Julia Spencer-Fleming - I Shall Not Want

Russ hadn't heard that voice from her in years. He had no doubt she would tear his ear half off if he didn't back down. He raised his hands in surrender. Janet did the same. Their mother let go. They both stumbled back a few steps, rubbing their respective injuries.

"Russell, I'm sorry you don't approve of my investing in Janet and Mike's farm, but I've been handling my own money for nigh on thirty-five years, and I'm not about to start having somebody else make my decisions now." Janet's tense shoulders relaxed until Margy turned on her. "Janet, if you're trying to tell me the reason you stayed in Millers Kill after you graduated was to keep me company-"

"No! I mean… no."

"Good. Didn't think so. One of you stayed and one of you went and it never made no difference in how I felt about you. So don't start with that now."

Janet shook her head.

"Russell?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She sighed. "I think you better go on home, after all. Give us all a chance to cool off. Mike'll drive me back after supper."

"Yes, ma'am." Jesus. Fifty years old, and she could still dress him down like he was a kid. He glanced at Mike, who had gotten very interested in one of the heifers during the argument, and then at Janet. She looked at him warily. He knew he ought to apologize, but he couldn't. It was selfish and stupid to drag Mom into such a risky venture. "I guess I'll see you later," he said.

Janet nodded. He beat a retreat, out the byre, through the barn, into the frosty evening. Opened his truck door and stood for a moment, trying to settle. Across the road, a car had pulled into the bungalow's driveway. A woman got out.

A woman in black clericals.

Oh, no. Not this on top of everything else.

But a second later, he realized the woman was too short and slight to be Clare. She turned, maybe attracted by the light spilling out of his pickup, and he could see she was the new deacon from St. Alban's. What was her name, Groosvoort?

"Chief Van Alstyne? Is that you? Is there some trouble?"

"Uh, hi"-the name came-"Deacon de Groot. What? You mean because I'm here? No. No trouble." He kept his voice neutral. "My sister and her husband-uh, farm around here."

"Well. How nice to see you again." She pushed at her immaculate mass of ash-blond hair. "Excuse my appearance. I've been at the Glens Falls hospital since this afternoon."

She didn't do hospital visits, did she? Wasn't that Clare's job? Had something happened to-"I hope everyone's all right," he managed to squeeze out.

"Our sexton, Mr. Hadley, had an acute myocardial infarction." She said it with the careful pronunciation of someone repeating what she was told. "Poor man had to have a quadruple bypass. I stayed until he was moved to the ICU. No visitors there, so I figured it was time for me to come home."

"Home?"

Even in the half-light, he could see her charmed smile. She pointed to the bungalow with pride. "No more commuting down to Johnstown for me. I've just bought the Petersons' house."

Kevin Flynn was checking himself out in the mirror. He tried combing his hair down flat, then dragging his fingers through it until it stood up in spiky chunks. Flat? Chunks?

Behind him, Lyle MacAuley finished his business and zipped up. "For chris-sakes, Kevin, it's the morning briefing, not a beauty contest." He went to the sink beside Kevin and turned on the water. " 'Sides, either way you wear it, kid, it's still red."

Eric McCrea emerged from one of the stalls, singing, "It's Howdy Doody time!"

"Like you ever saw Howdy Doody ." MacAuley shook off his hands and yanked a paper towel from the dispenser.

"Just trying to provide a reference you could get, Dep. If I compared our young officer here to one of the Weasley twins, you wouldn't know what I was talking about."

"I knew a couple strippers called themselves the Beaver twins, but no, I never heard of any Weaselies."

" Harry Potter ?" Kevin said. "Everybody's heard of that."

MacAuley made a face. "Kids' books."

"I like 'em." McCrea twisted a faucet on. "Last one came out, I read it before my son did."

"Grown-ups reading kids' books," MacAuley said with disgust. "It's no wonder we're importin' men from Mexico to do our work for us. We're all getting too dumb to know one end of a hammer from the other." He reached for the men's room door handle, only to be squashed against the wall when Noble Entwhistle pushed it open. Kevin, doing a last check to make sure none of his breakfast was on his teeth, grinned.

"Chief says, where'n the hell is everybody?" Noble reported.

McCrea twisted the faucet off and dried his hands. "If you step back from the door a ways, Noble, I think Lyle might be able to get out."

Noble shoved his wall-like frame through the door. "Sorry, Dep."

Kevin and McCrea snickered as MacAuley and Entwhistle did the doorway dance. Finally the deputy chief squeezed past Noble and disappeared into the hallway, a string of profanities marking his passage.

"What's taking you guys so long?" Noble asked. "You know what they say. If you shake it more'n three times, you're playing with it."

"Nah. We're just giving Kevin some beauty tips. Much better now the fuzzy thing on your chin is gone, Kevin."

"Goatee," Kevin muttered. It would have been a good one, too, if the chief hadn't squinted at him in the dispatch room last week and barked, "No beards. Shave it off."

Noble rolled his eyes. "I got a tip for you. Don't be late. If the chief don't notice her ,"-he wagged his head toward the hall, where the former public restroom had become the women's room-"he sure ain't gonna care how pretty you are."

In the mirror, Kevin could see himself blush. Everyone teased him about his freckles, but they didn't bug him. The bright, spotty ones of his youth had almost faded away, leaving him with just a scattering across his nose and cheekbones. But God Almighty, he hated his fair skin! It was like a fricking mood ring.

"We'll be right there," McCrea said. Noble grunted and lumbered into the hallway. When the door had shut behind him, McCrea said, "I have a tip for you, too, Kev." His voice was light but serious. "It's an oldie but a goodie. Don't shit where you eat."

Kevin looked down at the sink. "Whaddaya mean?"

McCrea sighed. "Kev, you didn't give a rip what you looked like until last week, when Hadley Knox started showing up for the briefings. I admit, she's a total babe. But you do not want to be fishing in these waters. I'd think everything that's happened between the chief and MacAuley would have taught you that much."

"That's different," Kevin said. "MacAuley"-he dropped his voice involuntarily-"nailed the chief's wife. I'd never put the moves on a married woman."

"It's not about married or not married. It's about sticking it to someone you're going to have to see at work every day."

"I'm not-"

McCrea held up his hands. "I don't want to get into it with you. Just think about what I'm saying, okay?"

The door thumped open. "Are you two waiting for an engraved invitation?" MacAuley said.

They followed the deputy chief out, Kevin, as always, bringing up the rear. He kept his eyes fixed on MacAuley's grizzled head until he had taken his usual seat in the squad room, an irregularly shaped space that had been knocked together out of several small offices about twenty years before Kevin was born.

"Nice of you gentlemen to join us." The chief sat on the scarred wooden worktable, his booted feet braced on two chairs.

"Sorry," McCrea said. If it had been, say, last November, he would have cracked a joke about them running a salon, or a book club, or something. But that was before the chief's wife kicked him out. Before she died. Before the department imploded in a smoking mess of old wrongs and betrayal.