When Broker picked Kit up at school, their conversation consisted of three words.
“Kitty?” Kit asked.
“No kitty,” Broker said. After a glum drive home, they walked into the house, and it was immediately apparent that Nina’s morning rally had continued into the afternoon. She still wore the odd outfit, minus the robe, but she’d combed and gathered her hair in a ponytail. The weights were strewn around the living room in a circle that suggested she had been working out. More than circumstantial was the tone of her voice when she saw her daughter:
“Young lady, you are vacuuming all the rugs, remember…”
Broker left them debating over the sound of the vacuum cleaner-Kit trying to make a case that all five rugs were too many demerits to work off.
Broker went into the backyard, making a vague reference to the woodpile. He walked far enough into the woods to verify that the ski pole and bunny were still in place.
All afternoon he’d driven the roads, his thoughts accelerating. He’d lost something. A cushion between his skin and everything else in the world. More and more he felt pressed right up against days full of sharp edges. It was a new sensation for him. Life hurt.
Wasn’t hard to figure out why.
If she really was thawing out…then the truce that had existed between them as he nursed her would also melt away. They’d be right back where they were before Northern Route tricked weird-facing the unresolved issue in their marriage.
Would she go back into the Army?
Would he revert to dangling military spouse? Would Kit again become a bouncing ball between Nina’s duty stations overseas and Broker playing stay-at-home mom?
Suddenly he was in a trip-wire region of resentments that had suspended, hang fire, during her bout of depression. When would they get aired? For starters, she had used Kit as part of her undercover ploy to penetrate the smuggling ring in North Dakota.
So damn consumed by her goddamn mission, she put our daughter in the potential line of fire.
The feud with Jimmy Klumpe was forgotten as he tipped into the pit of grievances he had been saving up.
But.
One day does not spell recovery. Go slow. She was still balanced on the lip of her own pit. So Broker stuffed the clamor back in his head. He carried an armload of oak into the kitchen, built a fire in the Franklin stove, and went through the motions of creating his perfect family hour.
He boiled water for noodles, reheated spaghetti sauce, tossed a salad. Kit came into the kitchen, arms clamped across her chest, dagger-eyed. “Mom is getting mean,” she said.
“No, Mom is getting better. You set the table.”
He followed her as she placed the plates. Then made sure she got the fork on the left, knife and spoon on the right.
Then he served the food and announced, “Mangia.” One of Kit’s favorite imports from her time in Tuscany.
They took their seats.
Kit, eyes down, stared into her spaghetti. The vertical intensity lines made deep dents in her brow.
Nina raised her fork, chewed dutifully, and made an attempt to keep the new normal rolling. “This is good. I’m impressed.”
Broker shrugged.
She continued. “You know, I think Irene is right…”
He looked up at the mention of his mother. “About what?” he said, not used to ordinary conversation with her.
“Well,” she said, “Irene has this theory your stifled creativity gets expressed in odd ways; like in the kitchen, and in the role-playing of undercover work.”
They studied each other in a perfectly routine way for two people who had been married for eight years, who had a child, who knew where all the hot buttons were.
Broker averted his eyes, turned to Kit. “So how’s your food?”
Kit let her fork drop, sat back in her chair, folded her arms tight, and planted her chin on her chest.
“Kit, I asked you a question.”
“If the wolves didn’t eat her, she’s gonna freeze to death.” Not looking up.
“Not now. There’s other stuff we have to talk about, like what happened today at school. How’s the new homeroom?” Broker asked, a bit testy.
Kit raised her eyes in full glower. “She’s the only friend I got to play with. You won’t let me bring anybody over.”
“C’mon, honey, you know it’s just for a little while.” Broker was speaking gently to Kit, but his eyes moved to Nina’s face, concerned the subject would rub her wrong.
“You always say that. But it’s not a little while,” Kit said. Her eyes flashed up, shot an accusing look at Nina, ducked down again.
Nina’s fork trembled in her fingers. Broker reacted. His hand a blur, he snapped the fork in midair before it fell into the plate.
Broker’s sudden movement made his daughter snap alert, wary. Seeing her uncertainty, he slowly set the fork back on the table where it belonged on the left side of Nina’s plate. Then he placed his hands, palms down, on either side of his plate and spoke slowly. “Look, we’ve been over this. Mom needs to get better, okay…”
Kit slowly bobbed her head and said, “Right. So when kids ask me over to play, I have to make excuses why I can’t because you don’t want to meet the parents or have them over here and then the kids don’t ask me anymore and I wind up playing alone on the playground. Dad! They think I’m weird.”
Nina said in a calm voice. “She’s right, Broker. No surprise they’re starting to pick on her. We should have left her with your folks.”
Broker shook his head and said firmly, “No, she’s been left with people half her life.”
Kit grimaced. “It’s not my fault that Auntie Jane and those people died,” she cried, tearing up. “Why do I have to get punished for it?”
Broker and Nina locked eyes; unspoken between them the charge they had robbed their daughter of innocence. Abruptly Nina pushed her chair back from the table. “This isn’t working. We should have left her with your parents,” she restated in a taut, hard voice.
Broker put out his hands in a pacifying gesture. He was losing control of the situation. “Okay. Nina, calm down. We’ll start over.”
That’s when the phone rang.
Broker stared at the Bakelite relic on the wall. When he didn’t move to answer it, Nina got up, picked up the receiver.
“Hello.” Pause, then, “Not bad, how’s yourself.” Her eyes turned to Broker. “It’s Griffin.”
Broker heaved up from his chair, took the receiver, put it to his ear.
“I figured you’d be calling me. Looks like you got a little situation going,” Harry Griffin said, his voice coming to a point.
Good old blunt direct Harry. “Oh, yeah,” Broker said ambiguously.
“You met Keith Nygard, right?”
“We met,” Broker said.
“Well, being the sheriff, he don’t exactly need an invite. But he stopped in to see me. He’s here right now, he’s got some questions for you. Figured he’d put me in the picture. He’s low-key, likes to keep it friendly. He ain’t in uniform. Tell Nina it’s about the crew. Ah, put on your coat and boots. You might be taking a ride.”
Broker picked up the cordless phone from the counter, hung up the rotary, and walked into the living room. When he was out of earshot, he asked, “What’d you tell him? About me?”
“Not a whole lot. That you were a cop; but he’d pretty much figured that out. Up to you how much more you tell him. But he ain’t dumb. Relax, this dustup with Jimmy Klumpe is nothing major, humor him. We’ll be over in half an hour,” Griffin said, ending the call.
Broker walked back in the kitchen and hung up the phone. Saw Nina and Kit watching him. They didn’t get many phone calls. “Griffin’s coming over with a friend. Wants to talk,” he said, sitting down at the table.
He felt Nina’s eyes map his body language. Christ, she is coming back. All the deadly green range-finding optics swimming into focus.
Broker shrugged and sat back down at the table. “Something about the stone crew.”
“Uh-huh,” Nina said.
“Yeah. Wants to look over the woodpile. Maybe take a drive, check out a job.”
“In the dark?” Nina wondered.
“You know Griffin-when he gets an idea in his head, he never quits.” Broker let the thought hang. Then he turned to Kit and said, “C’mon. Eat your dinner.” He picked up his fork and looked down at his own plate, where the spaghetti lay twisted in a meaty red coil like a belly wound.
The sheriff. Great.