“What for? It’s no big accomplishment to break your wrist.”
“For being so brave and strong and mature. You were very considerate with Mr. Monk when he wasn’t very considerate with you.”
“That’s not true, Mom. Mr. Monk is scared of hospitals but he came with us anyway,” she said. “He must really care about me.”
“He does,” I said.
“Now he knows that I care about him, too.”
“That’s why I’m so proud of you,” I said. “You’re worrying about how other people feel at a time when you should only be worrying about yourself.”
“There is no such time,” she said.
“Who says?” I asked.
“I do,” she said. “It’s something I decided.”
I’d spent so many years teaching my daughter how to think, but I’d missed the moment when she’d started thinking for herself. My little girl was growing up into someone with her own beliefs and opinions about life.
When had that happened? And why was it bringing tears to my eyes? I was turning into an emotional wreck.
“You still haven’t told me what you’re mad about,” Julie said.
“I’m mad at the Killer Cleats for playing so rough. I’m mad that you got hurt. And I’m mad that both of your arms are in casts when only one of them needs to be.”
“And you’re mad that Sharona came back.”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “that, too.”
“If you lose your job,” Julie asked, “will Mr. Monk still come to see us?”
“I hope so,” I said.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mr. Monk Can’t Decide
When we got home, I took the extra cast off Julie’s left arm, made us both grilled cheese sandwiches and gave her a couple painkillers. She went to bed early that night and was asleep within a minute. I went to bed early, too, but sleep didn’t come as easily for me.
I was really troubled about Sharona coming back into Monk’s life. I won’t lie to you, I felt threatened.
Monk wasn’t an easy man to work with. I was hired to take care of him, to be his caretaker, his driver, his shopper, his secretary and his companion. It was a real struggle at first.
Over time, though, that relationship had changed and things got easier for both of us. I wasn’t just taking care of him anymore—he was taking care of me, too. I had come to rely on Monk, and he on me, in ways that went beyond employer and employee.
If you set aside Monk’s phobias and hang-ups, we had a lot in common. We’d both lost a spouse to a violent death— my husband, Mitch, was a Navy pilot shot down in Kosovo. I never found out exactly what happened to Mitch and Monk is still haunted by his wife Trudy’s unsolved murder.
When Monk and I met, we were both reeling from our losses and trying to cope. We still were, but at least we had each other to lean on. We understood each other’s pain without having to explain a thing. It was nice to know that someone did and that meant a lot to me. It made me feel less alone and I think it did for him, too.
Monk had also become the only dependable, constant man in my daughter’s life since Mitch was killed. Sure, I’d dated some men, but there hadn’t been any real romances (though I almost fell for a firefighter once, a guy named Joe Cochran, who still pursues me. Sometimes I wish I’d let myself get caught, but I was afraid I’d lose him to a fire the way I lost Mitch to a war). I didn’t introduce Julie to many of the men and I never brought any of them home to spend the night. I didn’t want Julie to get attached to a man only to have her heart broken when he left.
I never thought that she’d see Monk as anything but my strange boss or that she would come to care for him so much. I guess that, despite all his eccentricities, Julie knew she could count on him.
Monk was the ultimate creature of habit and a man who strenuously resisted change. Sometimes, where kids are concerned, that can be a good thing.
The three of us spent a lot of time together doing mundane, domestic things that had nothing to do with my job. It was comfortable, and it was safe, and I didn’t want to lose it.
And I knew that I would if Monk fired me and gave Sharona her old job back.
But Sharona had a big edge over me. She was the one who’d saved Monk and she always would be. No matter how long I worked for him, or how close we became, I couldn’t beat that. He’d forgive her for just about anything. I would always be in second position.
It scared me.
But like Julie said, I’m a Teeger. I wasn’t going down without a fight. And I’d pretty much decided at the hospital that my relationship with Adrian Monk was something worth fighting for.
I would have gladly let Julie stay home from school on Monday but she insisted on going anyway. I think she wanted to show off her cast and prove how tough she was, which was fine by me. I promised to take her around our bohemian Noe Valley neighborhood that night to offer the merchants along Twenty-fourth Street the chance to advertise on her arm. In the meantime, Julie was going to give some thought to the advertising rates she wanted to charge.
I thought she had a pretty good chance of finding some takers. We were living in San Francisco, after all, where people enthusiastically embraced the weird, the radical and the crazy. It was no wonder that Monk was so comfortable
