“undetermined.”
“Unless that. But this is a teenager.”
“It happens.”
Ryan did show up that night. I’d showered and blow-dried my hair. And, yes, I confess, applied mascara and lip gloss and a spritz of Alfred Sung behind each ear.
The buzzer warbled around nine. I was reading about FTIR spectroscopy in the
The security screen showed Ryan in the vestibule, birdcage at his feet. I buzzed them in, welcomed both warmly. After greeting and ear scratching the cat, Ryan accepted my offer of a beer.
While I poured Moosehead and Diet Coke, Ryan settled Charlie on the dining room table. Birdie assumed his sphinx pose on one of the chairs, head up, paws in-curled, every sense fixed on the cage and its occupant.
Charlie was in top form, perch hopping, seed spewing, head cocking right then left to eyeball the cat. Every now and then he’d fire off a line from his repertoire
Ryan took Birdie’s end of the couch. I took mine, feet tucked under my bum. Again, we established that our daughters were good. Lily was waiting tables at Cafe Cherrier on Rue Saint-Denis. Katy was doing a summer Spanish course in Santiago, Chile.
My Montreal condo is small. Kitchen, bedroom, den, two baths. Only the main living area is spacious. French doors open from opposite sides, the north set to a central courtyard, the south to a Lilliputian-sized patch of grass.
Stone fireplace. Glass dining table. Yellow and blue Provencal sofa and loveseat. Cherry-wood moldings, window trim, and mantel.
As we talked, Ryan’s eyes roved from object to object. Pictures of Katy. My younger sister, Harry. My nephew, Kit. A ceramic plate gifted from an old woman in Guatemala. A giraffe carving purchased in Rwanda. Rarely did his gaze meet mine.
Inevitably, we drifted into shop talk. Safe, neutral ground.
Ryan had been working special assignments since the death of his partner several years earlier. He described his current investigation.
Three girls missing. Two others found in or near water. And now there was the Lac des Deux Montagnes floater. Six in all.
I told Ryan about the burn victim, the Doucets, and the Rimouski skeleton en route to my lab. He asked who was responsible for the latter. I described my meeting with Hippo Gallant.
Ryan said Hippo was inputting on his missing persons and DOA’s. Thus, we drifted into the inevitable Hippo stories. The time he left his gun behind in a gas station men’s room. The time he pulled a suspect from a culvert and ripped his pants up the ass. The time a collar took a dump in the back of his cruiser.
Conversation was genial and friendly. And brotherly as hell. No mention of the past or future. No body contact. The only references to sex were those made by Charlie.
At ten-thirty Ryan rose. I walked him to the door, every cell in my brain screaming that what I was debating was a
Not for the first time, I ignored the advice of my instincts.
“Talk to me, Ryan.” I laid a hand on his arm.
“Right now Lily—”
“No,” I blurted. “It’s more than Lily.”
The cornflower blues refused to meet mine. A beat passed. Then, “I don’t think you’re over your husband.”
“Pete and I have been separated for years.”
Ryan’s eyes finally locked home. I felt something hot coil in my belly.
“Operative word,” he said, “‘separated.’”
“I hate lawyers and paperwork.”
“You were a different person when you were with him.”
“The man had been shot.”
Ryan didn’t reply.
“My marital status never mattered in the past.”
“No. It didn’t.”
“Why now?”
“I hadn’t seen you together.”
“And now that you have?”
“I realize how much you care.” Before I could speak Ryan added, “And how much I care.”
That stunned me. For a moment I could think of nothing to say.
“Now what?”
