1
Callum MacDonnell woke up in a cold sweat and managed to stifle a yell at the last minute. He caught his breath, then rolled out of bed as softly as possible so as not to disturb Cat. Not easy at six foot five, and two hundred and fifty pounds. The light from the street tinted him the same shade of blue as his eyes, like snow under moonlight.
“You don’t really think I’m still asleep?” his wife said groggily from the other side of the bed. Catherine MacDonnell propped herself up on her elbows. “You were thrashing around like shark prey.”
“Sorry,” he said, and sat back down on the bed.
Cat hoisted herself up from the mattress and rested her chin on his shoulder straining to keep her eyes open. “Bad dreams again?” she asked, rubbing his back.
The same dream had plagued Cal for almost two weeks now. He tried to retain the peculiar details of his nightmare even as they dissolved into the ether of his memory. The lack of sleep affected him on patrol, and in New York City that could get a cop killed, especially in his precinct.
“Want to talk about it?” Cat asked.
“It’s probably just stress,” Cal said.
“Maybe you’re worried about the ESU exam?” She slid her fingers up to the back of his neck and kneaded the tension out with an aggressive thumb. Cal responded instantly. His shoulders dropped, his head bobbed to the side, and his muscles softened.
“No,” Cal said. “I’ll ace it.”
“Maybe you’re stressed because you’re having reoccurring nightmares.” She kissed his cheek.
Cal smirked. “You missed your calling as an analyst.” He let her dig into his neck and shoulders for a little while more. He’d been reluctant to discuss the dreams because of how strange they were-both in content and familiarity. “This dream feels like I’m living a memory,” he said to his wife. There, it was out.
That prospect brought Cat further out of her sleepy haze. “Cal, could it be you’re remembering something from before the accident? From your childhood?”
“I don’t think so. What I’m dreaming… it’s surreal. I’m in a stone building; there’s a fight; someone tells me to go through a door.”
“Who told you? Did you recognize a face? A landmark?”
“I was with a group. We were going on a trip. We had a talking horse…”
“A what?”
“It’s weird. At the end, there’s this intense grief, a pressure like a moose standing on my chest. Like somebody died.”
The thought of that pain made Cal tense up again. He squeezed the bridge of his nose hard and realized he needed an Advil.
“And then…,” Cat prodded.
“That’s when I usually wake up. This is the kind of stuff a fifteen-year-old boy dreams of,” he said, frustrated. “I just want a full night’s sleep. I am feeling stretched thin.”
They heard a shuffle in the hallway. The door to the bedroom creaked open.
“Hi Pa,” said their five-year-old daughter, Brianna, in a sleepy voice. She stood in the doorway in her flannel Dora the Explorer pajamas, clutching her Elmo doll in her hand. A testament to modern-day marketing.
“Bree, you should be in bed,” Cat said, a bit annoyed.
“I heard talking,” she offered as her excuse.
Catherine MacDonnell was the law in the MacDonnell home, which was the way Cal liked it in lieu of life in the outside world: long patrols, city politics, and administrative headaches. Her temper was legendary in the neighborhood when someone broke that order. Her hypnotic gunmetal-gray eyes and raven hued tresses-a gift from her Sioux grandmother-gave her a formidable presence, despite her small stature. She could turn whatever spot she stood on into the center of the universe when the mood suited her.
But, despite Cat’s protestation, Cal was happy to see Brianna. She was his anchor-his only known blood relative in the world, and he never lost his patience with her. “Don’t you have school in a few hours?” Cal said halfheartedly.
Bree looked at her father seriously and said, “It’s only kindergarten. All we do is color and play games. And then they make us take a nap so the teachers can relax.”
Cal laughed. Even Cat had to fight off a chuckle. “When did you get to be so smart?” Cal asked, holding his arms out. Bree jumped into her father’s massive arms, the safest place in her universe.
“Oh, don’t encourage her, Cal. We all need to go back to sleep,” she said looking at their daughter.
As if on cue, Maggie trotted in wondering who had called a family meeting at this hour and could she get a cookie out of it. The pit bull-lab mutt barked to announce her arrival, then jumped on the bed and proceeded to lick Bree like an ice cream cone.
“Brianna MacDonnell, get to bed this instant,” Cat said. “Maggie down!”
Cal knew better than to push his luck. He gave Bree a peck on the cheek and put her down with a pat on the butt. She left the room with Maggie in tow. Cat shook her hair, a bit flustered at the chaos. She studied her husband.
“You’ve got to see someone about this. You can’t keep going to work strung out on no sleep. It’s affecting all of us.”
“I know. I’ll make an appointment with one of the department shrinks.”
“Today?”
“Yes, right away,” Cal said, rolling his eyes. He lay back down on the bed facing the window, staring out at the winter sky.
Cat snuggled next to Cal and put her arm around him. She kissed him tenderly on the temple and then rested her head against his. “Don’t be mad,” she said. “That little girl needs her daddy to come home safe every day.”
“What about this little girl,” he said stroking her arm.
Cat snuggled closer and wrapped her leg around his. They stayed that way until they both fell asleep.
2
It was the silliest domestic dispute Cal and his partner, Erin Ramos, had ever been called on. The complainant was a seventy-three-year old recent emigre from El Salvador who accused her seventy-eight-year old husband of hiding her teeth because she refused to have sex. Perhaps the ambience of the South Bronx was not as conducive to romance as the Salvadoran countryside. A shouting match ensued, followed by the husband’s playfully spanking his wife on the rear end with a spatula. She responded with a rolling pin to his head. One of the neighbors called it in.
“Technically, he battered her first,” Erin noted.
Embarrassed by the sudden appearance of the law, the wife was on her third straight minute of explaining her story without coming up for air. Erin tried to keep up for Cal’s sake.
“She says she’s in America now,” Erin translated. “And doesn’t have to perform ‘wifely’ duties when she has a headache. There was an article in the Spanish Cosmo at the manicure shop.”
Neighbors spilled into the hallway to witness the commotion.
“Everyone back in their apartment, por favor!” Cal said. He squeezed the bridge of his nose, trying to drive the fatigue from his mind. “I don’t have the energy for this tonight. What’s the husband say?”
The husband, holding an ice pack on his little bald head, stood about four-foot-nine in slippers. His green
