Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

“Charlie…Don’t make me angry.”

The broad-leafed tree was a dozen trunks back. Last-second pause, taking the longest blanket and using it to tie the baby in a sling against my chest. I’d practiced this before, too. Sometimes, I carried the baby around the house this way, because then she didn’t cry, and when she didn’t cry, life was better for all of us.

Blanket was wet. Baby was wet. I was wet.

My mother’s voice, not so far behind me now. “Charlie Grant, come here this minute. Charlene Grant, don’t make me angry!”

I reached for the nearest branch, low, slippery, not too big, and with determined little fists, I grabbed it with both hands and scrambled up to the first tree branch.

Moving fast and desperate. All up, no down. Tree wasn’t that big, but neither was I. If I could just keep moving, monkey-climb my way to the top…

My mother was afraid of heights. She would follow me out, she would follow us down, but she would never follow me up.

Below me, her sudden screech.

“Charlene Grant! You come down here. Right now! Do you hear me young lady? Charlene Grant you do as your mother says!”

Swinging up and up. Not looking down. Not wanting to think about the drop, the fall, the squirmy weight of the baby. Not wanting to see my mother standing below, her hands on her hips, glaring at me with her snake-like hair and black maw mouth and the shovel that would go up down, up down, up down. Forming the hole. Not too big. Big enough.

At last I ran out of branches. Had to stop, nestled in the junction, shivering uncontrollably, rain streaming down my face, one hand clinging to a branch beside my head, the other wrapped around the baby.

My mother still screamed, but the wind was now whipping her words away. From this height, she was smaller, harder to see. From this height, I didn’t have to be scared of her anymore.

Eventually she would wear herself out. Eventually she would return inside and, caked in mud and filth and leaves, curl up on the couch and fall asleep. Then I would carefully make my way back down.

I would change the baby’s diaper, wrap her in fresh blankets I’d left warming on the radiator. I’d feed her a cold bottle, sitting cross-legged on the floor with her propped on my lap.

The baby would fall asleep. Then I would return her to the nest in the hall closet, before heading back outside and refilling the tiny hole, working, just as my mother had done, by the glow of a flashlight.

If I did everything right, in the morning, there would be no sign of tonight. It would be erased, a bad dream that never happened. And my mother would wake up happy, maybe singing lightly under her breath, and she would dance around the house with me, giddy and gay, and she would kiss and hug the baby, and everything would be all right again. She would love us.

For a little bit, anyway.

I nestled deeper into the tree limbs. Felt the warmth of the baby against my chest. Hoped she felt my warmth, too, as I wrapped my other arm around her and held on tight.

“It’s okay,” I whispered to her now. “Almost done now. Almost safe.”

She was no longer crying. Instead, she stared up at me with big brown eyes.

Then her little face lit up in a giant toothless grin.

She beamed up at me, my beautiful baby sister, Abigail.

D.D. MADE IT TO THE RESTAURANT ON TIME. Alex had selected the Legal Seafood on the water, next to the Boston aquarium. It was close to the airport, offered good food and great views. D.D. knew the restaurant well, had used to walk there from her North End condo. Walking, however, was much easier than navigating the crush of rush hour traffic.

She plodded up 93, then looped through an elaborate off-ramp pattern that mostly involved sitting at red lights for three to four turns at a time.

By the time she arrived at the waterfront location, she was tense, frazzled, and pretty sure she had sweat through the blue silk blouse she’d bought the week before, in anticipation of meeting her mother.

Across from the restaurant was a public parking garage. D.D. wound her way up the levels until she was lucky enough to discover an empty space, way in the back, as far away from the stairwell as one could get. The space was marked COMPACT ONLY. She wedged her Crown Vic carefully into the narrow confines, then eased open her door.

As she stepped out of her car, the icy cold sliced through her like a knife. She went from overheated to shivering in a matter of seconds.

She should start walking, warm herself up.

She stood there instead, feeling like a little girl again, dragging her feet as she got home from school, because she had another note from her teacher in her backpack and her mother would be angry again. Worse, her mother would never say a word. She’d just thin her lips and look at her in a way D.D. knew too well.

I am a grown adult, D.D. reminded herself. A top detective, respected by cops, feared by felons.

It wasn’t working for her yet. She wanted it to, but it wasn’t working.

She thought of Alex and baby Jack instead. The way Alex was no doubt sitting patiently with her parents, easing them into their visit, encouraging them to fuss over their grandchild. The way Alex would look up when she finally walked into the restaurant. The way he would smile, instantly, genuinely, as she appeared table-side.

D.D. started walking, one black booted step in front of another as she made her way across the garage, down the stairwell, then across the snowy street until she arrived in front of the bustling restaurant.

Final deep breath. Reminding herself that a woman who worked death investigations could surely handle one dinner with her own parents.

Her hands trembled.

She went in.

ALEX AND HER PARENTS WERE SEATED in the very back, in a corner booth. It was slightly quieter back there, but still busy enough given a Thursday night at a major Boston restaurant. A waiter had performed the high chair trick-turning it over so that Jack’s car seat fit snuggly between the wooden legs. Alex sat on the right side of the booth, her parents side by side on the left.

Her mom, Patsy, sported a Florida tan, beautiful silver-blond hair, and an elegantly carved face that had obviously served as the model for D.D.’s own. She was wearing linen slacks and a sea foam green sleeveless sweater over a thin white shirt-a snow bird trying to adjust for the northern climate, but forgetting just how cold and bitter January in Boston could be. D.D.’s father, Roy, equally fit and trim, also appeared as if he’d been plucked from the golf course, wearing a navy blue sports jacket over a white-and-blue striped polo shirt.

Alex, as she’d predicted, spotted her first. He wore one of her favorite dark red cashmere sweaters over a black turtleneck. When he saw her, his blue eyes lit up, and the corners crinkled with the full force of his smile.

She faltered. She went to take a step and actually stumbled a little. Because it hit her, halfway across the extremely loud and crowded restaurant, that the most handsome man in the place belonged to her. Smiled for her. Sat patiently, with their baby and her parents, for her.

And it terrified her, because for every ounce of love she felt for him, she felt simultaneously, like a bank of black clouds across the sun, that she wasn’t worthy. That a man this handsome, accomplished, and smart belonged more to the likes of her parents than to the likes of her.

Which pissed her off all over again. All these years later, she did not want to feel that small. Maybe she hadn’t been the child her parents had wanted her to be. But she was the adult she needed to be, and that ought to be enough.

D.D. thrust up her chin and strode across the restaurant.