He wasn’t sure he felt that way anymore. Maybe it was because now he was making memories worth remembering. It had been different before. He had been different before. Before he had started spending time with twelve-year-old Ben Outlaw, who was teaching him the fine art of how much glue to put on a model spaceship. And before Joe, who was teaching him just how little glue it took to hold two people together.
He blew out a breath and stared at the house.
It was a two-story frame house on Catherine Street, painted a pale blue, with old-fashioned white shutters. A thicket of dormant rose bushes buffered the small porch. The blooms were probably beautiful in the summer. Colorful, like her.
He had found the address in a phone book. Not under Eric Channing, which was to be expected. He didn’t know any cop who listed a phone or address. Then he looked under Kyla and K. Channing but found nothing there, either. It was only when he was closing the book and feeling a guilty pang of relief that he decided to try once more and look under Brown.
There had been two K. Browns listed, one out near Ypsi and one here in Ann Arbor. He figured the Ann Arbor cops still had to live in the city, so this was where he had come first.
His heart was kicking up, and he looked around, trying to relax, hoping to spot something that would tell him if this was her home.
There was a newspaper lying on the narrow walk and a pair of rain boots sitting on the top step. Next to them was a cardboard box with halo hats stamped on the side in big black letters and a UPS invoice taped on top. There was no mailbox on the curb and no car in the drive.
And no toys anywhere.
He walked to the porch and drew a breath as he lifted his hand to rap on the screen door. Before he could, the door swung open.
Kyla.
She wore a cream-colored suit with eyelets around the collar. The eye shadow and red lipstick were there but tempered with age and sophistication, the red more burgundy, the silver more charcoal. She had stopped straightening her hair, and it formed a short black cap of soft curls around her round face.
Her eyes fired with contempt. “Go away,” she said.
“Please,” Louis said. “I just want five minutes.”
She started to close the door, but to his surprise, she paused. “That’s all I wanted from you ten years ago,” she said.
“I know.”
She dropped her hand from the door and waited, again surprising him with her decision to stand there and hear him out. He had no idea where to begin, so he started with the simplest of thoughts.
“I’m sorry, Kyla.”
She said nothing. Nothing from her but that stare.
“I was a selfish sonofabitch,” he said. “I said some terrible things. You deserved better from me.”
Still nothing but that steely stare.
“I was stupid,” he said. “All I could see was my future going down the drain, and I panicked.”
Her eyes dipped to his jeans and sneakers. “That law degree you wanted so much,” she said. “Did you ever get it?”
“No.”
“What
The fact that she didn’t know told him Channing hadn’t shared his traffic stop with her or any of the background information he had gathered. Made sense. It had been Channing’s intent to bully Louis into keeping his distance.
“I became a cop when I got out of school,” he said. “Now I’m a private investigator.”
Her expression went from surprise when he said “cop” to scorn at “private investigator.” She ran a red- manicured finger through her hair, her anger waning to annoyance.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “Are you in some kind of twelve-step program and on the part where you’re supposed to say you’re sorry?”
“No,” he said. “I’m in town on business, and… it’s hard being back here without remembering. I know there’s nothing I can do to change a thing, but I wanted to tell you that I know how much I hurt you.”
“You expect my forgiveness?” she asked.
“No, I don’t expect a thing,” he said. “I just needed to say it.”
Kyla looked away, blinking back a glimmer of tears. Her hatred for him was still radiating off her in waves, but there was something else going on inside her, too. Something that was softening everything else.
“You’ve said what you needed to,” she said. “And I’ve given you more time than you gave me. Now, please go away, and don’t come back.”
She started to close the door again. He put a hand to the screen.
“Kyla, wait, please,” he said. “I need to ask you something else.”
“What?” she asked.
“Did you have the abortion?”
Without so much as a blink, she answered him. “Yes.”
The door closed.
Joe let the curtain fall and turned to face the dingy room. The clock on the nightstand told her it was only nine-thirty, but it felt later.
Where the hell was he?
He had dropped her off at the motel and sped off in the Bronco. He had asked her first, asked her if she minded. She had said no, she didn’t. But she did. As much as she knew he needed to go see Kyla, as sure as she was of his love, she had felt something shift. Maybe it was his eyes when he had looked at her over the table in the bar earlier. Maybe it was his voice when he said he was going to see Kyla. Whatever it was, it told her that things were never going to be the same between them again.
She kicked off her shoes, went to the bed, and sat down, cross-legged, her back against the flimsy wood headboard. She picked up the remote, clicked the TV on, and then clicked it off again. Her eyes went to the small plastic coffee maker on the dresser and then to the empty spot below where a mini-bar should have been.
Damn, she wanted a drink. But she didn’t want to chance going out and missing his call.
Why the hell hadn’t he called? He had been gone four hours.
She switched on the TV again, punching the button and half watching the images flip by. A cop harassing a gang member on
She stopped clicking. Clair Huxtable in a turquoise power suit and perfect hair, sitting in her pretty living room with her button-cute daughter Rudy in the crook of her arm.
Joe watched the show until a commercial jarred her back to the motel room. She sat there, the remote in her lap, staring blankly at the TV.
She was pretty. Had to be.
She was younger. Younger than he was, probably.
She was black. No matter what he said, it had to matter.
And a child…
Maybe they had a child together.
Joe shut her eyes.
Where the hell was he?
The phone rang. She pounced on it. “Louis?”
“Hello, Joe.”
It wasn’t him; the voice was too deep. It took a moment for it to register. She turned off the TV. “Mel?”
“I wasn’t going to give you a third guess. It would have been insulting.”
She smiled. “I’m sorry, I was just waiting for Louis to call. He’s been out all night.”
“On the case?”
“No. It’s a personal thing he had to take care of.”
