Tess Geritsen - Under The Knife

“Mommy came home late.”

“Again?”

Will leaned forward and whispered confidentially. “Adele was really mad. Her boyfriend was s’posed to take her to the movies.”

“Uh-oh. We certainly don’t want Adele to be mad at us, do we?” Guy flashed an inquiring look at his wife Susan, who was threading her way toward them. “Hey, are we wearing out the nanny already?”

“I swear, it’s that full moon!” Susan laughed and shoved back a frizzy strand of red hair. “All my patients have gone absolutely loony. I couldn’t get them out of my office.”

Guy muttered grumpily to Kate, “And she swore it’d be a part-time practice. Ha! Guess who gets called to the E.R. practically every night?”

“Oh, you just miss having your shirts ironed!” Susan reached up and gave her husband an affectionate pat on the cheek. It was the sort of maternal gesture one expected of Susan Santini. “My mother hen,” Guy had once called his wife. He’d meant it as a term of endearment and it had fit. Susan’s beauty wasn’t in her face, which was plain and freckled, or in her figure, which was as stout as a farm wife’s. Her beauty lay in that serenely patient smile that she was now beaming at her son.

“Daddy!” William was prancing like an elf around Guy’s legs. “Make me fly again!”

“What am I, a launching pad?”

“Up! One more time!”

“Later, Will,” said Susan. “We have to pick up Daddy’s car before the garage closes.”

“Please!”

“Did you hear that?” Guy gasped. “He said the magic word.” With a lion’s roar, Guy pounced on the shrieking boy and threw him into the air.

Susan gave Kate a long-suffering look. “Two children. That’s what I have. And one of them weighs two hundred and forty pounds.”

“I heard that.” Guy reached over and slung a possessive arm around his wife. “Just for that, lady, you have to drive me home.”

“Big bully. Feel like McDonald’s?”

“Humph. I know someone who doesn’t want to cook tonight.”

Guy gave Kate a wave as he nudged his family toward the door. “So what’ll it be, kid?” Kate heard him say to William. “Cheeseburger?”

“Ice cream.”

“Ice cream. Now that’s an alternative I hadn’t thought of….”

Wistfully Kate watched the Santinis make their way across the cafeteria. She could picture how the rest of their evening would go. She imagined them sitting in McDonald’s, the two parents teasing, coaxing another bite of food into Will’s reluctant mouth. Then there’d be the drive home, the pajamas, the bedtime story. And finally, there’d be those skinny arms, curling around Daddy’s neck for a kiss.

What do I have to go home to? she thought.

Guy turned and gave her one last wave. Then he and his family vanished out the door. Kate sighed enviously. Lucky man .

* * *

AFTER HE LEFT his office that afternoon, David drove up Nuuanu Avenue and turned onto the dirt lane that wound through the old cemetery. He parked his car in the shade of a banyan tree and walked across the freshly mown lawn, past the marble headstones with their grotesque angels, past the final resting places of the Doles and the Binghams and the Cookes. He came to a section where there were only bronze plaques set flush in the ground, a sad concession to modern graveskeeping. Beneath a monkeypod tree, he stopped and gazed down at the marker by his feet.

Noah Ransom

Seven Years Old

It was a fine spot, gently sloping, with a view of the city. Here a breeze was always blowing, sometimes from the sea, sometimes from the valley. If he closed his eyes, he could tell where the wind was coming from, just by its smell.

David hadn’t chosen this spot. He couldn’t remember who had decided the grave should be here. Perhaps it had simply been a matter of which plot was available at the time. When your only child dies, who cares about views or breezes or monkeypod trees?

Bending down, he gently brushed the leaves that had fallen on the plaque. Then, slowly, he rose to his feet and stood in silence beside his son. He scarcely registered the rustle of the long skirt or the sound of the cane thumping across the grass.

“So here you are, David,” called a voice.

Turning, he saw the tall, silver-haired woman hobbling toward him. “You shouldn’t be out here, Mother. Not with that sprained foot.”

She pointed her cane at the white clapboard house sitting near the edge of the cemetery. “I saw you through my kitchen window. Thought I’d better come out and say hello. Can’t wait around forever for you to come visit me.”

He kissed her on the cheek. “Sorry. I’ve been busy. But I really was on my way to see you.”

“Oh, naturally.” Her blue eyes shifted and focused on the grave. It was one of the many things Jinx Ransom shared with her son, that peculiar shade of blue of her eyes. Even at sixty-eight, her gaze was piercing. “Some anniversaries are better left forgotten,” she said softly.

He didn’t answer.

“You know, David, Noah always wanted a brother. Maybe it’s time you gave him one.”

David smiled faintly. “What are you suggesting, Mother?”

“Only what comes naturally to us all.”

“Maybe I should get married first?”

“Oh, of course, of course.” She paused, then asked hopefully: “Anyone in mind?”

“Not a soul.”

Sighing, she laced her arm through his. “That’s what I thought. Well, come along. Since there’s no gorgeous female waiting for you, you might as well have a cup of coffee with your old mother.”

Together they crossed the lawn toward the house. The grass was uneven and Jinx moved slowly, stubbornly refusing to lean on her son’s shoulder. She wasn’t supposed to be on her feet at all, but she’d never been one to follow doctors’ orders. A woman who’d sprained her ankle in a savage game of tennis certainly wouldn’t sit around twiddling her thumbs.

They passed through a gap in the mock-orange hedge and climbed the steps to the kitchen porch. Gracie, Jinx’s middle-aged companion, met them at the screen door.

“There you are!” Gracie sighed. She turned her mouse-brown eyes to David. “I have absolutely no control over this woman. None at all.”

He shrugged. “Who does?”

Jinx and David settled down at the breakfast table. The kitchen was a dense jungle of hanging plants: asparagus fern and baby’s tears and wandering Jew. Valley breezes swept in from the porch, and through the large window, there was a view of the cemetery.

“What a shame they’ve trimmed back the monkeypod,” Jinx remarked, gazing out.

“They had to,” said Gracie as she poured coffee. “Grass can’t grow right in the shade.”

“But the view’s just not the same.”

David batted away a stray fern. “I never cared for that view anyway. I don’t see how you can look at a cemetery all day.”

“I like my view,” Jinx declared. “When I look out, I see my old friends. Mrs. Goto, buried there by the hedge. Mr. Carvalho, by the shower tree. And on the slope, there’s our Noah. I think of them all as sleeping.”

“Good Lord, Mother.”

“Your problem, David, is that you haven’t resolved your fear of death. Until you do, you’ll never come to terms with life.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Take another stab at immortality. Have another child.”

“I’m not getting married again, Mother. So let’s just drop the subject.”

Jinx responded as she always did when her son made a ridiculous request. She ignored it. “There was that young woman you met in Maui last year. Whatever happened to her?”

“She got married. To someone else.”

“What a shame.”