But even as she held her son close, Evangeline’s mind refused to shut down. Snippets of the day’s conversations kept rolling around inside her head.
Maybe she was. Maybe the reason she clung so hard to her obsession was because when she finally let it go, she would have to let Johnny slip away, too.
And Evangeline wasn’t ready to say goodbye. She wasn’t sure she ever would be.
After the baby was fed and bathed, Evangeline put him in his swing while she examined the box Jessie had left on the table.
The package had been sent via UPS by a local company she’d never heard of and the return address was a post office box rather than a physical address.
Being a cop and naturally cautious to boot, a strange package would normally have given her pause, but her mother had recently developed a mean shopping addiction, which, Evangeline suspected, was in retaliation for her father’s perceived neglect.
In the past few months, Lynette Jennings had entered the world of home shopping networks with a vengeance—cubic zirconia jewelry being her favorite indulgence—and lately she’d also discovered the Internet.
To conceal her expensive obsession, she’d started having some of the packages shipped to Evangeline’s house. Although Evangeline had long ago concluded that if her father were home as rarely as her mother let on, he probably wouldn’t even notice all the deliveries anyway.
But that little contradiction didn’t seem to faze her mother, who seemed to get a perverse pleasure from thinking that she could still pull the wool over her husband’s eyes.
So Evangeline kept her observations to herself. The last thing she wanted to do was get caught in the middle of her parents’ squabbling. She tried her best to stay neutral, but if everything her mother told her was true, she could only deduce that her sixty-year-old father had slowly but surely lost his mind.
But she was too tired to worry about all that tonight.
As she tidied up the living room, she started to place the box by the door so she’d remember to take it to her mother’s the next morning. Then she changed her mind, and thought, what the heck? Her name was on the label so she might as well take a peek inside. A diversion would do her good, and besides, sometimes her mother actually did order things for her and the baby.
Removing the packing tape, Evangeline unfolded the flaps and removed a layer of bubble wrap. Nested inside sheets of pale blue tissue paper was a mobile made out of origami cranes. Each was done in a different color and pattern, but the shape and size were identical.
Lifting the mobile from the box, Evangeline carefully untangled the gold cords from which the paper cranes were suspended.
“See the pretty birds, J.D.?” She held them up so that her son would notice them.
There wasn’t a card, but Evangeline knew the mobile had come from her mother. Who else would spend good money for a bunch of paper birds?
“That Nana. I’d hate to be the one paying her American Express bill these days. But that’s not our problem, is it, J.D.?” Evangeline placed the mobile back in the box and got to her feet. “Let’s go put this on your bed.”
She laid the baby in the crib while she fastened the mobile to the rail. J.D.’s arms and legs flailed excitedly as she wound the music box. But once the melody started to play and the cranes took flight, he grew very still, almost as if the sound had a hypnotic effect on him.
The tune was something lovely and haunting, and it seemed familiar to Evangeline, but she couldn’t place it. The soft tinkle was like a memory that flittered just out of her reach.
As soon as the mechanism wound down, J.D. started to fuss, so Evangeline turned the key a few more times.
The same thing happened when the music stopped.
He grew very agitated only to fall silent the moment the melody started up again. After five or six turns, his little eyes started to droop and finally he drifted off.
For the longest time, Evangeline stood beside the crib, watching her son sleep.
When will it happen? she wondered.
She loved him, of course, but she’d never felt that overwhelming rush of emotion that new mothers were supposed to experience when they looked at their babies. J.D. still seemed like a tiny stranger to Evangeline, and more often than not, she felt completely out of her depth.
She did everything a mother was supposed to do for her child. She fed him, bathed him, walked the floor at night when he couldn’t sleep. She even made time to cuddle. But it wasn’t enough, and Evangeline knew there was something lacking in her.
The baby whimpered in his sleep as if even then he could pick up on her mood.
He was so sweet and so innocent and so totally at her mercy. The notion that she and she alone was responsible for his well-being overwhelmed Evangeline, and she’d never in her life felt so inadequate.
“I’m doing the best I can,” she whispered.
Johnny’s voice.
It was a question she’d asked herself a million times since the rainy Tuesday night her baby had been born.
Turning out the light, she tiptoed from the nursery and headed for the kitchen, where she poured herself a glass of wine. Grabbing the baby monitor, she went outside to sit on the front stoop for a while.
With twilight came a cooling breeze from the gulf that stirred the banana trees and the night-blooming jasmine climbing up a neighbor’s trellis.
This was the time of day, with the sky still glowing from the sunset and the air soft and perfumed, that Evangeline missed Johnny the most. At times like this, her loneliness seemed bone-deep and boundless.
Down the street, several cars were parked in front of a house blazing with lights. Music and laughter drifted through the open windows, and melancholy tightened like a fist around Evangeline’s heart.
She wondered if they were celebrating an anniversary or a birthday, or if a casual get-together had blossomed into a full-blown party.
That was the way it used to happen at their place. Not this house, but the home she and Johnny had shared. Almost all of their parties had begun with a few friends dropping by. Then calls would be made, food and drink would be brought in. Before Evangeline knew it, their tiny house would be brimming with cops and the spouses of cops.
People who worked in law enforcement were an insular bunch, and as with any other group, there were those who fit in and those who didn’t. Most of the cops Evangeline worked with had always viewed her as something of an odd duck, but once she and Johnny became a couple, they’d at least made an effort to accept her. If doubts lingered, it was shelved for Johnny’s sake because everyone loved him.
But since his death, Evangeline was once again the odd man out. Not that she cared about a social life. Even growing up in the midst of a loving family, she’d always been a loner.
But Johnny was the opposite. He’d loved being surrounded by people.
Evangeline supposed his need for company came from being so alone as a child. His mother had abandoned him when he was a baby, leaving him to be raised by an aging grandmother who lived in the country. When she passed, he’d been shuffled through a series of foster homes until he was old enough to strike out on his own.
So, yeah, it was easy to understand why family and friends had meant so much to him.
Which made it all the more poignant that he’d died alone, in a deserted parking garage, crawling toward the exit.
Evangeline drew a shaky breath as memories of that night flooded through her.
