Jackie returned just before Christmas as if that had been her intention all along. She and Davis fell back into their marriage of few words. Davis restarted the small talk with Joan, even buying her a weekday lunch at Rossini’s.
Anna Kat had been dead for three years.
Justin at One
– 14 -
Every spring on the Northwood Garden Walk, a guide from the historical society described the process contractors followed when building a new home within town limits. An ordinance prohibited construction of any new house if a computer in the assessor’s office found it to be “in excess of fifteen percent similar” to an existing house. To gain approval, the architect’s drawings were scanned and the locations of rooms, sizes of door frames, and placements of stairs were checked against every home in town. Minutes later, a number emerged with recommended changes ensuring the unique nature of each Northwood residence.
The Finns’ gigantic Victorian-style home had scored 1.3 percent on the assessor’s scale. No alterations necessary. Spanning two generous lots, it was much larger than it looked from the sidewalk, with much of the interior space hidden in turns and angles not visible on the outside unless seen from overhead. Terry hired a pilot and a photographer to fly over the neighborhood and snap such a picture so he could show it to befuddled friends who marveled at the roominess inside. “It’s like Dr. Who’s Tardis,” Terry liked to say. Martha still didn’t know what he meant by that, despite his attempts to explain. She laughed and called him “geek.”
Davis parked across the street, having passed by it once, lost in thought, wondering if this was a good idea, to violate the see-without-being-seen policy he had maintained since Justin’s birth. He palmed the toy, which Jackie had been kind enough to intercept and wrap when she saw him heading out the door with it.
“What’s so special about this boy?” she asked.
“They’re all special,” he replied, and she casually added this to the list of secrets he kept from her.
“Dr. Moore,” Martha Finn said when the door was open only a crack. “What a surprise! We must have the healthiest house on the block today between the two of you.”
“The two of us?” Davis wondered quietly before noticing Dr. Burton in the living room across the foyer. He took a long, stiff step inside and Martha shut the door. “Hello, Joan,” he said.
Joan tilted her head and her new black bob angled away from her face as if the part in her hair were a hinge. “Davis!” she said. “What are you doing here?” She recognized right away how condescending that was and regretted it. “I mean…”
“I always like to pay our kids a visit on their first birthday,” he lied. He had made such calls occasionally over the years, but never since Joan had joined the practice. She let it pass.
“Thank you so much.” Martha, short and thin, all residual signs of pregnancy burned away power-walking, took the toy truck (a little advanced for Justin, she’d tell her husband later, but nice) wrapped in shiny red paper. “Can I get you something to drink? Terry’s at the store getting some things for the party later.”
“Party?” Joan asked, kneeling down to watch Justin pick at the wrapping of her gift, a developmental contraption of letters and cubes and zoo animals and plastic rings, each deliberately too big for a trachea. “How fun.”
“Mostly our friends, of course, not his,” Martha said. “Wine and mimosas. Fruit and cheese platters. Too much talk about work and baseball.”
“He looks good.” Joan grinned and shook her hair in his face. “Robust.”
Standing at the edge of the carpet, Davis studied the boy. He had watched him several times from his car, following Martha discreetly when she took Justin to Costco or the park. He looked like any other kid then, and like any other kid now, his red overalls stenciled with birthday pudding handprints. Justin lifted a giraffe to his forehead and made a curious, grown-up face. When Joan and his mom laughed, he did it again.
Davis tried to imagine AK’s killer at one year – a different house, a different mom, a different time, a different toy – making a face exactly like this. He thought about AK at that age, already having acquired the big green eyes and high cheekbones she would keep through adolescence. Her laugh on the old videos was a close relation to her teenage giggle, and her polite stubbornness was hardwired in the womb. Now he tried, but couldn’t extrapolate a killer from these pudgy little hands and thin blond hair.
Minutes later, outside, at the door to Joan’s Spyder, she asked, “Do you have an hour?”
“Jackie’s got dinner at five.”
“That’s more than an hour.”
“I suppose it is.”
Marty’s was close to the train, and did a fair six o’clock business during the week. The Sunday crowd, lined up around the bar, heads angled at a spring training Cubs game, was sparser. Over whiskeys on the rocks and a table tent advertising hot-and-spicy chicken wings, Joan asked Davis how he was doing.
“How am I? Fine.”
“What’s with the birthday visit?”
“Just a whim.”
“Uh-huh. How’s Jackie?”
“She’s fine.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard.”
Goddamn, Joan. Subtle like a frying pan to the temple.
“What have you heard?”
“Are you having an affair with Martha Finn?”
Davis coughed a half-swallowed sip of whiskey into his glass. “What?”
“It fits. You show up at her house on the kid’s birthday, conveniently when her husband is out of the house. I ran into Gregor exactly the same way a few years back when he was diddling that one, you know, Sante Gramatica. Remember?” She started whispering, one sentence too late. “Anyway, it’s okay with me if you are. I just wanted to make sure you were discreet.” She paused to assess how her speech was coming off and might have decided it sounded thick with ulterior motives because she added, “For the sake of the practice.”
He laughed, and it looked natural to her. She relaxed.
“Sorry. I thought I had to ask. Professionally.”
“If I had a nickel for every time someone thought I was having an affair…,” Davis said.
Without even a grin, Joan put a dime on the table and slid it in front of him. “So things with Jackie are good?”
“I didn’t say that.” He shrugged, surprised at his own candor, having been put on edge by Joan’s directness. “AK would have graduated from Illinois this June.”
“I know.”
“With the exception of her – episode – a few years back, Jackie’s handled it better than me, and that’s put a strain on things at home. She’s been able to move on in many ways, but I just can’t stop thinking about Anna Kat. Every day, I remember a new thing. By the time I’m sixty, I’ll have replayed every second of AK’s life in my head. Reincarnated her in carbon copy. Repeated every move she made right up to the end.”
“Do you think that’s healthy?”
“I’m sure it’s not. It’s like I have to live her life for her because she’s not here to do it herself. And it’s not just her. I spend more time in the basement with my dead relatives than I do upstairs with my own wife. I’m an asshole.”
Joan frowned for a long moment, then ordered two more drinks with a gesture. “Can I tell you a story?” she asked.
Passing through the revolving doors of the medical center into the Houston night, Joan felt like she was swimming in steaming black liquid. Hair went limp across her scalp. Blouse adhered to her skin. She didn’t sweat; the city sweated on her.
When she arrived from the Bay Area for her residency in January, she found Houston more hospitable than she expected. There were decent bookstores and an active theater community and a good symphony (not that she ever attended). The people were friendly (although most folks she met were, like her, from elsewhere) and the winter days pleasant when it wasn’t pouring rain. The summer nights were something else, however. In the summer, it was like breathing coffee.