by C. M. Newman
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: AMATEUR
“Lookin’ good, Mr. Clean.” Marshall said merrily, patting Vince on the shoulder while they all ate dessert in the living room. “Now we just gotta talk about losin’ that animal on your face.”
“Sorry, it’s staying,” Vince said. “Looks all right otherwise?”
Marshall checked out the back of Vince’s head. “Looks great. Really does. So, how was your week off from chemo?”
“Spent a lot of time with Charlie. It was really nice.”
“How do you feel?”
“Enough with the questions, Marshall, we’re not here to interview him,” Harry said, cutting in and taking a seat near the other two. “Good food. Who cooked?” he asked Vince.
“Sounds an awful lot like a question to me,” Marshall said testily.
“Yeah, whatever. Did you cook all this?” Harry asked as Marshall squeezed Vince’s shoulder and headed to the bathroom.
“Some guy in a white coat and hat did, I’m pretty sure,” Vince replied.
“You don’t love us enough to cook for us?” Harry joked.
“No, I love you too much to cook for you,” Vince corrected.
Harry smiled warmly. “Listen, I’m sorry I haven’t been able to come by more often. You shouldn’t have to offer me food to get me over here. I’ll be making more of an effort, I promise.”
Vince shook his head. “I’m fine, really. I understand more than anyone how busy you guys are, how little you have left in you at the end of the day. Last thing you want to do is…this.”
Meanwhile, Sophie and Angela crossed paths in the kitchen. “Do you know if there are any more forks?” Sophie asked. “I think I lost mine.”
“You lost a dirty fork? In the living room? I’d hate to be the one to find it…” Angela opened up the silverware drawer without looking and handed Sophie a clean fork.
“How’d you know where they were?” Sophie asked.
Angela almost choked on the cheesecake she ate. “I had to look for one earlier. Here, maybe I’ll just put more out. Obviously we’ve got a fork shortage out here.”
“Angela?” Charlie asked, coming into the room with his pajamas on.
“Yeah, Charlie?” she said, bending down and trying to be only as sweet with him as any other woman would be, feeling like she’d already made a blaring slip-up.
“Daddy says it’s past my bedtime,” Charlie whined.
“Well, then, it’s past your bedtime, if that’s what your daddy says.”
“But I wanna stay up with you guys.”
“I can’t undermine your daddy, Charlie. Besides, if you don’t go to bed now, you’ll be all cranky tomorrow.”
Charlie pushed his lower lip out. “Can you tuck me in?”
“Of course I can tuck you in. Let’s go.” She held out her hand for Charlie and he took it. Vince gave them a quick glance as they passed by, but didn’t say anything.
“Can I have some pie?” Charlie asked as he crawled under his blankets.
“That wasn’t pie,” Angela said, sitting at the edge of the bed, “it was cheesecake, and you tried some and you didn’t like it, remember?”
“Oh. Can I have some ice cream?”
“We don’t have ice cream. Besides, you had dessert. You had some cookies that Sophie brought.”
Charlie didn’t make Angela say “no” any more straightforwardly. “Okay…I have to say my prayers now. Then can you read me a book?”
“Of course I can.”
Angela wasn’t sure what to do at first when Charlie knelt beside his bed. “You have to kneel,” he informed her.
“Right, of course.”
“Daddy says he prays on his own but he likes to listen to me pray. Do you just wanna listen?”
“Umm…sure. I would love to. Whenever you’re ready.”
“Dear God, thank you for letting us have a party and thank you for letting all of Daddy’s friends come over and thank you for letting me stay up late, but next time let me stay up later, please. And thank you for all the good food, but next time please have someone bring pie. Oh, and thank you for letting Angela tuck me in. Amen. Okay, now it’s time for a book.”
Angela tried not to laugh at Charlie’s speed at changing subjects. “What’s this one about?” she asked, holding up a chapter book with a creased cover.
“That’s an Arthur book. Let’s read that one.”
“Okay, maybe we can take turns,” Angela proposed.
“Can you start?”
—
Ever since arriving, Harry had been trying to corner Vince. He finally succeeded a while after Sophie and Angela had gone out for a short walk; Vince was just seeing Marshall out of the apartment. “About time I got you alone,” Harry said, clapping Vince on the shoulder and urging him to sit on the couch.
“Sorry…you get cancer and you get pretty popular, as it turns out,” Vince said flatly. He eyed the empty cheesecake platter longingly, wishing he had sprung for a second.
“You really doing all right, Vince?”
Vince didn’t have to force a grin, not with Harry. It came naturally. “Yes, really. It’s been great to spend more time with Charlie. We had a lot of fun this week.”
Harry’s eyes were bright, his ears happy to hear this. “Good. Has uh…” Harry lowered his voice and narrowed his eyes. “Angela been around?”
“She drops by a couple times a week to say hello. Why?”
“Frankly, I’ve been a little worried lately.”
This piqued Vince’s interest. Angela hadn’t mentioned anything negative about work beyond being tired. “What do you mean?”
“She hasn’t been herself lately. It’s obvious she hasn’t been getting enough sleep, which we can all handle during a case, but this has been going on for weeks. She’s irritable sometimes, distant other times. I just wonder if maybe she’s said anything to you.”
Vince needed not conjure up a look of concern. He found one rather easily. “No, she hasn’t. She puts on a happy face when she’s here. I guess it could just be that she’s taking the news a little harder than everyone else or has a harder time hiding it. Or, it could be something else entirely, in which case I’d have no clue.”
“Can you do me a favor?” Harry asked.
“Of course.”
“Talk to her. Ask her how she’s doing, ask if there’s anything she needs to unload. I’ve tried easing my way in, doing it the nice way, but she’s not receptive. I’ve even had the other two try to find a way in, and nothing.”
“You think she’s hiding something?”
“I do. Whether it’s about you, I don’t know,” Harry said, not entirely convincing Vince.
“Is she still performing well at work?”
Harry raised a mocking eyebrow. “It’s Angela. Of course she’s performing well at work. She’s just been PMSing for weeks now and it’s time to find out why.”
“I’ll talk to her next time she stops by,” Vince promised. He eyed the clock. It was still rather early for an adult gathering to be disbanding entirely. “More wine?” he offered.
—
Angela walked out of the building with Sophie after they had hugged Vince goodnight. They had been the last ones out of the apartment. Angela reached her car and stopped in her tracks. “Ah, crap—I forgot my keys inside,” she moaned, hoping it came off as real. “You go ahead. I’ll see you Monday?”
“You sure you don’t want me to wait?” Sophie asked, briskly rubbing her arms. The temperature seemed to have dropped five degrees since they’d gone on their little stroll.
Angela shook her head fervently. “Go, go, go. I’ll be fine.” She prayed that Sophie wouldn’t sit in her car waiting for heat for too long. She couldn’t know that Angela stayed inside for more than a few minutes.
“You didn’t actually have to leave your keys behind,” Vince said to Angela when he opened up the door for her and confirmed that she was alone.
“It’s actually a good thing I did, otherwise I probably
would’ve been holding them out in front of me when I pretended to forget them. Ugh…” Angela stepped out of her shoes and shouldered off her coat, letting Vince slide it off her arms and pull her close.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing, I was just a total amateur tonight. How I ever trick suspects into talking, I don’t know.”
“Relax, everything’s fine,” Vince said gently, leaving a kiss on Angela’s forehead and heading to the sink, which was about to overflow with hot water.
Angela did a tour of the living room and dining room, bussing the tables. “Be careful where you sit. Sophie lost a fork somewhere,” she muttered, handing Vince some dirty dishes.
“Go sit down, put your feet up,” Vince pleaded. “I’ve got these.”
“No, I want to clean. It’s therapeutic.”
“Some might say you need something therapeutic, I guess,” Vince led in.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Vince placed as many dishes as would fit into the sink full of hot, sudsy water, then rested his hand on the small of Angela’s back, guiding her to the living room.
“What’s wrong?” Angela asked as they sat down together on the couch.
“Harry’s concerned about you. He asked me if I knew what might be wrong.”
Angela sighed pressed herself into the cushions behind her. “Am I that bad? Really?”
“Tired, irritable, distant…his words, not mine. But he said you’re still doing your job well.”
“Fantastic,” Angela mumbled. “What did you tell him?”
“That I’d talk to you. He asked me to. He said he’s been trying to ease his way in and you’re not letting him, and that you weren’t receptive to Marshall or Sophie, either.”
“Both true.”
“Maybe you should just…tell them,” Vince said with hesitance. He squeezed Angela’s hand, brushing his coarse thumb over the back. “They care about you. They’re worried.”
“You think they’ll be less worried when they find out I’m seeing you?” Angela retorted. “You know them. The whole team is like that, even me. Maybe not everyone picks and picks and picks just because they suspect something is wrong, like I do…but everyone worries. And that’s all they’d do. Then they’ll try to fix my problem for me, because that’s what they see it as. A problem.”
“You don’t know that,” Vince said, this conversation sounding annoyingly familiar. He wondered how many more times they would have it before Angela finally gave in.
“It’s not a chance I want to take. I’ll put on a better front at work,” Angela insisted.
“I’m not just worried about whether you want the team to know, Angela. I’m worried that there are even those things for them to notice. Tired? Sure, we’ve all had our days, even our weeks or months. But irritable? distant? That’s not you. You’re never really irritable, just incredibly angry from time to time, and that was only ever with me,” he noted. “And you’ve always got your head in the game. What’s with being distant?”
“I think it all stems from being tired,” Angela said, knowing Vince could see right through her lie, but not caring.
“Still haven’t been sleeping well?” Vince asked.
“I’m still catching up,” she said. “Can we please talk about something else? I promise, I’m fine. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
Angela gave Vince a warm stare and a peck on the lips. “I am. Did you have a nice time tonight?”
“I did. I don’t like being the center of attention like that, but it was the only way I could get everyone in one place and feel like the family was back together, you know?”
“Yeah…” Angela switched gears and swung her feet up onto the coffee table. “Did you get a chance to chat with everyone?”
“I did. It was nice. Definitely makes me miss work.”
“Work sure does miss you,” Angela said somberly, resting her cheek against Vince’s shoulder. “At least I do. It’s so strange without you there.”
He assuaged her woes with a few gentle squeezes of the back of her neck. They sat in silence, enjoying the peace they hadn’t had all day. “This is nice,” Vince reflected.
“This is excellent,” Angela murmured. “Blanket?”
From the back of the couch, Vince unfolded what they by now considered to be their blanket and tossed it around them. “Cold?”
“Not now.” The silence had done what it could in the way of settling them both. Being wrapped up together did the rest. Vince didn’t let it last too long, though. He was getting rather tired and knew Angela must be feeling the same.
“See you in the morning for church,” she said brightly at the door, tightening the knot in her scarf. A long cuddle had done wonders for her outlook. “Speaking of which, Charlie saying his prayers is just about the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen…or heard, I guess. Dress code?”
“Whatever you’re comfortable in. And then we can have our little chat with Charlie afterward. Sound good?”
“Sounds perfect. Actually,” she said with a sportive grin, “it sounds incredibly awkward and terrifying, but that’s par for the course these days.”