The Daughter She Used To Be

by Rosalind Noonan

  “I think Mom’s too busy obsessing on trays of lasagna to bring out the tear police.”

  “Well, you just hang in there.” She squeezed Bernie’s hand, and then let it go. “Call me crazy, but I always knew something like this would happen. It’s such a dangerous job they do.”

  “You know the details, right? That they weren’t on duty. They were in the coffee shop.”

  “I know that, but they’re still a target. Always a target.” Lucy squinted as she sorted through the throng of women in the small kitchen. “At least with Dad retired, we just have Jimmy to worry about now.”

  “He’s been teaching at the Police Academy for years. I’d say his risk is minimized.”

  Lucy’s eyes opened wide as she smacked Bernie with a glare. “He still drinks coffee, doesn’t he? He wears a uniform. When you do the math, the risk is there.”

  The back of Bernie’s tongue went sour at the disintegration of Lucy’s tender, loving attitude. How your sister can go from caring to crazy in two short minutes ...

  A neighbor moved away from the table, and Sarah was revealed, hunkered down in her corner.

  “There she is ...” Lucy reached down to hug Sarah, who seemed petite under Lucy’s well-honed arm. “Honey, I am so sorry.”

  Sarah seemed trapped in Lucy’s embrace, and for a moment Bernie wondered if Sarah even remembered who Lucy was. The two had only met a few times, and Sarah was overwhelmed right now.

  Then Sarah murmured, “Thanks, Lucy.”

  “How are you holding up?” Lucy asked, plucking an errant hair from the shoulder of Sarah’s black dress.

  “Still in shock. You never expect something like this ... never.”

  “Of course,” Lucy agreed. “Of course you don’t. How are the girls dealing with it?”

  “I don’t think they understand,” Sarah said.

  “Gracie gets it,” Bernie said. “Did you hear the readings she picked out? She’s a perceptive kid.” Bernie didn’t know why she felt compelled to defend her niece, but she did not want people condescending toward Grace. “Grace understands.”

  “They’re babies.” Sarah let out a gasp, sort of a hiccup of emotion. She covered her mouth, her eyes shiny and distant. “Babies.”

  “In the scheme of a lifetime, that is so true,” Lucy agreed. “I was just telling Bernadette that I knew something like this would happen. When we were kids I worried every time Dad went to work. I would ask our mom, what if some bad man tries to kill him? Do you remember that, Bernie?”

  Bernie shook her head and turned to the counter to pour Keesh’s coffee. One of her earliest memories of Lucy was just a beanpole girl astride her red bike, the wind tossing her unkempt hair as she pedaled off down the street. After that she remembered Lucy fighting with MK and Jimmy over who would get to use the car. No recollections of a worried Lucy, and Bernie thought she would have noticed, since Lucy had slept just across the room. But then, to be fair, Lucy was thirteen years older than her—a teenager when Bernie was born.

  “My parents always ignored me, but the fear never went away.” Lucy’s hands were pressed to her heart, her eyes flooded with sincerity. “I think it’s one of the reasons I had to move so far away, because thinking about the danger every day made me crazy.”

  “Really?” This was a new story for Bernie, and though she didn’t completely buy it, she did see how Lucy was a terrible match for their family. Thank goodness she had found happiness elsewhere. She grabbed the drinks and edged toward the living room. “Excuse me.”

  Now the conversation in the dining room was swirling around the Coffee Shop Killer. She delivered the drinks, then paced casually back to the edge of the archway to listen in.

  “I hear he may not make it?” someone said.

  “Aah, wouldn’t that be a pity,” Sully said sarcastically. “Save hundreds of thousands in legal fees, not to mention the cost of incarceration.”

  “If he’s guilty.”

  “Of course he’s guilty. Black guy dying of a gun wound?”

  “I’m just saying ...”

  “You know, they got partial prints on the water cup. And some blood from the crime scene. A DNA match. Is that enough for you, Drallee?”

  “It’s him,” Sully said. “And we’ll all be lucky if he dies in surgery. Save me the trouble of doing it myself.”

  The guys laughed and giggled at that.

  “Yeah, I can see you over at the hospital, Sully, pulling the plug on his life support system. Like a scene from Two and a Half Men. Oops! I must have tripped over that cord!”

  More laughter.

  “We laugh,” Sully said, “but it’s not far from the truth. A monster like that doesn’t deserve to live. Believe me, I’d take him out myself if I had the chance.”

  A hollow pain sank in her belly as the men laughed.

  “Aunt Bernie?” Conner was trying to get her attention.

  She blinked. “Sorry. What?”

  “Do you want this chair? I can get some folding chairs from the basement.”

  “No, sweetie. No problem.” She rubbed her hands over her arms, feeling chilled to the bone. “I’ll just sit on the couch with my peeps.”

  With a last look at the men in the dining room, she noted that the light of the chandelier was not so flattering on red noses and the burnished silver of beer cans.

  “TV programming on Sundays leaves much to be desired,” Amy said as she scrolled through the channels.

  Bernie sat down between Keesh and Amy, feeling the weight of the day as she sank into the sofa cushion. “It seems like this morning happened ten years ago.” She kicked off her shoes.

  Amy looked down at the floor. “I love your shoes.” She picked one up, her brows raised. “Dolce & Gabbana? Pretty nice.”

  “They’re comfortable.”

  Amy slipped them on and crossed her legs. “Amy like.”

  Lucy stepped in from the kitchen, dipping a tea bag into a mug of steaming water. “So what’s going on in here?” She had such an air of confidence, the way she could take charge of a conversation.

  “We’re waiting for the news,” Erin said. “There might be something about the Coffee Shop Killer.”

  “If they have the info, I’ll bet it’s their top story,” Lucy said as she paced through the room, pausing to stare at an old family photo by the bookshelves.

  Bernie supposed you’d have to be pretty sure of yourself to pick up and move to another place, take on another religion, live a totally different life. Ironically, the Sullivans seemed to think Lucy was the black sheep of the family, but maybe she had proven them all wrong by succeeding.

  It was uncanny how much she looked like Mary Kate, with the same wispy hair, high cheekbones, and blue eyes. They could have been twins but for Lucy’s stylish short haircut and lack of laugh lines at the outer edges of her eyes.

  Lucy strode across the room, glancing toward the next room with a wry smile. “I see Dad is still holding court at the dining room table. Some things never change.”

  “Their discussion would set the criminal justice system back fifty years if it ever left the room,” Keesh said with a deadpan expression.

  So he had heard. Bernie felt torn, wondering if she should try to explain how cops think, or just keep mum.

  “They’re moving on to capital punishment now,” Keesh added. “In another five minutes, they’ll have this suspect, Curtis, getting a lethal injection.”

  Bernie laughed along with the others, though she felt slightly traitorous. Part of her wanted to be sitting at her father’s table.

  “Do you hear them?” Lucy put a hand to her mouth. “Are they for real?”

  In the dining room, someone kept saying: “He’s going to fry.”

  “Lethal injection.”

  “He’s going to fry.”

  “They don’t fry them in New York anymore. It’s lethal injection!” The louder voice shut down ancillary conversations.

  “Okay, okay, lethal injection. Either way, he’
s dead.”

  Lucy swung into the center of the archway, her tweed jacket making her look every inch the college professor. “Gentlemen. Can I make an argument for tolerance and perhaps mercy? Let’s assume that the quote, Coffee Shop Killer suspect is found guilty. Is it really necessary to add any more bloodshed to the savage toll?”

  The ensuing silence was uncomfortable for Bernie. Lucy could command the field, but the other guys weren’t really interested in playing by her rules.

  “I think it is,” James said. “This guy killed three cops, Luce. He killed our brother. I say he has to go.”

  “To prison, yes.” Lucy tipped her mug at the men. “Remove him from society so that he doesn’t have the opportunity to kill again.”

  “The thing is, darlin’, I’m not sure that’s an adequate punishment for the crime,” Sully said.

  “Is there any replacing the lives he took?” Lucy paused, as if waiting for an answer, clearly an adept lecturer. “No. And as for rehabilitation, I heard mention that he’s been in prison already. He may not have ever lived a functional life on the outside. You can’t rehabilitate a person who has never learned to live in our habitat.”

  Everyone was quiet as Lucy stepped up to the table, put her mug down, and made eye contact with each man sitting there.

  “My guess is that this man is mentally ill,” Lucy said solemnly. “Truly, anyone who could perform such a heinous act is mentally ill. To execute a person with a mental deficiency, that’s like executing a child.”

  “Let me ask you this, Luce.” The soft tone of their father’s voice didn’t mask the impatience embedded in his words. “If you were given the choice to execute Adolf Hitler, wouldn’t you have taken him down?”

  Lucy straightened, her chin rising for a moment of thought. “That’s a tough one, Dad. But digging deep for an honest answer, I’d have to say that I’d spare his life. Let him suffer the loss of his freedom for the rest of his life. But I wouldn’t stoop to his level by exterminating another human being.”

  “That’s your right, darlin’.” Sully squinted up at her. “I bet they love you at that college.”

  It was a slap in the face; Bernie knew that.

  But Lucy stood tall. “Tolerance,” she said, nodding at each man at the table. She smiled then, picked up her empty mug, and breezed back into the kitchen like she owned the place.

  When Bernie glanced at her friends, Amy wiggled her eyebrows.

  “I want to be her when I grow up,” Amy said.

  “No, you don’t.” Keesh shook his head. “Besides, your parents don’t care that you’re already argumentative and self-absorbed.”

  Bernie smiled, though she strained to listen to the chatter in the dining room.

  “Yeah, tolerate this.”

  “Drallee. Cut it out.”

  “What’s the latest on the negotiations for the new contract?” Sully asked, wisely changing the subject to a safe topic.

  Bernie wondered why she felt as if she’d just been through the wringer, when she hadn’t argued with the men at all.

  “Hey, it’s on!” Erin pointed the remote at the TV, where the banner read: COFFEE SHOP KILLER SUSPECT ARRESTED, and turned the volume up.

  The mug shot of a young black man filled the screen, and Bernie was surprised that she felt nothing. Was this really the suspect? The skin around one of his eyes drooped slightly and his mouth was crooked, as if he’d thought to smile but changed his mind. And his eyes ... she had thought she would find malice embedded there, as easy to read as a list of his criminal intent.

  Instead, there was only sadness.

  This couldn’t be the killer.

  There were no answers in his eyes.

  The reporter said that neighbors in Curtis’s housing development painted a picture of a quiet, sickly boy who, as a child, had been mocked for his disabilities.

  “Oh, sure, they’re going to say that.” James had paused in the archway to watch. “Every killer has a deprived and abused background. It’s the standard defense now.”

  But what if it was true? Bernie turned away from the television, haunted by the man’s sad eyes. What if he had been abused and denied opportunity all his life?

  And who was this Curtis man to Brendan, her strong, noble brother who was fading from the landscape even though half of the city had spent the day honoring his life?

  Already his seat at the dining room table was taken. His room upstairs held so few hints that he’d ever reigned in his “man cave,” firing away at Nintendo or falling asleep with a book slumped on his chest. The very air in the house, once filtered by his easy grace and humor, now crackled with raw electricity, snapping and mean.

  It was all unbalanced.

  Off kilter.

  He was gone, and no pursuit of justice could ease the ache in her soul.

  Mindless of the din surrounding her, Bernie buried her face in her hands and began to cry.

  Chapter 33

  “Took you long enough to get here.” Indigo cocked one eye at Dr. Dude and his two residents. She was only half-kidding, as excitement and nerves had been high since she’d started feeling tingling sensations in her lower extremities. Dr. Dude, whose real name was Carson something unpronounceable, was a West Coast guy with longish blond hair that looked like it was brightened by the sun. She and Elijah had speculated that he was a surfer dude who went to med school in the Caribbean and made a wrong turn somewhere around Atlanta.

  “Sorry about that, Lady Cop, but you’re not my only patient.” He went to the foot of the bed and rolled the blanket up. “Though you’re my only celebrity patient. I heard that the mayor was here twice.”

  “He was.” Elijah folded his arms across his chest. “I let him in, but all those reporters, I turned away at the door.”

  The shooting had brought out Elijah’s protective instincts, a side of him Indigo had never seen. She had decided she liked being taken care of when she needed shelter.

  “Okay, Lady Cop.” Dr. Dude stood at the foot of the bed, rubbing his hands together like a magician about to perform a magic trick. “Just trying to warm my hands. Sorry, but they’re cold.”

  “Whatever.” Indigo just wanted to know the truth, whether or not the sensations meant she was coming back from this injury. “Just tell me if it’s all real, Doc.”

  Dude reached for the foot of the bed.

  Indigo gasped. “That tickles.”

  The doctor and his two residents froze for a second, then looked at each other.

  With a challenge in his eyes, Dr. Dude lifted his chin. “Let me know if you feel—”

  “Ouch!” She grinned. “That was a trick question, wasn’t it? You were poking me when ... Hey! Stop mauling my foot.”

  “You’ve got feeling again.” Dr. Dude smiled big and proud, as if he’d just conquered Mount Everest.

  “Woohoo!” Indigo’s arms shot up in the air. Victory!

  Even serious, too-cool-to-emote Elijah cracked a smile. “What does it mean, Doc?”

  “It means we can start physical therapy to get your wife walking again.” Dude came to the head of the bed and shook Indigo’s hand. “You did it, Lady Cop. Your prognosis is good. With your determination and spirit, you’ll be walking within the year. Maybe in a few weeks or months. It depends on a lot of factors.”

  “I’m going to be working hard on it. I’m a fighter.” Indigo dashed away the tears that rolled down her face.

  “I’ve seen that.” Dr. Dude patted her shoulder. “You just keep fighting.”

  “She will.” Elijah still had half a smile. “She’s stubborn as all get-out. Indigo doesn’t give up.”

  It was true. She hadn’t given up on Elijah, after half a dozen trips to rehab, months and even years of sobriety, and then back to rehab again. She loved the person he was when drugs and alcohol didn’t pull him under, and she was determined to do anything in her power to keep him alive and in her life.

  She wished she could warn her daughters about the consequences of
falling for a reckless guy who’d been encouraged by his friends and parents to kill the pain with a few beers, a shot of Wild Turkey, a crack pipe passed in the alley behind the bar. Hers would be a cautionary tale: Here’s what happens when you fall in love with a bad boy ...

  When she’d met Elijah she wasn’t a cop yet. It was one of those crazy road trips she used to do with her girlfriends. Out to the Hamptons. Skiing in the Berkshires. Clubbing in Philly.

  Elijah’s family was rooted in Philadelphia. His father, Max, once a professional musician, owned three bars in the city. Elijah had worked for his father at the Blue Step, a downtown club where jazz and hip-hop groups performed on weekends. Sometimes Max brought out his old-timers to do a few jazz numbers. Other times, Elijah sat at the piano and played in with different groups.

  He was amazing on the piano.

  Indigo was not musical, but she recognized genius. The way he’d sit there with his eyes closed, letting the music flow through him. Indigo was convinced that the music came from deep inside him, from that tender, distant place that was so difficult to reach. From his soul.

  The first night she met him, she knew she wanted to be a part of him.

  Those early days when it was all so new, everything had seemed magical. Elijah’s volatile talent and tender kisses. The colored lights and curling smoke, the intoxicating music and pink gin drinks. She remembered his perfect white teeth against the brown of her shoulder and his skin so dark it had a silver sheen in the night.

  He was her drug, thrilling and addictive, and once she had her taste there was no way to resist a deeper sip. It was easy to stay in his place. Just as easy to go with him to church when they learned they had a baby coming along.

  Then came the morning after, time to pay the bills and face the sun. That was when weaving through the layers of talent and tension, the family ties and family secrets, became more than she could handle.

  Eventually, she’d had to leave him in order to save her life and his. When your husband is nodding off while he’s supposed to be watching your baby daughter ... it was time.

  But she had never given up. Stubborn, he called her. Yeah, she was stubborn. She’d moved the baby up here, back with her family, and had gotten hired by NYPD.