Father Christmas (20 page)

Molly unlocked the door connecting the
garage to the house and stepped aside. Michael slipped his hand
into his father’s as they went in.

After moving her car back out to the street,
she returned to the garage and entered the house. John and Michael
were in the kitchen. It was cleaner than she would have expected a
male-dominated kitchen to be, but devoid of decorator touches. The
curtains were plain, the refrigerator without magnets, the days of
the wall calendar marked with an angular scrawl. Michael was seated
on the linoleum floor, struggling to remove his boots. John leaned
against a counter, his face pale and his mouth taut.

“
Sit,” Molly commanded,
figuring he would probably prefer to be ordered about than to be
babied. “I’ll help you with those boots in a second, Michael,” she
added, unfastening her jacket and shrugging out of it. She glared
at John, who hadn’t moved. “Sit,” she repeated. “There.” She pulled
a chair away from the table and pointed to it, then turned her back
on him and draped her jacket over another chair.

By the time she knelt down next to Michael,
he’d triumphed over his boots. He tossed them into a corner and
frolicked off, shouting, “I’m starving! I’m gonna play now.”

Without Michael to focus on, she had no
choice but to look at John. He had freed his left arm from his
jacket and was gingerly easing his right arm through the sleeve. He
tossed the jacket onto the seat of the chair where she’d draped her
parka, then lifted his gaze to her. His cheeks looked hollow, their
contours emphasized by his five-o’clock shadow. His eyes seemed
haunted.

“
Did the doctor give you
any pain-killers?” she asked.

“
Yeah.” He reached into
the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small bottle of pills. He
read the label, then set the bottle on the table. “There’s a bottle
of scotch in the cabinet above the fridge,” he said. “Glasses are
on the shelf above the toaster.”

She caught herself before
lecturing on the dangers of mixing liquor with prescription drugs.
He hadn’t taken one of the doctor’s pain-killers—and he
had
read the label with its numerous
warning stickers. He was a cop; surely he knew what he was
doing.

Gail would give her a long, vehement
reprimand for placing that much faith in him. But Gail wasn’t here
now, and Molly’s only purpose was to make this evening work out for
him and his son.

She dragged a chair over to the
refrigerator, climbed onto it, and opened the cabinet above it.
Pulling down the bottle of scotch, she told herself that just
because she was puttering around in his kitchen didn’t mean she was
making herself at home in his house. Her friend Allison would feel
more comfortable in this situation. She was a nurse, used to seeing
that patients’ needs were met.

Molly brought the chair back to the table
and then located a glass on the shelf he’d indicated. She presented
him with the glass, and the fingers of his left hand brushed hers
as he took it from her. He set the glass on the table, twisted the
cap off the bottle and poured an inch of the gold-hued liquor for
himself. She stuffed her hand into the pocket of her jeans, as if
that would erase the feel of his callused fingertips whispering
against her skin.

“
Would you like me to fix
something for dinner?” she asked brightly. “I could run out and
pick up some fast food, if you’d rather.”

“
I’m not hungry,” he said,
then took a sip. “If you could throw together a sandwich for Mike,
that would be great.”

She surveyed the contents of the
refrigerator, found bread and American cheese, and pulled them out.
Then she eyed John reproachfully. “I don’t care if you’re hungry or
not. You have to eat, too.”

He sent her what began as a scathing look
but softened into a grudging smile. “You’re going to make me?”

She smiled back. “You bet I am. Where do you
keep soup?”

“
Do you boss the kids
around, too?”

“
Where’s the soup?” she
persisted, planting her hands on her hips and giving him her
sternest frown.

He shrugged in defeat, then took a sip of
his drink. “Left of the sink,” he said. “Do you boss the kids
around?”

She swung open the cabinet, pulled down a
can of tomato soup, and proceeded to locate a pot on her own. “Yes,
I boss the kids around. I boss everybody around. That’s me, the
Boss of Bosses. I’m trying to train Michael to say, ‘Yes, Boss,’
whenever he addresses me. I’d also like to train him to salute, or
maybe to bow in my presence, but we haven’t gotten that far
yet.”

John surprised her by laughing. She was glad
she’d managed to defuse his tension and distract him from his pain.
She was also glad she’d gotten her mind off that vision of him
sitting on the ER table, shirtless and unbearably sexy despite his
wounds.

She worked at the stove, stirring milk into
the soup, then preparing cheese sandwiches to be grilled in a
frying pan. Every now and then she heard the dull thud of John’s
glass meeting the table as he lowered it. It was a friendly sound,
the sound of a husband keeping his wife company while she fixed
supper.

Stupid thought,
she chided herself.

“
Why do you call him
Michael?” he asked abruptly.

She turned from the stove and frowned. “As
opposed to...?”

“
Mike.”

She smiled and pivoted back to her cooking.
“If he asked me to call him Mike, I would. He’s never asked.”

John said nothing. She stole a glimpse of
him as she searched the cabinets for bowls and plates. He appeared
to be in deep thought. When she carried the bowls to the table, he
glanced up at her. “That’s nice,” he said. “Respecting him that
way. Not presuming.”

She didn’t respect Michael’s choices to be
nice. Respecting children was the foundation on which the school
rested. But she was glad John thought it was nice, anyway.

“
My family still calls me
Johnny,” he admitted. “They used to call me
Johnny-Come-Lately.”

“
Really?” She treasured
this revelation. John exposed so little of himself, and like a
hungry soul, she savored every small scrap. “Why?”

He shrugged again, then winced and
repositioned his right arm on his lap. “I was always the last to
speak up. If everyone else was shouting, I’d just sit back and
listen until they were all done. Then, maybe, I’d say something—if
I had something to say. I was always late with my comments.”

“
Listening is better than
talking, sometimes,” she said.

“
They thought I was slow.
Not
slow
,” he amended, tapping
his finger against his temple to indicate that he meant mentally
slow. “But slow on the draw. Late to react.”

“
No,” she argued. She’d
seen him react with terrifying speed to the pick pocket on near the
bank on Dudley Street. She assumed that he’d reacted with equal
speed today, when he’d taken on an armed hoodlum. She pictured him
chasing down a man with a big, horrible knife in his hand. She
pictured him knocking the man over, fighting off his slashing
attacks.... The very idea made her shudder.

“
Did you draw?” she asked
quietly, bracing herself to accept whatever answer he
gave.

He frowned. His gaze traced hers to his
right hand, tapped around the spherical gauze packing, resting
motionless on the table. He raised his eyes back to hers. “You
mean, did I draw my weapon on him?”

She nodded and swallowed her anxiety. She
had seen his gun once. She could imagine the metal coldness of it,
the lethal force. The thought that he’d clutched that gun in his
hand, his finger on the trigger, the power of life and death in his
grasp...

She couldn’t stand to
think of him shooting at anyone. But he’d been deflecting the
lunges of a hunting knife. He
should
have shot the thug. Right between the eyes. He should have
killed him without pause, without mercy.

She hated herself for even thinking such a
thing.

“
No,” John said. “The
sidewalk was too crowded.”

“
He could have killed
you.”

John’s gaze merged with hers. The opaque
darkness of his irises let nothing out, or in. “Yes,” he said
laconically. “He could have killed me.”

The scent of burning cheese summoned her
back to the stove—which was just as well, since looking at him,
seeing the torment in his eyes and hearing the detachment in his
voice disturbed her too much. She couldn’t stand to think of him
risking his life as he had that afternoon. Nor could she stand to
think that he could have protected himself and defeated his enemy
only by risking other lives. What an agonizing equation to live
by.

“
Michael?” she hollered,
busying herself with the sandwiches. “Could you please come to the
kitchen? Dinner’s ready.”

Michael raced into the kitchen, skating
across the smooth floor tiles in his socks. “You gonna eat with
us?” he asked Molly. “Daddy, is Molly gonna eat with us?”

“
Yes,” he said so firmly,
she turned off the stove and pulled another bowl and plate from the
cabinet. It seemed easier than arguing with him.

Once the food was on the table and Michael
was strapped into his booster seat, he asked John, “How’s your
boo-boo?”

“
It’s okay,” John said
stoically.

“
Did you get
hurt?”

“
Not much.”

“
Who hurt you?”

Molly could practically feel the waves of
tension emanating from John. He didn’t want to have this
discussion. “Some guy,” he answered vaguely.

“
Why?”

“
Why what?”

“
Why did some guy hurt
you?”

John shifted in his seat and downed a
spoonful of soup. “I don’t know,” he said. “Someone from the Public
Defender’s office will find a reason, I’m sure.” He must have
noticed Molly stiffening as she thought of her sister nobly
defending thugs just like the one who’d gone at John with a knife.
But he didn’t retract the statement.

Disloyal though it was, she couldn’t blame
him.

Michael beamed a smile at Molly. “Musta been
a bad guy.”

“
Musta been,” she said
weakly. Her mind was churning. She wanted to defend her sister. She
wanted to point out that, while John hadn’t fired at the bad guy,
another cop might have shot him, just to prove he had the law on
his side. Another cop might have killed the bad guy without a
moment’s regret, just because being a cop automatically made him
the good guy, and being the good guy automatically entitled him to
shoot a gun.

Right now, her sympathies lay with John.
John, who listened before he spoke, who thought before he acted.
John, who forced himself to consume his soup for Molly, even though
he wasn’t hungry. John, who was sore and battered and had every
right to resent bad guys and the lawyers who defended them—and the
sisters of those lawyers.

Maybe she was a traitor. But tonight, she’d
seen John’s pain. She’d perceived his fear. She’d comprehended his
strength.

Tonight, she was on his side.

BY THE TIME they’d finished their supper, it
was already nearly eight-thirty—Michael’s bed time. Molly offered
to stay long enough to get Michael settled for the night, and John
accepted the offer.

“
Daddy don’t like to give
me a bath,” Michael related as Molly helped him into the
tub.

“
Doesn’t
like
to,” she corrected him. “Why not?”

“
I make it wet
everywhere.” He proceeded to demonstrate, splashing the water with
his hands and sending a spray over the side of the tub, where it
landed half on the floor and half on Molly.

“
Stop!” Snaring his
slippery-wet wrists, she reached behind her for a towel, blotted
the dampness from her sweater and dried the floor. “If you want to
play, you’ve got to keep the water in the tub.” She found a plastic
cup by the sink and handed it to Michael. “You can fill this with
water and empty it out back into the tub.”

“
I dump it!” Michael
boasted, then poured a cupful of water over his head and shrieked
with delight.

“
As long as you keep the
water in the tub.” She lifted his washcloth and swirled it around
under the water. “Look. It’s a fish!”

“
No, it’s not,” he said,
staring at her as if he considered her an idiot.

“
It’s a washcloth fish.
Whoosh!” She pulled it through the water and around his
knees.

He giggled. “I catch the fish!”

But the fish eluded him long enough to swipe
the bar of soap, and when he did finally catch the fish, it managed
to wriggle around, spreading suds across his belly and under his
chin, where grime striped the creases. The fish floated through his
fingers, swam down his back, plunged under the water and then rose
again to saturate his hair for a quick shampoo.

By the time Michael was toweled off and in
his pajamas, his teeth brushed, his time on the potty profitably
spent and his hair combed, Molly’s sweater was almost dry.
“Bedtime,” she announced.

“
No, no, no! I get a
book,” he insisted, darting down the hall ahead of her and into his
bedroom.

She followed as far as his open door, trying
hard to ignore the room across the hall. That was probably John’s
bedroom, a sight she would be better off avoiding. As it was, she
was going to spend her night dreaming about his bare chest, his
strong, graceful arms, the bruises staining the arch of his
ribcage, the flat stretch of his abdomen. She didn’t want a vision
of his bed encroaching on her dreams, too. She didn’t want to know
how big it was, what color the linens were, how many pillows he
used.