Janice Johnson - Maternal Instinct

“Maybe.” She bit her lip.

“So, your friend called,” he prompted.

Nell held her pencil poised to take notes.

Carla Shaw’s friend Becca had called and said she heard gunshots and screams and she didn’t know what was happening. She’d let Carla know more when she did. Carla had hurried to the nearest office to tell other people, but she stayed in earshot of her phone. Only Becca didn’t call back. Everybody discussed whether they should phone 911 or what, and finally one of the claims adjusters, a man, of course, had stood.

“Hell, I think I’ll go down there and check it out.”

“I tried to stop him,” Carla said, staring at them with big, haunted eyes. “But he wouldn’t listen. He had to be macho. He went down the stairs. And…um—” her mouth worked “—now he’s dead.”

Nell dropped her notebook and went to the young woman, not so much older than her daughter. Kneeling, she covered her hands with her own. “I’m sorry.”

Tears filled Carla’s eyes. “He was kind of a jerk. But mostly just a guy. You know?”

Nell nodded wordless agreement.

“Why would somebody shoot him?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly.

Carla freed one hand from Nell’s and wiped her wet cheeks. “We couldn’t really hear anything. Only then the elevator doors opened, and everybody stuck their heads out of the offices, because we thought it must be Kyle.” She was shivering uncontrollably now. “Only it wasn’t. It was that man. He was shooting as he walked out. I had just the one glimpse, and then I ran back in my office and locked the door and squeezed behind some filing cabinets. I don’t know how I was strong enough to move them.”

“Did he come into your office?”

“The glass insert in the door exploded, and I think maybe a spray of bullets hit the filing cabinet, because it jerked—really, almost jumped, like somebody had slammed into it. But I couldn’t see out, and later, when the police came, the door was still locked. So I guess he didn’t bother coming in, even though he could have just reached in and opened the door.”

Her eyes showed that she wondered why. Had she hidden so cleverly he thought no one was in there, or did he not want to bother hunting? Had her prayers to God been answered? Or had she just been lucky?

Nell remembered a story she’d heard once about a soldier in Vietnam who’d awakened one morning and discovered that his entire platoon lay dead around him. Every single man had had his throat slit during the night. Every one but him. He spent his life haunted by the question: why? Why him? Why not the friend who had slept beside him, or the guy he didn’t like, or the captain? Why was he chosen to survive? Did his life have some yet unknown purpose? Or had he been chosen at all?

Carla and all the others would live with some of the same questions.

Hugh did the note-taking. They got the names of the others she had clustered with, two of whom had died under the barrage of submachine-gun fire within seconds. Nell comforted as best she could once they had wrung everything Carla knew from her.

In the end, they left her staring at a soap opera on television, still huddled inside her sweatshirt as though the temperature was sixty instead of eighty inside the small house. Walking silently down the driveway under the hot sun beside a tall, grim Hugh, Nell smelled again the heavy scent of the roses.

They would hear this story again, and again, Nell realized. Today, tomorrow, perhaps for weeks. She knew from experience that by the end of the day, they might be able to hear it and minutes later climb into the car and crack a joke, or talk about dinner plans, or a movie one of them had seen last weekend. They might even think themselves inured, but the horror would be lurking deep in their psyches, the reminder of the sprawled bodies, the acrid scent of blood, the remembered terror on every face.

How would she get through this summer, working this horrific case, worrying about her daughter, worrying about herself? she wondered in a kind of daze. Partnered with a macho jerk who could smile like that?

A man who, insane though the very idea was, would be the father of the unborn child she might be carrying, if the fates chose to teach her a lesson.

“HOW DO YOU KNOW when you’re in love?”

Nell turned her head sharply.

Kim lay sprawled on the couch, the remote control in her hand, the videotape she’d been playing on pause. She still gazed dreamily at the TV, as though an imagined movie continued in her mind’s eye.

Carefully, Nell set down her book. “Nobody your age can really, truly be in love.”

The dreamy look vanished, replaced by clear resentment. “Why won’t you even talk to me?”

“I am talking.”

The movie burst into life with a cacophony of street sounds. Kim froze it again with an impatient punch of her thumb. “You’re not talking, you’re putting me down.”

Was she? Maybe, Nell admitted ruefully. She was lucky Kim was still willing to ask what she thought.

“I don’t mean it as a put-down to say that you’re too young to know real love.” She shifted to tuck one foot under her. “Part of growing up is that you’re always reaching for the next stage of development. You’re getting physically mature now, but you don’t have quite your full height or curves yet. You don’t resent that.”

“I resent being told I’m incapable of deep feelings,” Kim declared, mouth sulky. In loose drawstring flannel pajama bottoms and a tiny tank top, she was the quintessential child-woman. “Does that mean I don’t really love you, either?”

Had she been this touchy at that age, Nell wondered.

Duh.

“Love for your parents is part of your makeup from the moment you’re born. Having that love—or need—reciprocated means survival for a baby. You’re barely reaching the age when that same kind of attachment between you and a man is part of your biological drive.”

Kim rolled her eyes. “You sound like a sex-ed film.”

“Are they necessarily wrong?”

Her daughter shrugged, staring moodily at the television again. “People used to get married by my age. Romeo and Juliet weren’t even sixteen.”

“Maybe physical development was compressed. Remember, they were old by their thirties.”

Interest sparked on Kim’s face. “You mean, you’d be an old lady?”

“Hey!” Nell protested. “I’m only thirty-two.”

“You said—”

“Okay.” She made a face. “Yeah. I’d have passed my prime childbearing years, assuming I hadn’t died in childbirth. For sure, you’d be giving me grandkids.” She couldn’t suppress a shudder.

Kim chortled. “You are so paranoid! You couldn’t even say that without freaking!”

“You know,” Nell said quietly, “I do have reason to be paranoid.”

“You think no teenager should ever fall in love or have sex, just because you got pregnant. Lots of my friends have sex, and they don’t get pregnant.”

Lots of her friends. Nell almost whimpered.

“Do they use birth control?”

“I guess.” Kim shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “You’re just so old-fashioned! It’s not like I’d be ruined if I turned seventeen and I wasn’t a virgin anymore.”

Nell had always tried to be honest with her daughter. Now she admitted, “No, of course you wouldn’t be. But what if you did get pregnant? Remember, no method of birth control is one hundred percent effective. Would you be comfortable getting an abortion? Maybe some of your friends have.”

Kim was silent, head bent, a curtain of hair hiding what she knew.

“Is Colin prepared to marry you?” Nell continued relentlessly. “To pay child support? Are you willing to drop out of school, or switch to the alternative school, so you can be a mother?”