“Yeah, well, I was ‘mated’ before. Didn’t have such a happy ending.”
“All the more reason to try again-this time with a man who, unlike Brandon, wants to be married to you.”
There was a time when Brandon did. Back when they’d been featured on the cover of Connecticut Magazine under the headline: “Our State’s Shining Future.” She was one of the youngest Major Crime Squad lieutenants in the state. And the only one who had happened to be a woman of color. A West Point graduate. Daughter of the Deacon, the deputy superintendent and highest ranking black officer in the history of the state police. Brandon was two years out of Yale Law School and the state’s top young district prosecutor. And as for eye appeal, well, Brandon was what Denzel Washington would look like if only Denzel were handsome. Except it turned out that Brandon’s shiny future was in Washington with the Justice Department-and the daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia congressman. The affair had started when they were in law school together. In fact, it had never actually ended, not even after he’d married Des.
Bella was peering suspiciously at her. “You’ve got cold feet, haven’t you?”
“Not a chance.”
“Don’t you flap your gums at me, missy. I’m not some beery lout you just pulled over for making an illegal left turn. Friends tell each other the truth.”
“Real? Marriage opens up a whole lot of stuff that we’ve successfully avoided until now. There’s the whole racial thing, obviously. Our two families having to deal with each other. Plus there’s the issue of-”
“Children,” Bella acknowledged, nodding her head.
“Whoa, flag on the play! If you have a man in your life you already have one child. Who needs another?”
Bella just glowered at her like an angry Jewish bowling ball.
“What I keep wondering,” Des confessed, “is why we can’t just go on doing what we’re doing. Enjoying each other’s company. Having fun together, great sex.”
“Because that’s not how a relationship works. When you’re involved in each other’s lives you have to keep growing together. Mitch is a centered, caring man who wants to share his life with you. In return, you cook him dinner once in a while. Show up when you feel like it, give him a good, swift shtup…”
“Not so swift.”
“Then you jump in the shower-I trust-and out the door you go, free as a bird. You’re the boyfriend from hell. It’s a classic case of role reversal, if you ask me.”
“You know, I’m trying to remember if I did ask you.” Des slumped against the kitchen counter, sighing. “Want to know the crazy part, Bella? When I’m with Mitch I finally feel like the person who I want to be. I like myself. Brandon always had me right on the edge of panic. I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. I’d sob for no reason. Scream at him, throw things. Brandon and me, we fought a lot.”
“You don’t have to tell me. I could hear the glass breaking from next door.”
“But then we’d kiss and make up and…” Without warning, Des suddenly remembered Brandon’s body against hers, his hands on her, how he tasted and smelled. The sense memories were so vivid that she felt lightheaded. “That part was so good. Except it was the only part that was good. With Mitch, it’s all sweet and warm and caring. It feels so much, I don’t know, calmer.”
“Well, it should, tattela. You’re not miserable. For God’s sake, don’t you realize that?”
The call came in as Des was heading out the door, groceries and little yellow dress in tow. She didn’t have very far to go. Just down the hill to an address on Uncas Lake Road, where two men were reportedly throwing punches out on the front porch. A neighbor had phoned it in.
High above the lake, where cool breezes blew during the summer, many of the cottages like hers had been gentrified in recent years. Down below, where dark, narrow side streets eadended at the oily water’s edge, this had yet to happen. Here, clans of swamp Yankees remained crowded into the moldering bungalows and cinder block ranchettes that were squeezed together, shoulder to shoulder.
The address she was looking for was a dogeared cottage that had a whole lot of beatup cars and trucks parked out front. One of them was a canary yellow van that said S amp; D PAINTING on its side.
Bement Widdifield and little Donnie Kershaw were flailing away at each other out on the floodlit porch. Justine was screaming at them to stop.
Des ran up the front steps and put herself between them, her long arms outstretched. “Step back right now, hear me?” she barked. “Step back or I’m running both of you in!”
“He started it,” Donnie protested, blood streaming from his nose down into his mustache and beard.
“I’m going to finish it, too,” vowed Bement, whose left eye was blinking rapidly and watering. He’d taken a poke in it. Bement was wiry and quicklooking. Also major hunkish in a Tommy Hilfiger boytoy kind of way. He had blond hair down to his shoulders, a cleft chin, cheekbones to die for. “This isn’t over!”
“Fine by me!” Donnie shot back.
“Both of you, stop this!” Justine hollered at them. She was a tiny, gorgeous thing, redfaced with rage. “Donnie, this is my house! And Bement is my boyfriend!”
“What brings you here, Donnie?” Des asked, continuing to stand between the two men.
“Me and Stevie came by to pick up Allison is all, I swear.” Donnie swiped at his bloody muzzle with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. His reflecting shades lay broken on the porch floor. “Stevie and Allison started getting busy in the bedroom, so I was having a brew and watching me some tube-until he came over.”
“And then you couldn’t leave him alone, could you?” Justine smacked her brother hard in the left ear.
“Ow, Teeny, that hurt!”
“It was supposed to, you cretin!”
The front door was open. Des grabbed Donnie by the collar and shoved him inside. “You two stay put out here,” she ordered Justine and Bement.
The living room was small and stuffy and reeked of cigarette smoke. There was TV, a sofa and coffee table. Not much else. A short hallway. Probably two bedrooms, one bath. The kitchen was spotless. Des found a dish towel and tossed it to Donnie for his nose.
Allison Mapes came padding barefoot out of her bedroom wearing a Tshirt and nothing more. Allison was built low to the ground and meaty through the hips, with little in the way of breasts. Her bare arms and legs were soft and pale. Allison’s hair was boyishly cropped and dyed a whitish blond with streaks of maroon and green. She had six or eight ear piercings, a nose ring. Eyes that were exceptionally lifeless. Des knew her from McGee’s Diner, where she waited tables when she wasn’t busy rolling those eyes or scuffing around like a surly princess. Mitch maintained that Allison could be a lot of fun. Des had never seen her so much as smile.
Stevie the mullethead followed Allison out of her bedroom, barechested, his flannel shirt in one hand. He was buttoning up his lowslung jeans with the other. “What’s all the commotion, little brother?” he asked, eyes widening at the sight of Des.
“Donnie and Bement were mixing it up,” she told him as Donnie stood with the towel pressed against his nose, not saying a word. “You didn’t hear them?”
“Me and Allison were getting reacquainted,” Stevie replied, leering unpleasantly.
Allison curled her lip at him. “You were getting reacquainted. I was trying to get dressed for dinner.”
Stevie slouched there in the doorway with his shirt off, his bare chest hairless and concave.
“Would you put your shirt on, please?” Des asked him.
He smirked at her. “Why don’t you put it on for me?”
“Not a problem.” Des grabbed him by his bare shoulders, whipped him around and slammed him facefirst into the wall. “Are we having fun yet?”
“Damn, lady,” Stevie protested angrily. “You are crazy.”
Des yanked his shirt from his hand and started to drape it around his shoulders-until she pulled back from him in horrified shock. There were dozens of raised scars on Stevie Kershaw’s back. The kind of scars that come from being whipped with a belt until you bleed.
She released him, swallowing. “Does Donnie have a set of those, too?”
“None of your business.” Stevie snatched his shirt from her and put it on. “Besides, it was a long, long time ago.”
“Yeah, we were little kids,” Donnie said defiantly. “We’re not anymore.”
“Did he hit Justine, too?”
“Not ever,” Stevie replied. “Teeny was his little princess. And we were his dogs. But the old man couldn’t hurt
