A Mother's Love

by Dawn Stewardson

  “They’re estimating three hundred dead. Said the number would be a lot higher if the epicenter had been nearer Guatemala City.”

  “Then it must have been somewhere in that vicinity, which means it was nowhere close to Villa Rosa.”

  That meant her clinic and the people in the town were all safe. Still, she needed to know more than Hank was telling her.

  “I... Would you mind if I phone someone back home?” she said. “To get the details. I’ll put the call on my card.”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  A minute or so later, Hank could faintly hear her in the kitchen, talking. He closed his book and sat gazing at nothing, thinking that as soon as she was finished he’d...

  Man, he didn’t know whether this was a good or bad time to start in about Robbie with her. But he knew he had to do it. He just couldn’t wait any longer.

  It was at least ten minutes before she reappeared.

  “So?” he said, putting the book aside as she sat down on the couch.

  “The epicenter was about forty miles west of the capital, and the quake itself wasn’t too strong.”

  “It was strong enough to kill three hundred people,” he reminded her.

  “I know,” she murmured. “And even if it had only been three that would be three too many.”

  “The news coverage said serious earthquakes are pretty common down there.”

  “Well...I guess that depends on how you define serious. And common.”

  Hank could feel annoyance verging on anger building inside him.

  “I think the figure they mentioned was four thousand significant ones in the past five hundred years,” he said.

  Natalie simply gazed at him. “That’s only an average of eight a year,” she said after a few seconds. “Spread out over the entire country.”

  “Only an average of eight a year?”

  “Hank,” she said slowly, “how many are there in California each year?”

  “I have no idea, but we’re not talking about California.”

  For the second time in barely an hour, he ordered himself to calm down. Then he said, “Look, seeing that news segment really threw me. The idea of Robbie being in an earthquake-prone country for any length of...

  “Natalie, let’s cut to the chase. Just how much time do you want with him? Are you thinking he should spend part of each summer there?”

  He knew she had way longer than that in mind, but the lower he started the better.

  She gave him a sad little shrug. “Before I came here, I was hoping you’d be willing to settle for part of each summer. Now, though...I’ve seen how much you and Robbie love each other. But...”

  “Natalie, there’s an obvious solution to the problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “Well, it would be a million times easier to work out some sort of sharing agreement if you didn’t live in a different country.”

  “But I do. And—”

  “Wait,” he said, holding up his hand. “Just listen for a minute. Please.”

  “All right. I’m listening,” she murmured.

  “Okay. I know you’re happy where you are, doing what you’re doing,” he began in his most reasonable tone. “But getting licensed to practice in New Jersey or New York wouldn’t be a major deal, would it?”

  “No, it wouldn’t.”

  “And if you lived somewhere near here, we could—”

  “Hank, Guatemala is my home.”

  “It’s your adopted home.”

  Even as the words came out, he couldn’t believe he’d said them. He’d just implied that an adoptive home wasn’t the same as a where-you-were-born one.

  Meeting Natalie’s gaze, he waited to see what she’d say in response. She had the good grace to say nothing.

  He sat quietly, giving her a few more seconds.

  When she remained silent, he said, “I just don’t understand why you won’t even consider leaving. I hadn’t realized earthquakes were as serious a problem down there as they are, but you did.

  “And you were almost killed in one. Your husband was killed. Why didn’t that make you want to leave and never return?”

  She slowly shook her head. “That’s like asking why everybody doesn’t leave San Francisco or Los Angeles. I guess, when you live in a place that’s prone to natural disasters you just come to accept them as part of life. Whether it’s earthquakes or hurricanes or tornadoes or whatever.

  “Maybe...I think we sort of convince ourselves that nothing awful will ever happen to us. Or, in my case, won’t happen again.”

  Giving him another little shrug, she added, “Lightning never strikes the same place twice.”

  “That’s not true. Of either lightning or earthquakes.”

  “No...you’re right. But...do you want me to try to explain exactly why I still live there?”

  He nodded.

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “But I have to start way back.”

  She paused, then continued. “When I was halfway through med school, my parents died. Friends of theirs had a small plane, and the four of them were flying to South Carolina for a long weekend. The plane crashed and they were all killed.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She nodded. “It was very difficult to cope with. Med students are always under a lot of stress and that... Well, I think I told you before that I don’t have any close relatives, and I just felt completely alone in the world.

  “At any rate, I managed to graduate—although hardly at the top of my class. Then I took a position with a hospital in Detroit. Working in Emergency, which turned out to be like working in hell.

  “Every night we’d see kids totally wasted on drugs, drunks beaten half to death in brawls, mugging victims sliced up or shot because they hadn’t handed over their wallets quickly enough. There was even the occasional street person someone had set on fire for kicks.

  “I started to think that half the population of the city didn’t put the slightest value on human life—either their own or anyone else’s.

  “And...I’d gone into medicine because I wanted to help people. But all I was doing was patching them up and sending them back out into the night. That really got to me, made me more and more depressed.

  “Then a friend suggested I try something completely different—working in a foreign country, a different culture, and...

  “It was the best advice I’ve ever gotten. Going to Villa Rosa literally gave me a new life. The people there needed me. And they really appreciated what I did for them.

  “Then I met Carlos, and... Do you believe in fate, Hank?”

  “Maybe sometimes,” he said slowly. Things happened and you dealt with them. But he’d never been much of a philosopher, never spent a lot of time pondering why they happened.

  “Well, with Carlos and me it seemed as if fate had brought us together. He was from Spain. I was from Michigan. The odds on us ever meeting had to be a zillion to one. Yet there we were, in the same place at the same time.

  “At any rate, once we were married and had Robbie, my life was better than I’d ever imagined it being. I... Naturally, it hasn’t been that way since the earthquake. Suddenly I was alone again.

  “Only, I wasn’t, really. Once I recovered and went back to Villa Rosa...

  “Hank, the people there were so kind to me. Not only the clinic staff but the entire community. And they still are. It’s... They make me feel as if I’m part of a big extended family. Make me feel that I belong.

  “And it’s where Robbie was born. Where he’d still be if that mistake hadn’t been made.

  “So I want him to get to know the country. To see there are ways of living that are completely different from this one. To learn about wildlife and breathe fresh air and swim in the streams and...”

  She slowly shook her head. “I want him to experience a place where people need me. Where I feel good about myself. And even though I can see how my moving to somewhere near here makes perfect sense to you, I don’t ever want to
be part of a rat race again.

  “I’m happy where I am, and leaving just isn’t something I could do.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HANK AND TRAVIS touched base with a few of the other detectives in Manhattan North Homicide, then headed for the parking garage. Tonight, their first order of business was a drive down to Little Italy so they could drop into the bar their suspect in the Lowenstein homicide frequented.

  “Vests?” Travis said as they reached his car.

  “If you think so.”

  Hank took off his jacket, trying not to grin as his partner popped the trunk.

  While uniformed officers routinely wore Kevlar vests, detectives rarely did. It was just part of the dets’ culture—even though they had special-issue ones designed for wearing under sport jackets.

  Possibly, they were a little too cavalier about not using them. That thought crossed Hank’s mind every time he heard about a detective being shot or knifed on the job.

  But the prevailing attitude was that vests were a pain, only worth bothering with if you were raiding a place. Or serving a search-and-seizure warrant on a suspect you figured was armed and dangerous.

  Travis’s attitude had been no different until he’d gotten engaged to Celeste. Now, though, he was much more cautious. And Hank had no doubt who was behind that.

  But what the hell, he told himself as he put on his vest, then shrugged back into his jacket. He had Robbie to think about. And Joey Noguchi, known on the street as Joey Nogood, probably would be carrying when they caught up with him.

  As for dangerous, he’d been in and out of trouble for years. Most recently, until three months ago, he’d been a guest of the state, serving a stretch in Sing Sing for armed robbery.

  And it wasn’t likely he’d done an about-face while out of circulation. Especially not when a couple of witnesses had put a man matching his description in the vicinity of Lowenstein’s liquor store two weeks back, the night someone had walked in and shot the man point-blank.

  Hank had a gut feeling Joey was their shooter. If he was, arresting him would mean case closed, and it always felt good to put another slimeball away.

  However, step one was finding him, then interrogating him about his activities on the night in question.

  After Travis had driven out of the parking garage, he glanced over and said, “So? Who’s looking after Robbie? Natalie?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’re going to let her do it until Audrey’s back?”

  “I guess,” Hank said, hoping his partner would leave it at that.

  Otherwise, he might end up having to admit that he’d invited Natalie to stay at the house, which he didn’t particularly want to do. Travis would figure he was nuts.

  But he wasn’t, he told himself firmly. Nuts would have been her driving back and forth to the motel all the time.

  Still, he’d already realized that having her right there in the house was far from ideal.

  His attraction to her was part of the problem, of course, although he was handling that—mostly by doing everything he could to ignore it. But the other part was even trickier to deal with.

  The more time he spent with her, the better he got to know her. And the better he got to know her, the—

  “Has she elaborated on her sharing idea yet?” Travis asked.

  “Well, we sort of started discussing it before I left tonight, but we really just talked around it.”

  “Oh?”

  He shrugged, then filled Travis in on the earthquake and what Natalie had said about not leaving Guatemala.

  After he’d finished, Travis said, “A country prone to earthquakes. As if things weren’t bad enough already. But why didn’t you come right out and ask how much time she’s after?”

  “Actually, I did.”

  “And?”

  “She didn’t give me an answer. In fact, I got the sense she isn’t really sure.”

  When Travis shot him a curious glance, he added, “I think she originally came here hoping she’d be able to just take Robbie home with her—that I wouldn’t really care.”

  “In other words, she’s delusional.”

  “I said, hoping,” Hank repeated. “I doubt she actually figured it was likely. But now...now we both seem to have accepted that there’s just no easy resolution to this.”

  Travis glanced at him again. “Don’t forget what I said last night, huh? Because it still sounds as if she’s trying to soften you up. And as if she’s succeeding. But if you agree to too much...”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  Unfortunately, though, what he knew in his head and was beginning to feel in his heart didn’t correlate.

  He had to play hardball with Natalie. Otherwise he might end up losing Robbie entirely. Yet every time he saw the way she looked at the boy, something inside began whispering about how much she’d been through. And how much effort she’d put into finding her son.

  But he couldn’t let that get to him. Because Travis was right. If he agreed to too much he’d regret it forever.

  They turned onto Mulberry, parked down the block from the Blue Cat Club, then walked back to it and flashed their shields for the gorilla guarding the door. He grudgingly gestured them in—much to the annoyance of the people waiting in line for admittance.

  The air inside was smoky, the room dark and crowded, but they found two empty stools at the bar and ordered a couple of beers.

  If they were going by the book, they’d have coffee. In a place like this, though, that would be a dead giveaway they were heat. And if Joey Nogood was here and made them for cops, he’d be out the back door before their eyes had time to adjust to the darkness.

  Hank took a swig of beer, then let his gaze begin drifting casually from table to table.

  They’d never seen their suspect in person, but his lengthy rap sheet meant there’d been no shortage of mug shots. Unfortunately, none of the customers bore much resemblance to them.

  “He’s not here,” Travis finally said.

  “No, but he might show, so how about giving him a few more minutes.”

  They gave him ten, then Hank said, “Okay, let’s head out and try to drop by again later.”

  “Or there’s always tomorrow,” Travis said. “It’s not as if we have nothing else to do tonight.”

  * * *

  “DADDY’S HOME!” ROBBIE called from the living room.

  His announcement sent a rush of relief through Natalie. It was almost ten o’clock and she’d been worrying about why Hank hadn’t appeared yet. Worrying that something had happened to him.

  She didn’t like the fact that she had been. No more than she liked the little buzz of excitement she was feeling. She simply could not let herself get caught up by the mere prospect of seeing him again.

  Peering into the mirror above the dresser, she ran her brush through her hair one more time—then gave up. It was futile even trying to make herself look as if she hadn’t just come in out of a strong wind.

  She could hear Hank’s footsteps on the porch as she headed from Audrey’s bedroom.

  By the time she came in sight of the front door, he was opening it and Robbie was bouncing excitedly in the hallway. He was so obviously happy to see Hank that she cringed a little inside.

  “Hi, Daddy!”

  “Hi, big guy.” He swung Robbie up and tucked him under his arm like a human football.

  “Everything go all right?” he asked her while Robbie squealed and struggled for freedom.

  “Fine. How about with you?”

  “Oh, just another night in the city that never sleeps,” he said, setting Robbie back down.

  “I’m not usually this late,” he added. “We try to avoid being smack in the middle of something at the end of a shift, but it doesn’t always work out that way.”

  She nodded, thinking he looked tired. The little laugh lines at the sides of his eyes were more noticeable than usual.

  “We’re goin’ to the mall,” Robbie said. “Me and Natalie.�
�

  “If that’s all right with you,” she quickly added. “I was waiting for you to get home before we left.”

  “Sure. It’s fine. I’ll be sleeping anyway.”

  Sleeping. She tried to force away the picture that conjured up, of Hank relaxed and peaceful as he slept.

  She’d better work on purging those images from her mind. At least of this particular man.

  “Natalie has ta buy a bear,” Robbie said.

  “A bear?” Hank repeated, giving her a weary smile.

  “At the toy store,” Robbie told him. “But it’s not for me. I’d want a truck.”

  When Hank continued to eye her, clearly curious, she shrugged and said, “It’s for Emma Perez. She lost everything in the fire, including her favorite bear.”

  “Ah.” Hank glanced at Robbie’s feet. “You’ll need your shoes in the mall, so why don’t you go find them.”

  “’Kay.”

  As he started for his bedroom, Hank focused on Natalie again, saying, “I know it’s none of my business, but didn’t we agree that Emma and her grandmother weren’t the best special project for you?”

  “Well...yes. The problem is, I’d already told Cynthia I’d help with them.”

  “Ah,” he said again, his dark gaze holding hers. “On the job, it’s sometimes hard to stay emotionally detached. But we make a point of it. I’d assumed doctors operated under the same principle.”

  “And you’re saying I’m not? That I’m getting emotionally involved with Emma? By buying her a stuffed animal?

  “Hank, we’re talking about a seven-year-old child who’s in traction, lying in a bed twenty-four hours a day. With virtually no visitors except for me.

  “Yesterday, her grandmother wasn’t even there because she was sick. So if I can make her a little happier by giving her a bear, I’m going to. And I hardly think that constitutes getting emotionally involved.”

  He slowly shrugged. “As I said, it’s none of my business.”

  “Got ’em,” Robbie called, scurrying back down the hall with his shoes in his hands.

  “Then we’d better get them on you,” Natalie said.

  She knelt down beside him, thankful the shoes hadn’t been hard to find. Because if she wanted to buy Emma a bear it wasn’t any of Hank’s business. And she didn’t want to discuss it with him.