Kathy Reichs - Devil Bones

“A guy I dated in college.”

“And where is Coop?”

“In Haiti. With the Peace Corps. It’s a win-win. I get a break on rent. He gets someone looking after his place.”

The waiter delivered drinks, then stood smiling at Katy, pen and hopes poised.

I recited our order. The waiter left.

“What’s up with Billy?”

Billy Eugene Ringer. The current boyfriend. One in a trail leading back to Katy’s middle school years.

“He’s a dickhead.”

A promotion or demotion from peckerhead? I wasn’t sure.

“Care to be more specific?”

Theatrical sigh. “We’re incompatible.”

“Really.”

“Rather, he’s too compatible.” Katy took a hit of Pinot. “With Sam Adams and Bud. Billy likes to drink beer and watch sports. That’s it. It’s like dating a gourd. You know?”

I made a noncommittal noise.

“We have nothing in common.”

“It took you a year to figure that out?”

“I can’t imagine what we talked about in the beginning.” More Pinot. “I think he’s too old for me.”

Billy was twenty-eight.

Katy’s palm smacked the tabletop. “Which brings us to Dad. Can you believe this shit with Summer? I don’t understand why you’re being so cooperative.”

My estranged husband was almost fifty. We’d lived apart for years, but never divorced. Recently Pete had requested that we file. He wanted to remarry. Summer, his beloved, was twenty-nine.

“The woman squeezes puppy glands for a living.” Katy’s tone redefined the term scornful.

Summer was a veterinary assistant.

“Our marital status is strictly between your father and me.”

“She’s probably sucked his brain right out through his-”

“New topic.”

Katy drew back in her chair. “OK. What’s up with Ryan?”

Mercifully, our salad arrived. As the waiter ground pepper from a mill the size of my vacuum, I thought about my own on-again off-again, what, boyfriend?

What was Ryan doing now? Was he happily reunited with his long-ago lover? Did they cook together? Window-shop while strolling hand in hand along rue Ste-Catherine? Listen to music at Hurley’s Irish Pub?

I felt a heaviness in my chest. Ryan was gone from my life. For now. For good? Who knew?

“Hell-o?” Katy’s voice brought me back. “Ryan?”

“He and Lutetia are trying to make it as a couple. To provide stability for Lily.”

“Lutetia is his old girlfriend. Lily is his kid.”

“Yes.”

“The druggie.”

“She’s doing well in rehab.”

“So you’re just out on your ass.”

“Lily’s going through a rough patch. She needs her father.”

Katy chose not to reply.

The waiter arrived with our food. When he’d gone, I changed direction.

“Tell me about work.”

“Shoot-me-in-the-head dull.”

“So you’ve said.”

“I’m a glorified secretary. Scratch that. There’s nothing glorified in what I do.”

“Which is?”

“Maintain folders. Feed info into a computer. Assemble criminal histories. My most exciting task to date was a credit check. Heart-pounding.”

“Did you think you’d be arguing before the Supreme Court?”

“No.” Defensive. “But I didn’t expect mind-numbing drudgery.”

I let her vent on.

“I make next to nothing. And the people I work with are slammed by their caseloads and just want to negotiate pleas and move on to the next file. They don’t have time for a lot of interaction with staff. Talk about boring. There’s only one guy with spunk, and he’s got to be fifty.” Katy’s tone changed ever so slightly. “Actually, he’s bodaciously hot. If he weren’t so old I wouldn’t mind slipping off his tighty whities.”

“Too much information.”

Katy rolled on.

“You’d like this guy. And he’s single. It’s really sad. His wife was killed on nine-eleven. I think she was an investment banker or something.”

“I’ll find my own men, thanks.”

“All right, all right. Anyway, half the staff are fossils, the other half are too harried to notice there’s a world outside the PD’s office.”

I was beginning to grasp the problem. Billy was no longer making grade, and no twenty-something cute-boy lawyer was waiting in the wings.

We ate in silence for a few moments. When Katy spoke again I could tell her thoughts had circled.

“So what are we going to do about Summer?”

“For my part, nothing.”

“Jesus, Mom. The woman hasn’t finished forming a full set of molars.”

“Your father’s life is his own.”

Katy said something that sounded like “cha,” then fork-jabbed her fish. I took another mouthful of veal.

Seconds later I heard a whispered “Ohmygod.”

I looked up.

Katy was gazing at something over my shoulder.

“Ohmygod.”

“WHAT?”

“I don’t believe it.”

“What?”

Bunching her napkin, Katy pushed away from the table and strode across the restaurant.

I turned, confused and anxious.

Katy was talking to a very tall man in a very long trench coat. She was animated, smiling.

I relaxed.

Katy pointed at me and waved. The man waved. He looked familiar.

I waggled my fingers.

The two started toward me.

The NBA build. The loose gait. The black hair parted by Hugh Grant himself.

Ping.

Charles Anthony Hunt. Father, a guard first for the Celtics, later for the Bulls. Mother, an Italian downhill skier.

Charlie Hunt had been a classmate at Myers Park High. Lettered in three sports, served as president of the Young Democrats. The yearbook predicted him the grad most likely to be famous by thirty. I was voted most likely to do stand-up.

Following graduation, I’d left Charlotte for the University of Illinois, gone on to grad school at Northwestern, then married Pete. Charlie had attended Duke on a hoops scholarship, then UNC-Chapel Hill law. Over the years I’d heard that he’d married and was practicing up North.

Charlie and I both played varsity tennis. He was all-state. I won most of my matches. I found him attractive. Everyone did. Change was sweeping the South in the seventies, but old mores die slowly. We didn’t date.

The Labor Day weekend before our collegiate departures, Charlie and I swung a bit more than our rackets. The match involved tequila and the backseat of a Skylark.

Cringing inwardly, I refocused on my veal.

“Mom.”

I looked up.

Charlie and Katy were at my side, both flashing copious dentition.

“Mom, this is Charles Hunt.”

“Charlie.” Smiling, I extended a hand.

Charlie took it in fingers long enough to wrap the Toronto Sky-Dome. “Nice to see you, Tempe.”

“You two know each other?”

“Your mama and I went to high school together.” Charlie’s accent was flatter and more clipped than I remembered, perhaps the result of years spent up North, perhaps the product of intentional modification.

“You never let on.” Katy punched Charlie’s bicep. “Objection, counselor. Withholding evidence.”

“Katy’s brought me up to date on all your achievements.” Charlie was still enveloping my fingers, giving me his “no one in the universe exists but you” stare.

“Has she.” Reclaiming my hand, I glanced narrow-eyed at my daughter.

“She is one proud young lady.”

The proud young lady gave an unbelievably staged laugh. “Mom and I were just talking about you, Charlie, and in you waltz. What a coincidence.”

Like garlic and bad breath are coincidental, I thought.

“Should my ears be burning?” Boyish grin. He did it well.

“It was all good,” Katy said.

Charlie looked appropriately surprised and modest.