Patricia Cornwell - Chaos

“It’s not fine,” Benton says as we pass through the deepening shadows of tall boxwood hedges.

“Some things won’t change. It has to be fine.”

“You can’t let Dorothy get to you this way.” His tinted glasses look at me.

“I assume you’ve heard the nine-one-one call.” I change the subject because my sister has wasted quite enough of my time. “Apparently Marino has a copy but he wouldn’t play it for me.”

Benton doesn’t respond, and if he’s listened to the recording he’s not going to tell me. Had he been made aware of it, he might have requested a copy from the Cambridge Police Department, citing that the FBI wants to make sure a government official wasn’t misbehaving or being threatened.

My husband could come up with anything he wants to gain access to the 911 recording, and he’s quite friendly with the commissioner, the mayor, pretty much everybody who’s powerful around here. He didn’t need Marino’s help.

“As you may or may not know, someone complained about me supposedly disturbing the peace.” It sounds even more bizarre as I hear myself describe such a thing to someone whose typical day involves terrorists and serial killers.

I glance at him as we near the proud brick building in the gathering dusk, and his face doesn’t register whatever reaction he might be having.

“I assume Bryce told you about it after Marino confronted him, wanting to know exactly what happened in Harvard Square when he dropped me off,” I add.

“Marino’s feeling insecure about you,” Benton says, and I can’t tell if he’s making a statement or asking a question.

“He’s always insecure,” I reply. “But he’s also acting oddly. He was pushy about wanting to drive to the airport. He was overly interested in helping pick up Dorothy.”

“I wonder how he knows she’s coming here. Did you tell him? Because I didn’t.”

“Since we had almost no warning, I really haven’t had a chance to tell hardly anyone,” I reply. “Maybe Lucy mentioned it to him.”

“Or Desi might have. He and Marino have gotten to be real pals,” Benton says, and he can mask his emotions better than anyone I know but he can’t fool me.

I can tell when something hurts him, and the blossoming relationship between Marino and Desi obviously does. I’ve worried it would as Marino spends increasing amounts of time with a mercurial and insatiably inquisitive boy whose genetics are largely unknown to us. We don’t know what to expect. We can’t predict who he might take after.

It should be Janet’s late sister Natalie since it was her egg she’d had frozen when she was only in her twenties. Long before she did anything about it she was researching surrogate mothers and sperm donors. I remember her talking about being a single parent, and in retrospect it seems she had a premonition that her days on earth would be few. And they were. Seven years after Desi was born she would die of pancreatic cancer. It’s such a shame she’s not here to watch him change rapidly like a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon.

“Look, I get it,” Benton is saying. “I’m not nearly as much fun as Marino. He’s already taken Desi fishing, started teaching him about guns, given him his first sip of beer.”

“Fishing is one thing but I’m not happy if Lucy and Janet think the rest of it is okay.”

“The point is—”

“The point is that you don’t need to be fun the same way Marino is,” I reply. “In fact I’m hoping you might be a good example.”

“Of what? A boring adult?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a sexy brilliant federal agent who drives fast cars and wears designer clothes. Desi just doesn’t know you yet.”

“Apparently Desi does know me. Marino told him I’m a retired school principal, and Desi asked me about it. I told him it was a hundred years ago when I was just out of college and working on my master’s degree,” Benton says.

“Did you explain that when you were getting started, a lot of FBI agents came from educational and legal backgrounds? That in other words yours was simply a sensible career path?” Even as I say it I’m aware that it’s too much explanation, and the well has been poisoned.

“There was no reason for Marino to bring that up except to make Desi afraid of me. Which is harmful and ill-advised because he’s headstrong enough already. I’ve noticed that increasingly he doesn’t like being told what to do.”

“I agree he doesn’t like to be controlled. But then most of us don’t.”

“Marino’s goal is to be Good Time Uncle Pete while I’m the school principal,” Benton says, and I watch the darkness settle heavily, hotly.

We’ve reached the wide brick patio arranged with wooden tables, red umbrellas, and potted shrubs and flower beds. On this last Wednesday of September, there shouldn’t be an empty chair out here. But there’s no one sitting outside the Faculty Club, no one in the world but us.

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