Wendy Hornsby - Midnight Baby

When the mortuary priest raised his Bible and asked for the group to pray, I looked at the faces in the small knot around Sly. He chewed the sides of his cheeks, trying not to cry, until Michael put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. Sly dissolved into deep, mournful sobs that defined the huge hole that Pisces had tried to fill, the huge hole that was the history of his short life.

Michael knelt down on one knee and brought the child in close, giving him a shoulder to cry against. Mike put his hand on his son’s cheek, completing a circuit of support.

I wasn’t concentrating on what the minister was saying, something about children going directly to heaven to sit next to God. Maybe he forgot that children don’t like to sit. My Casey never had.

Knowing better than to do it, I looked over at Leslie Metrano. I knew exactly what she was thinking – about every instant of her Amy’s life that had been stolen from her. I saw the shadows of those images roll across her face, and I could not bear it. I leaned against Casey’s burgeoning chest and bawled.

Guido held me. Agnes Peter held him. The minister could have been reciting “Baa Baa Black Sheep” for all we heard. When we grieve, what we mourn is lost possibility. The coffin beside us, covered with a blanket of tiny pink rosebuds, contained nothing so much as lost possibility. What was there for a stranger to say that we did not know?

The priest said amen, Leslie fainted, and the service was over.

With family attending to Leslie, the crowd began to disperse. Michael picked up Sly, all gangly arms and legs, and carried him back up the hill toward the line of cars parked above the chapel. As I watched them go, I wiped my nose on the back of my hand. Guido handed me a pack of lens papers. They were totally useless, so I gave them back and used my sleeve.

Mike had walked over to us. He put his arm around me, and I leaned my head against his hard chest.

“Ready?” I said. He only nodded. His eyes were rimmed with red.

As we walked up the hill, Casey grabbed the elbow of Mike’s dark suit coat. “Do you believe in the death penalty, Mike?”

“Sometimes,” he said.

“Mom doesn’t.”

“Oh yeah?” He glanced at me, lifting the corner of his mouth. “What do you think, Casey?”

“I used to think it was barbaric. I mean, killing is wrong no matter who does it, right? But I think this time it’s different. I mean, it’s so unfair that those people are alive and she isn’t. I think that sucks.”

“So do I.” He put his other arm around her.

“What are you going to do to them?” she asked.

“It isn’t up to me,” he said. “The courts will decide.”

“You have to do something.” Her voice rose half an octave.

“I’ll do my job, Casey,” he said calmly. “My job is finding the evidence the court needs for conviction. Elizabeth and Ricco weren’t planning on getting caught; they left us a pretty easy trail to follow. We’ve already learned that Elizabeth’s boat was in Dana Point the day of the killing. She and Ricco could have driven up to L.A. in an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Ensenada, Cabo – all a bunch of bull. And we can prove it.”

“Any word on Ricco?” I asked.

“We’ll get him,” Mike said, frowning.

“I want to go to the trial,” Casey said.

“You’ll probably be in school,” I said. I looked up at my daughter. She had always been, in my life, the source of both my greatest satisfaction and the most maddening complications. Casey had auditioned for the Joffrey and been accepted. That meant ballet every day. In San Francisco. Thinking no time like the present, I pulled Mike closer.

“So, Mike,” I said. “Casey has good news. She’s been accepted into the young dancers’ academy.”

“Congratulations,” he said. “What does that mean?”

Casey began to sparkle again. “It’ll be like a high school for performing arts. I’ll dance and take classes, and I’ll start having parts with the ballet.”

I watched his face fall as the big question came to him. “Where is this academy?” he asked.

“Here.” She did a small graceful leap, a reflex. “In L.A.”

I pulled her back. “I didn’t know that. I thought it was in San Francisco.”

Casey looked over at Mike and laughed. “I may be just a kid, but I’m not stupid.”

I heard my name called out and looked up to see Sly standing on the curb at the top of the slope, waving his arms at me. We picked up our pace and he ran down to meet us. By the time he reached us, his legs were going faster than his brakes could handle. Mike caught him around the middle and set him down on solid feet.

“What do you need?” I asked him.

“My stuff,” he gasped. “Where’s my stuff? I gotta take it to my new place.”

I snapped my eyes up to Mike. “What new place?”

“Don’t panic,” Mike said. “Sly’s going to a group home in Reseda. He doesn’t need MacLaren anymore.”

“Oh,” I said. My first thought had been that Michael was taking Sly home. Or that Mike was. As fond as I was of Sly, he still needed more supervision and counseling than any of us, or all of us together, could offer him.

“Where’s my stuff?” Sly asked again, antsy about it. “It’s in Mike’s car,” I said. “All locked up.”

Sly hurried us the last few yards. Mike opened the back door of his Blazer and took out the brown-paper-wrapped bundle that was buckled into one of the seats. He made a show of dusting the thing off and smoothing down the tape before he finally handed it over.

Michael leaned against the open car door. “What’s in that?”

“Just stuff.” Sly shrugged and tucked the bundle under his arm. “Let’s go. I don’t want to be late for lunch.”

“Hold the phone,” Michael said. I thought he was posing a bit for Casey’s sake. I didn’t like the way she noticed his effort and responded in kind. He reached out his hand to Sly.

“I took you to my house and showed you all my stuff,” Michael said. “Now you show me yours.”

“No big one.” Sly rolled his eyes, tried for coolness.

“Then show,” Michael urged.

Again Sly shrugged, and then, to my great surprise, he began to unwrap the brown paper. I slipped my hand into Mike’s and squeezed it. I don’t know why I felt so expectant. I had thought of helping Sly say no, but this exchange seemed to be something between him and Michael.

Out of the leg-of-lamb-shaped package appeared first a brown furry ear, then shiny black button eyes and a red yarn nose. When he pulled the paper away, he was cuddling a much-loved stuffed dog of indeterminate breed.

“Cool,” Michael said. “Where’d you get it, squirt?”

“From her.” Sly’s big dark eyes teared up, but he held the tears back. “Hilly brought it with her. She said I should take care of it for her.”

“Cool,” Michael said again.

“Yeah,” Sly agreed, imitating the way Michael bobbed his head. “Its name is Amy.”

Wendy Hornsby is the Edgar Award-winning creator of the Maggie MacGowen series. A native of Southern California interested in writing at a young age, she first found professional success in fourth grade, when an essay about summer camp won a local contest. Her first novel, No Harm, was published in 1987, but it wasn’t until 1992 that Hornsby introduced her most famous character: Maggie MacGowen, documentarian and amateur sleuth.She has written seven of the MacGowen novels, most recently The Paramour’s Daughter (2010), and the sprawling tales of murder and romance have won Hornsby widespread praise. For her closely observed depiction of the darker sides of Los Angeles, she is often compared to Raymond Chandler. Besides her nine novels, Hornsby has written dozens of short stories, some of which were collected in Nine Sons (2002). When she isn’t writing, she teaches ancient and Medieval history at Long Beach City College