Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

I guess the cops in upstate New York called him first, after the incident. My mother had his name listed as the emergency contact, though no phone number. Police, however, are a bit more skilled than mentally ill twenty-five-year-olds, so within a matter of days, they tracked him down. He was not in the country, however. Paris, London, Amsterdam. I don’t recall.

He bounced them to Aunt Nancy, who did the honors of assuming responsibility for a niece she’d never met. Even then, she ran a business, the call came out of the blue, so it took a few more days while she made it from the wilds of New Hampshire to the even deeper wilds of upstate New York.

Those days remained hazy for me. I remembered waking up in the hospital. I remembered being surprised that I was alive. Then I remembered feeling deeply, deeply disappointed.

A social worker sat bedside. She had black hair cut in a short bob that showed off a sharp, angular face. Not a kind-looking person. Not maternal. She looked hard and spoke in a clipped voice.

The doctors had removed my appendix, maybe some other things. Apparently, spending years eating small doses of glass and rat poison was not good for various internal organs. But I was healing well, she’d assured me. I’d be just fine.

And again, I was so deeply, deeply disappointed.

I never spoke to her. Or the nurses. Or the doctors. They had betrayed me. They had forced me to live. I’d hated them for that.

Eventually, my aunt had arrived. She’d taken my hand, and that quickly I went from being my mother’s child to being my aunt’s niece.

That was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

Aunt Nancy was my mother’s older sister by six years. She had silver-gray hair cut Brillo short. Premature gray hair ran in the family, I was told. Like blue eyes and strong jawlines. But the gray color suited my aunt, brought out her steel blue eyes, her high cheekbones. My aunt could care less. If my mother was obsessed with male attention, then my aunt was equally obsessed with keeping men at arm’s length.

When their parents died in an auto accident-in New Hampshire you’ll notice lots of signs advising you to brake for moose; you really should- my aunt took over the parenting role. My mom was a wild one, even back then. And my aunt was the responsible one, even back then. Needless to say, their relationship was strained even before my mom got knocked up by a wealthy Boston financier.

They went their separate ways until one day, the phone rang and my aunt learned about an incident, a niece, and yet one more unexpected life change.

Like any kid, I never appreciated my aunt, until one night, my own phone rang with news of an incident, a tragedy, an unexpected loss. And I turned to my aunt for guidance, because given a choice between being my mother’s daughter and being my aunt’s niece, I’d take niecedom any day of the week.

My aunt is brave. My aunt is tough.

Fuck chewing shattered glass.

Run a bed and breakfast with little help and no health insurance in the mountains of New Hampshire, where in January the daily temperature will start at negative twenty and most of your Boston guests will have forgotten to pack hats, scarves, and gloves and will consider it all your fault.

I thought of my aunt now, as Tulip and I slowed at an intersection, waited for the light to change, then sprinted through the crosswalk. I thought she deserved better than yet another life-changing phone call on January 21.

I thought, heart pounding from the exertion of my six-mile run, sweat pouring down my face, dog trotting beside me, gun quickly accessible in my fanny pack, that I was glad my aunt couldn’t see me now.

Because she’d have taken one look at me and understood that even if I was winning the battle, I’d lost the war: I’d become the spitting image of my mother, down to the bruised eyes, hollowed out cheeks, and hard-lined face.

The mountains had left me. My aunt had left me. Living in isolation, fighting paranoia in a big city, I had become everything I knew better than to be.

These days, I was my mother’s daughter.

Except I didn’t chew shattered glass anymore.

I carried a. 22 semiauto. And this evening, sometime after 7 P.M., I was going to prove once again that I knew how to use it.

HELLO. My name is Abigail.

Have we met yet?

Don’t worry, we will.

Hello. My name is Abigail.

RHODE ISLAND STATE POLICE DETECTIVE SERGEANT Roan Griffin had the voice of a bear and the build of a boulder. Big guy. Probably bench-pressed small automobiles after toppling sumo wrestlers and tackling linebackers. Good-looking guy, too. Officer Blue Eyes, the Providence Journal had dubbed him years ago, when he’d appeared on Dave Letterman to model the state police’s award-winning new uniforms.

Truth was, the Rhode Island State Police had a reputation for the best-looking cops in New England. No one knew how they did it. Maybe a special factory that chiseled out broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, square-jawed men. Either way, whenever there was an opportunity for cross training with their Rhode Island counterparts, the female officers of Massachusetts quickly signed up. Like, all three of them.

Currently, D.D. was on the phone with Griffin. A shame, really, because Rhode Island’s headquarters was only an hour south, and given the restaurants available for lunch in Providence’s Federal Hill…Missing out on sightseeing and Italian dining, D.D. thought with a sigh. So much for the new and improved lifestyle.

Griffin was a married man. Actually, his second marriage, as the first wife had died of cancer. Wife number two was a blond advertising executive named Jillian. D.D. had never met her, only knew her because of the press coverage. Jillian had survived the notorious College Hill Rapist about eight years back. Her younger sister hadn’t been so lucky. When they’d finally arrested a man for the attacks, Jillian had formed a group dubbed the Survivors Club in order to assist one another through the trial. Except there hadn’t been a trial, given that the suspect had been gunned down outside the courthouse and Jillian and her fellow club members had gone from sympathetic victims to prime suspects.

D.D. would be the first to admit she’d followed the case as zealously as Nancy Grace, especially when days after the alleged rapist’s murder, another woman was attacked. Seriously, there were days on this job when she thought not even a suspense novelist could make these things up.

Griffin and Jillian had two boys now. Ages four and six, D.D. was learning. The youngest, Dylan, had taken a page out of his father’s book and was all football all the time. The six-year-old, Sean, had recently discovered cooking. As in last night he’d prepared rack of lamb for the entire family.

“With a pomegranate molasses marinade,” Griffin was finishing now, “though I suspect his mom helped him with that.”

“He’s six. How’d he even lift a roasting pan into the oven?” D.D. wanted to know.

“Oh,” Griffin said breezily. “He gets that from me.”

“And the hot oven…not a problem?”

“Jillian did the honors of taking it out. And she helped him sear the outside on the stove. But he found the recipe-”

“Where? At the back of his comic books?”

“He checked out a cookbook from the library. He’s a how-to kid. No fiction, but brings home books on how to plant gardens, how to engineer robots, how to build boats. Guess now it’s gonna be how to cook.”

“Rack of lamb. That’s amazing.”

“Hell, it was fabulous. I’m ready to start a college fund for Johnson and Wales.”

“I don’t know about cooking yet for baby Jack,” D.D. said. “But last night he threw up something that might pass for molasses.”