John Lescroart - The Motive

"Rita tells me you and she were talking about women's things. Does that have to do with your maybe good news?" Treya kissed him hello, quickly, on his cheek, then turned away and stepped back to let the two of them in. "Have you been crying?"

She kept herself turned away, shook her head no. But too fast. And she started walking toward the kitchen. Still carrying Rachel, Glitsky followed. "Trey?"

"I'm just emotional," she said. "About this possibly good news, which I so hope it is." She squared her shoulders, took a deep breath and turned to face him. "It looks like we're going to have another baby." She waited, breathless for a minute, then unloosed a torrent. "Are you okay with that? Please say you are. I know we never talked about it specifically, I mean whether we were actually trying. And I just found out this morning. I've been wanting to tell you all day, but didn't just want to leave a message, and then when you didn't call me even once during the day or come home, I thought the mayor must have done something awful, and I didn't want to bother you by calling at work if you had some crisis, but then it got so late…"

Glitsky closed the distance between them and put his free arm around her.

"Sandwich hug!" Rachel, in heaven between them.

"Sandwich hug," Treya repeated to her daughter, kissing her. Then she looked up at her husband through a film of tears. "Okay? It's okay, isn't it?"

"More than okay," he said. "Unalloyed."

The next morning, Friday, Dismas Hardy made it downstairs at a few minutes past seven. Breakfast noises emanated from the dining room, but he walked directly across the kitchen first, to the coffeepot where he poured himself a cup. Turning right into the family room, toward the back of the house, he tapped the glass of his tropical fish tank and poured some food into it. All his dozen little fishies seemed to be in good health as they rocketed to the surface, the tank was algae-free, the pump gurgled with a quiet efficiency.

"You love those guys, don't you?" His wife, Frannie, stood in the doorway.

"Love might be a little strong, being reserved only for my mate." He crossed over and kissed her good morning. "That would be you, the mate."

"Loves wife more than goldfish," she said. "And people say the romance goes."

"Never with us. Except they're not goldfish, not at forty to sixty bucks a pop."

"Sixty dollars? And they weigh, what, one ounce?"

"That would be one of the big ones."

Frannie stared into the tank for a minute. "I'll never complain about the price of salmon again. Speaking of which, are you eating breakfast this morning? Because if you are, you'd better get in there. The lox is almost gone."

In ten seconds he was standing, glaring down at the dining room table. Both of his children were engrossed in their morning newspaper-Vincent on the comics, Rebecca with the rest of the "Datebook" section. A toasted half bagel rested in front of his regular chair at the head of the table, but there was no sign of any lox, although two small empty plates held traces of cream cheese and crumbs.

"Vincent," Frannie didn't wait to analyze, "didn't I ask you to save some lox for your father?"

The boy looked up in total affront, hands to his chest, all outraged innocence. "Hey, it's not me. I did." He pointed across the table. "Talk to her."

The Beck was a step ahead of her mother. "I didn't hear you say that." She turned to her father. "I would have, Dad-you know I would."

But Hardy didn't get a chance to answer her. This, evidently, hadn't been the first moment of friction between the women in the house this morning, and Fran-nie's frustration now boiled over a bit. "You were sitting right where you are now when I said it," she said. "How could you not have heard me?"

"I thought you were talking to Vincent."

"So you turned your hearing aid off? Was that it? You know I was talking to both of you."

"Okay, but I just didn't hear you. I didn't think you were talking to me, okay?"

"No, not okay. Join the rest of us in the world here, would you?"

"Uh, guys," Hardy waded in delicately. He never knew what would happen when he got between his wife and his daughter. "It's okay. I got my coffee. I'm happy."

"I'm happy for you," Frannie said, "but that's not the point, and it's not okay. She's been doing this kind of thing all the time lately. And nobody else seems to notice. Or care."

Uh oh, Hardy thought.

"All the time?" Now Rebecca's tone went up a big notch. "All the time! I don't even know what you're talking about. I haven't done anything except eat some stupid lox, which was right out here on the table in front of me. Okay, if I ate it, I'm sorry. But what do you want me to do, Mom? Barf it back up?" She put her finger into her mouth.

Following the action, Vincent suddenly threw his comics page down and jumped up, away from the table. "Easy, Beck. Come on."

Hardy intervened at the same instant. "Don't barf it up. I'll just go throw a couple of my tropicals on this bagel…"

"Don't make a joke out of it," Frannie said. "It's not funny."

"I'm not going to really barf it up." Rebecca rolled her eyes in what Hardy believed was an expression of the platonic ideal of teenage pique.

"All right then."

Frannie obviously didn't think it was even slightly all right, but the fight had gone out of her, and she turned and disappeared back into the kitchen. Hardy debated whether to follow her or not and decided they'd both be happier in the long run if he didn't. If he went to her, they'd just keep talking about the Beck and how they were losing control over her, how she didn't respect them any longer, how he didn't take an active enough role anymore. It would all escalate and somehow become all about him and Frannie. Didn't he see the way she was getting? Didn't he care what was happening to his daughter?

He did care. He simply didn't spend as much time with her as his wife did, didn't identify with her in a more or less absolute way, and didn't really think he needed to. His daughter was growing up, becoming independent, which he believed was her fundamental job. And doing fine at it. Better than fine, even, with her incredible grade point average, president of a couple of clubs, working a night a week this semester tutoring math.

Hardy honestly believed that she hadn't heard Fran-nie issue her warning about the lox. She would never have eaten it if she'd thought it was meant for her father.

But Frannie would have said that was the problem-she didn't think about anybody but herself. To which his answer was, "Of course not, she's a teenager." But this wasn't a popular response.

He sat down and took a bite of his bagel, pointed to the rest of the newspaper down by his son's elbow. "Vin, could you please hand me a section?" he asked. Then, sotto voce to the Beck, "I don't think you ate my lox on purpose, but you might want to go tell your mother you're sorry you yelled at her."

"Except, you know, Dad," she whispered, "she yelled at me." But shaking her head, she got up anyway and disappeared back into the kitchen.

Vincent, back in his chair, shook his own head, rolled his eyes. Girls. Hardy nodded in understanding. In this, he and his son were allies. Then he pointed again, said, "The paper, please. If I can't eat lox, at least I can read my morning paper." Vin reached over and grabbed the front page-double-time-and went to pass it up the table, glancing at the front page as he did. "Hey," he said. "Uncle Abe." And the paper's progress halted.

"Vin." Hardy, his voice suddenly sharp, snapped a finger. "Now. Please."

The tone brooked no argument. In a second, Vincent up and over his shoulder, the two males were reading the caption under the four-column, front-page picture of Glitsky smartly saluting the mayor. "Deputy Chief of Police Abraham Glitsky gets his marching orders from Kathy West yesterday afternoon at the Ferry Building at the beginning of the mayor's first 'Neighborhood Stroll.' The new administration plans to bolster police presence as well as civic awareness in troubled areas of the city, and Glitsky's appearance, according to the mayor, underscored the spirit of cooperation between her office and the Police Department that both sides hope to build upon."