“What is it?” Louise spat the words at him.
“If I’d knocked you up, I wouldn’t’ve run out on you. And you know darn well that’s so.”
She did. He could see it in her face. He could also see that she would sooner have been dropped into the supervolcano than admit it. “Maybe you’d better take me back to work,” she said glacially.
“Okay.” He tossed a five on the table, then paid the bill at the register. Rain started spattering down as they walked across the lot to his car. He held the passenger-side door open for her. She got in with the air of Marie Antoinette heading for the guillotine.
Neither one of them said much as he drove north to Braxton Bragg Boulevard. Just before he turned in to the fortified lot, Louise murmured, “I wish… I wish things could have been different.”
“A lot of people do,” Colin agreed. Cops saw that every hour of every day. “But by the time they make the wish, it’s already too late. Take care of yourself, Louise, whatever you decide to do.”
“Like it matters to you!” she flared.
“It does,” he said. “We can’t go back to square one, though. You’ve got your life to live, and I’ve got mine, and they aren’t on the same track any more.”
She slid out and slammed the car door. Then she hurried inside; the rain was coming down harder now, and she didn’t have an umbrella with her. The guard nodded to Colin as he left the lot. He gave back a wave that was half a salute.
When he sat down at his desk again, Gabe asked, “Do I want to know how that went?”
Colin thought for a moment. “Even worse than I expected,” he said judiciously.
“Aii!” Gabe winced. “They said it couldn’t be done!”
“Oh, it could, all right.” In a few bleak words, as if he were summarizing a case on the witness stand, Colin explained how.
“Oh, man. Oh, wow, man.” Sanchez shook his head. “That happened to me, I wouldn’t’ve come back here. I’d’ve found somewhere quiet and got loaded.”
“I’m on city time now not on mine,” Colin said. “And I did too much drinking right after we broke up. It’s a bitch, all right, but she’s just not my problem any more.” He packed the words with more emphasis than he usually used. Was he trying to convince himself as well as his friend? He wouldn’t have been surprised.
“You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din,” Gabe told him. “Now, are you gonna give your new squeeze the good news?”
That was a more interesting question than Colin really liked. Reluctantly, he nodded. “Don’t you think I’ve got to? If we’re going to make some kind of life together, she needs to know what’s going on with me.”
“I guess.” Gabe sounded anything but sure. “I don’t know who it’ll be rougher on, though, you or her.”
“Oh, my God, Colin! How totally awful for you!” Kelly exclaimed when her fiance reached the end of his story. Here and there getting through it, he’d sounded more like a machine running on clockwork than a flesh- and-blood human being. She had the feeling he couldn’t have made it through without shutting down most of what he was feeling.
“I’ve had lunches I enjoyed more,” he allowed. “Hey, I’ve had teeth pulled I enjoyed more.”
“I believe you. I wish I could be down there to give you a hug,” Kelly said.
“That’d be good,” Colin said. “So now I’ve got to set up a skip trace on this clown. Just what I want to do.” He couldn’t get it out of his mind.
“You could just tell her to forget it. She’s got a lot of nerve, dropping that on you after she sashayed out the door.” Kelly thought she needed to remind Colin of that. If Louise wanted to sashay back into his life, how interested would he be? They’d had a lot of years together. If she could work it so the ones that had passed since she left him somehow didn’t count…
Carrying her lover’s baby made that harder. But if she decided to visit a doctor, she wouldn’t have to carry it long. Then again, Colin had never struck Kelly as being good at forgetting.
His electronically transmitted sigh in her ear did everything a real one would have except ruffle her hair. “Hon, if some guy ran out on a woman I’d never heard of before and left her pregnant, I’d put out a skip trace on the so-and-so.” He sighed again. “I wish this were some gal I never heard of. I wouldn’t get all messed up inside dealing with her then.”
“I bet you wouldn’t!” Kelly exuded righteous indignation. “She gave you one in the eye, and now she wants your help? Some nerve!”
“Yeah, well, I pretty much told her the same thing.” Colin hesitated, then went on, “In case you’re wondering, like, I wouldn’t take her back on a silver platter. That’s all over now. I’m better off, and I’ve got the sense to see it. Just so you know.”
The supervolcano had shot global warming right behind the ear. The ice pack in the Arctic Ocean and the one around Antarctica were both spreading and thickening. Kelly had some satellite data on her kitchen table somewhere. She could dig it out…
Thickening ice packs or no, a glacier in the middle of her chest suddenly melted all at once. Glorious warmth spread from the spot where it had been. “I did know,” she said, which was true and false at the same time in a way scientific data couldn’t be. She’d been pretty sure of the one thing, while still worried about the other.
“Happens I love you,” Colin added, as if he’d been an innocent bystander when that somehow happened to him.
“It works both ways,” Kelly assured him. She didn’t like to get mawkish. She had no intention of going Bridezilla when they made things official. She still marveled that he’d got up the nerve to propose, and that she’d had the nerve to say yes, or even sure. The percentage of women who passed thirty single and stayed that way permanently was large, and getting larger by the year. She was bucking the odds.
“Okay. Good.” He sounded like someone who needed assurance, or at least reminding. Then he said, “Keeping that in mind makes it easier to cope with Louise.” He chuckled harshly. “Teo was always everything I wasn’t. He was sweet. He was caring. He listened to Louise-”
“You listen!” Kelly interrupted. “Whenever we talk, I always think how I’ve never known anybody who listens like you.”
“Louise didn’t think so. She wanted out, and Teo was her way out.” Another chuckle. “Then he wanted out, too.”
“He was everything you weren’t,” Kelly said. “You never would have done anything like that. Even if you had got somebody pregnant, you would have stuck around afterwards.”
“One more thing I told Louise. I do like to think so,” Colin said. “But who knows? Sometimes you just can’t cope, so you run.”
Kelly snorted. It was much easier to imagine Colin sticking like glue even when that made him a goddamn nuisance than to picture him breaking and running. She wouldn’t have minded had he run from Louise-just the opposite, in fact. But that wasn’t his style, and never would be.
“Anyway, now you know,” he continued. “You needed to, because I’ll have to give Louise whatever cop-style help I can.” No, he wouldn’t run. He said, “If she ends up having this kid, though, you’ve got to remember it ain’t mine.”
That made her laugh in surprise. “I promise,” she said.
“Okay.” Another pause from Colin. Then he said, “Son of a-” and broke off very abruptly indeed.
Kelly had long since seen that he didn’t like to cuss in front of her. He must have bitten off something juicy. And he must have had reason to bite it off. “What?” she asked.
He sounded thoroughly grim as he answered, “Somebody’s gonna have to tell the kids about this. Two guesses who draws the short straw. Won’t they be thrilled to find out they’re gonna have a new half brother or half sister?”
Quite a few words for grown children’s reactions to news like that went through Kelly’s mind. Thrilled didn’t make the list. “Don’t say anything right away,” she urged. “Maybe your ex will take care of it for you-”
“Ha!” Colin delivered a one-word editorial.
“-or maybe she’ll decide to get rid of the baby, and in that case there won’t be anything to tell.” Kelly resolutely pretended he hadn’t broken in.
“No, huh?” he said. “She’ll have to explain-or I’ll have to explain-how come dear, sweet, wonderful, loving Teo isn’t in the picture any more. He just disappeared for no reason at all, right?”
