woke to the hollow burning in her throat, chest, and abdomen and to the cruel pulling around her hips. She is eight weeks now: the time at which she lost the others. She knows he is just as afraid as she if not more so. Yet he sleeps. Light creeps through the blinds again. She wishes it would stretch out to reach her already-swollen belly. Yesterday, she sat on the sidewalk, her back to the sun. The heat soothed her muscles as she ate cottage cheese out of a blue mug. How many men passed the house, calling her darling, before he came out to sit distractedly on the porch? He had probably been asleep then too. A cat snores under the bed, and the sound makes the springs shiver. She will give up soda, and she won't have anymore burgers with fries. A sensible grocery list crumples beside her. If they go now, they can beat the after-church rush. He twitches. The light fades out again.
     “Wake up,” she whispers without looking at his back. “Damn you, wake up.” LS