Among the Shrouded (11 page)

The
plane, positioned for take-off at last, began gaining speed down the runway.  Within seconds, the wheels left the ground, and the three women began their journey to America.  The land of opportunity.

CHAPTER

18

T
HOMAS

“Thomas?” Mildred called cautiously as she opened the back door of the row house.

“Yes?”
he yelled from the second floor.

“The door was unlocked.  Why are you home
already?” she asked.

He
ran down the stairs two at a time and helped his mother into the house with her armload of groceries.

“I didn’t
do any lineups this afternoon.”

“Why not?  I thought you said you were getting chosen for quite a few
of them.”

“I am.  But I didn’t have time today.”

“Oh?” said Mildred, as she rearranged the contents of the refrigerator to make room for the gallon of milk.

“I went shopping earlier.  I had to buy a new shirt.  Well, new to me.
  I found a nice one at the thrift store on York Road.”

“A new shirt!  You haven’t bought any new clo
thes since I forced you to buy a new pair of jeans a year ago.  You wore that holey pair for months!  What’s the occasion?”

“
I ruined a shirt today,” he said.

“How in the world
did you ruin your shirt?” Mildred exclaimed.

He
continued emptying the contents of the grocery bag neatly into the pantry.  “I used it to save someone’s life.”

“Thomas!”
she responded, nearly dropping a head of lettuce on the floor, “what on earth are you talking about?”

He
explained what had transpired at the picnic lunch that afternoon.  “Mia invited me to dinner at her place Sunday night, so I figured it was as good of an excuse as any to get a new shirt,” he concluded.

Mildred found her way to the kitchen table and carefully
lowered herself onto one of the chairs.  He didn’t know how to respond to her silence.

“Ma?” he said crouching beside her and taking her hand in his.  “Are you okay?”

“As I live and breathe, I never thought I’d see the day.  But he
re we are.  It’s happening.”

“What’s happening?”
he asked with genuine concern.

“You are going to fall in love.  And get married.  And I’m going to have a grandbaby after all,” she said, tearing up.

He began laughing aloud and gathered Mildred into his arms.  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said, smiling at her.  “It’s just dinner.  No one’s proposed.  And the shirt’s not all
that
great, so don’t get your hopes up just yet.”

On Sunday evening, he kissed an excited Mildred goodnight before boarding the bus running service to Parkville.  He was wearing his new shirt, a 1970’s yellow and brown plaid oxford with snaps instead of buttons.  He carried a brown paper bag containing the bottle of merlot, a small bouquet of carnations, and a fiction novel he had just finished about J. Edgar Hoover’s involvement in the formation of the FBI he thought Mia would enjoy.

As the bus app
roached the stop closest to her apartment complex, he found that in addition to being excited to see her again, he also felt as though he was being drawn to her by some unseen force.  It was a feeling he had never experienced before.

When she opened the door,
he presented her with the flowers, and she seemed genuinely touched by the somewhat archaic gesture.  She reached up to place a kiss tenderly on his cheek.  The warmth of her touch was still lingering as he followed her hesitantly into the apartment.

“Did you know
of all the boys I’ve ever dated, you’re the first one to ever bring me flowers,” she asked as she rummaged under the kitchen sink in search of a container large enough to hold the carnations.

“I find that hard to believe,”
he commented.  “For what it’s worth, you’re the first girl I’ve ever given flowers to.”

“I find that hard to believe,”
she said, emerging from beneath the sink with a large mason jar.  “This will have to do,” she said, placing it on the counter.

“
It looks perfect,” he said.  “I brought you this too,” he added, handing her the paperback from the bag.

“Oh,” she said
, scanning at the back cover, “this looks fabulous!  Have you read it?”

“I just finished it the other day. 
Because the storyline is about the FBI, I thought it might be something you’d be interested in.”

“I love crime dramas,”
she said.  “I love them because, unlike in real life, they usually have happy endings.”

“
Don’t most people’s lives end happily?”

“
You
are
cautiously optimistic, aren’t you,” she laughed.  “I suppose they do end happily sometimes.  But not for a lot of the people I see every day.”

“I can imagine,” he said as he watched her taking homemade lasagna out of the oven.  “What made you decide to become a police officer?”

“I didn’t want to
at first,” she replied.  “It was hard, growing up with my dad as a cop.  He was gone a lot.  Worked weird hours.  Drove my mother crazy with worry.  And he brought it all home with him, you know?  It’s hard not to I suppose.  I know I do.  It’s difficult to watch the worst of the world day in and day out and not let it start sticking to you.” 

She
pulled a small bowl of salad out of the refrigerator and handed it to him to set on the table.  She followed behind with a basket of bread.

“When I started college, I’
d chosen pre-law as my major.  During high school I’d decided I wanted to become a judge.  I thought the best way to help the good people of the world was to make sure the bad ones got convicted.”

“So what made you change your mind?”
he asked, as he opened the bottle of wine and began to pour some into both glasses on the table.

“I couldn’t do it.”

“Couldn’t do what?  Surely the workload wasn’t too difficult?”

“No, the studying wasn’t the problem.  It was the waiting.  I realized I was going to have to wait for the bad guys to get to me.  As a judge, I was going to be the end of the road for the criminals.  I began to understand that many of them would never even get to me, behind the
bench in the courtroom.  As much as I hated to admit it, I recognized I didn’t have the patience to be a judge.  I wanted to get the bad guys right away, at the source of the problem.  I needed to become a cop.”

“Just like your dad,”
he commented.

“Just like my dad,”
she said, taking a sip of wine.  “This is delicious, Thomas.

“I’ll tell Belinda when I see her,” he smiled.

She rose from the table and brought the lasagna from the kitchen.  As he watched her crossing the room, so obviously comfortable in her own skin, it occurred to him that he could very easily fall in love with Mia Rosetti.

“It sm
ells so good.  I love lasagna,” he declared.

“I’m glad,”
she said.  “I almost didn’t make it.  You know, the Italian girl making lasagna to impress a boy on the first date…”

“Third date,”
he corrected.

“Third date.  R
ight,” she laughed.  “Well, I thought it might be a little cliché, but for some reason I didn’t think cliché would bother you.”

“If cliché
always tastes this good,” he said, taking his first bite, “I’ll have it at every meal.”

“Thanks,”
she replied.  “It’s my grandmother’s recipe”.

The two ate in silence for several minutes,
and he caught her glancing curiously at him several times.  He wondered what she was thinking and hoped he hadn’t said or done something to offend her.

“What is it?  Is there something on my face,” he joked.

“No.  Nothing that doesn’t belong there,” she laughed.    “I was just thinking about yesterday and how kind you were to Mrs. Huggins.  It was really…”

“
Motherly?”

“Refreshing.  I was going to say refreshing.  Most of the men I’m around all t
he time are so busy being tough, they forget to be kind.”  She finished the last of her wine and began clearing the table. 

“I’m not very tough,”
he replied, joining her in the kitchen with his dishes.

“I think you are a lot tougher than you
think you are.  Especially where it counts.”

“Where does it count?”

“On the inside,” she said.  “To live through what you’ve lived through and come out the other side so grounded and, for lack of a better word, normal… that requires some serious intestinal fortitude.  I can’t quite understand how you didn’t end up like so many of the kids I see who fall through the cracks.  The system fails so many of them.  They turn to drugs and alcohol and crime.  You didn’t do any of that.  You just… overcame.”

He
felt the warmth of her compliment but was hesitant to acknowledge it.  Instead, he sidestepped around it with a compliment of his own. 

“Well, it’s a good thing
you’re a lot tougher on the outside than you appear.  I would’ve never guessed you’d have been able to take down that mugger like you did the other day.  That was amazing.”

“It was okay,”
she said modestly.

“It was more than okay and you know it,”
he continued, beaming at her across the kitchen.  “What I can’t figure out is how you knew.”

“How I knew what?”
she asked, loading the last of the dishes into the dishwasher.

“How you knew that the guy was going to attack
Mrs. Huggins.”

He
lifted himself onto the countertop and watched as she placed the leftovers into the refrigerator.  When she was finished, he was surprised when she crossed the kitchen and positioned herself in front of him, between his knees.

“I didn’t know,” she said resolutely.

“Bull,” he said, cautiously placing a tendril of her hair behind her ear.  “You knew.  When you told me to stay put, that guy was nowhere near them.  I had absolutely no idea what you were doing.  There was nothing to indicate he was going to attack them.”

“There was
to me.  It’s just good training.”

“What do they train you in at the police academy?  Seeing
into the future?”

“No.  Nothing like that,”
she said, placing her hands on his thighs and looking up into his eyes.

He
looked down at her.  She was a beautiful wisp of a woman, standing so close he could smell the crisp fragrance of her shampoo.  He felt as though he should be anxious, but instead, he was perfectly as ease with her proximity.

“Then what?” he asked.

“Thomas, can I trust you?” she asked.

“Yes, of course.”

She took his hand and pulled him gently from the countertop.  She led him into the living room where she sat on the overstuffed couch and invited him to do the same.  They sat, side by side, and he reached out to hold her hand.

“I’m all ears,” he said, giving her a grin.  He
assumed she had seen the man’s face on some police rap sheet which alerted her to his proclivity for crime.  Therefore, he had no idea why she was making such a production over disclosing that information.

“I have this gift,” she began.
“It’s an ability, sort of.  I figured out when I was a little girl that I could see people’s auras.”

“
People’s what?” he asked.

“Auras. 
At least that’s what I call them.  It’s hard to describe, but when I look at people, I see them under a veil.  It’s like a shroud of lightness or darkness.  Most people’s auras are light because most people are inherently good.  But some people have dark auras.  They don’t have the light inside of them that encourages them to do the right thing.  And so instead, a lot of times, they do bad things.  Very bad things.  When I saw the man yesterday, at the park, his aura was very dark.  Because his darkness was so close to the surface it indicated to me he was about to do something bad right then.  That’s how I knew.”