The Word of a Child (20 page)

He shrugged. "I don't know. That he doesn't have any
say over what you do? That you think he was guilty?"

Her narrowed eyes told him he was blowing it big time.
"Do you realize how nasty and petty you're making me sound? Do you really
believe I'm incapable of telling my ex-husband what I think? That I'd resort to
'showing him' in such a hurtful way?"

He felt like scum. "No," he said. "I guess
it's my own inadequacies speaking. I've been wondering ever since you agreed to
have dinner with me
why
you did. Why me?"

She stared at him for an unnervingly long time, seeing more,
he suspected, than he was ready to bare.

"Maybe you're the handsomest man who has asked."

He made an impatient gesture.

"And
the
most persistent."

"I can be pushy," he admitted.

"And you kissed me. That helped."

"It did?"

She gazed seriously at him. "The truth?"

Connor reached out and gripped her hand. She turned it to
meet him palm to palm.

"You've opened my eyes. Made me take another look at my
choices and my life. Freed me, a little, from the guilt I've been
carrying."

"So you're grateful," he said grimly.

She shook her head, then nodded, then shook it again.
"Yes. No. It's…" Her mobile face showed her struggle for words.
"You've stirred me. And, um, I'm attracted to you. Because of Simon,
you're the last man I should be dating. But here I am anyway."

Gaze lingering on the color flaring in her cheeks, on the
rich depths of her eyes and the delicate curve of her jaw, he said softly,
"Thank you."

She wrinkled her nose at him and removed her hand from his.
"Tonight was supposed to be about
you,
not me. How did you manage to dissect
my
motivations
again?"

Reassured for the first time that she shared the
uncomfortable, maybe inconvenient, attraction he felt, Connor was able to grin.
"You're so easy to rile."

She tried to glower. "Oh, thanks."

Their salads arrived, and conversation lightened as they
ate. Connor told Mariah about his family as they appeared on the surface: three
brothers, all cops, only the older one married and with children, their mother
a lifelong presence in their lives.

"Is your father dead?" Mariah asked.

"Since I was a kid. Nine. He was murdered."

"Murdered?" she echoed in horror. "How?
Why?"

"Dad was a loan officer at a bank. Some nut walked in,
sprayed the place with bullets and walked out. Dad and two others were killed,
a twenty-one-year-old teller was paralyzed for life and a couple of customers
were injured." He was silent for a moment, remembering his mother's
profound grief and his own childish bewilderment. "They never caught
him."

"So you don't even know if your father was a target, or
if it was random."

"You got it. That was tough on my mother."
Understatement. "She couldn't understand, mourn, move on. She kept waiting
for the who and why, only nobody could tell her. Dad died because…" He
grimaced and held out his hands, palms up.

Tiny crinkles formed on her brow. "Is that why you all
became police officers? To exact the justice and closure your family never
had?"

He moved his shoulders uneasily. "That's the tidy
answer. Probably even true."

She cocked her head to one side. "But you don't like
it?"

On a spurt of frustration, he said sharply, "It's a
ridiculous goddamn reason to choose a career."

Mariah looked thoughtful. "It beats chance, which is
how most people wander into a career. At least motivation that personal implies
a purpose. Even a passion."

"I used to think I had both. I'm not so sure
anymore." Connor was shocked to hear himself admit as much. His brothers
were his best friends, and he hadn't done more than hint to them at his
increasing dissatisfaction. When he said, "I'm starting to hate my
job," they took it as hyperbole, and he hadn't corrected them.

"What's changed?" she asked simply, pushing away
her salad plate.

He leaned forward. "Some of your accusations pretty
much nailed my problems with what I do. I'm a destroyer. It has to be
done—nobody should get away with abusing a child or raping a woman. But the
fact is, I often can't prove my case. Whether I do or not, I leave chaos in my
wake. Doubts, fear, recriminations, guilt, marriages irretrievably shattered,
kids taken from their parents…" He rotated his head to ease the tension in
his neck. "I break. I don't pick up the pieces."

She'd have been within her rights to say,
I
told you so.
Instead
she said with quiet sympathy, "But how could you? That's not your job."

"No," he said. "It's not. And, as you pointed
out, that was my choice."

Their dinners arrived, and as they ate he talked more about
growing up, raised as much by John as by his mother, who'd worked two jobs to
pay the bills and put food on the table.

"Sometimes I rebelled at having a brother only a few
years older giving me orders, but I idolized him, too. He claims Mom influenced
him to become a cop, but I can't say the same. She was hardly ever home. No,
me, I followed in John's footsteps—four years at the University of Washington, then I applied for a badge. By that time, I'd been hearing big brother's stories.
Hell, it was inevitable."

"And Hugh?"

"Oh, he was gung ho from the time he was a little kid.
Like John, he got from Mom the idea that if cops had really done their jobs,
Dad's murderer would have paid. Or maybe the shoot-up wouldn't even have
happened, because the wacko would have been in jail for something else. There
had to be warning signs. Hugh is on a mission to ensure the bad guys don't walk,
so they can't commit evil another day."

"You make him sound like John Wayne."

Connor gave a grunt of laughter. "Actually he's
sinfully good-looking and likes to play on his days off. Usually with a pretty
blonde, although a redhead or two have slipped in there."

"What about you?" Mariah asked quietly.
"You've never been married?"

He shook his head. "Just never came up."

"You haven't become … soured on marriage, after what
you see in your job?"

"Maybe more cautious," he conceded. "Mom
never remarried. I guess I'd like to be sure I've found my once-in-a-lifetime
partner before I take the plunge."

She nodded and bowed her head, pushing food around with her
fork.

"Do you still love him?" Connor asked abruptly.

She looked up, eyes widening. "No! We've been divorced
for three years."

"You might have left him only for Zofie's sake."

"How could I love a man I thought might have…" She
stopped.

"But do you think he did it?"

"I don't know!" she cried. "I've said that a
thousand times. I just don't know!"

Connor set down his fork. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have
asked."

"It's all right." Suddenly she sounded weary.
"Of course you wonder. I don't even understand myself what I thought or
guessed or knew. All I'm sure of is that if I had loved Simon the way I should
have, I would never have doubted him and I certainly wouldn't have feared for
Zofie. So … do I love him? No."

The last word was clipped, tight.
Don't ask me any more.
But he heard grief in her conclusion, too, and some
self-doubt he couldn't clearly make out. She'd already suggested that she
judged herself because she hadn't stood by her husband.

Connor regretted fiercely that he hadn't been able to answer
her questions for her. Like his mother, Mariah Stavig found it hard to live
without that closure she'd talked about.

"Do you miss him?" he asked.

"Simon?" Emotions passed like ghosts across her
face. "At first I did. It was hard to become a single parent overnight.
When you're used to being married, suddenly being on your own is scary. There's
nobody to talk to in the same way, nobody to count on if your car breaks down
or you get sick or…" She made a face. "But I was the one who did the
talking. Simon was the strong, silent type. I realized somewhere along the way
how little he ever actually communicated to me. He didn't feel as if he needed
to explain himself. Not ever. So, after you came that first time, it was like
him just to turn the TV back on and pretend nothing had happened."

"But you must have asked him."

"He got angry," she said simply. "That's when
I realized he always had, whenever I questioned him." Hair a dark halo,
her face pretty and earnest, she looked at Connor as if she really wanted him
to understand her SOB of an ex. "You know, Simon was actually born in Yugoslavia—well, Serbia, now. He has some old-world notions. His grandmother stayed with us
once, and she wouldn't sit down to dinner while he was eating. She hovered,
hurrying to refill his glass, asking if he wanted more of anything, waiting on
him. Simon's mother isn't quite that bad, but she's deferential to his father.
Maybe, in his view, a woman should never question a man."

And they had a daughter. Hadn't that ever worried Mariah?
"Zofie seems pretty outspoken," Connor commented.

"Simon always talked about how she could be anything. A
doctor, a lawyer, the president of the United States. I really think he
expected his children to be American in a way he isn't quite, even though he
doesn't even have an accent. Zofie has never hinted that he's squelched her.
But apparently I was another story."

"You were his wife."

"Exactly." She smiled sadly. "We'd been
married five years, and I hadn't noticed that he didn't confide in me. Pretty
dense, huh?"

Damn the bastard for making her sad.

"I wouldn't say that. The problem is, we look to be
swept away by love. Analyzing someone's character, habits and values flies
against the romanticized notion of love overcoming all. Maybe when you're older
and considering a second marriage, you tick off the good versus the bad. I
suspect very few people do the first time around. He must have had appealing
qualities. Would you have listened if a friend had said, 'Hey, he's kind of
old-fashioned about women. He isn't going to like being challenged by
you'?"

"I didn't listen," Mariah said ruefully. "My parents
didn't like him at all. They're old-fashioned in a different way—Mom was forty
when she had me, but I probably wouldn't have listened if they were young and
hip. Or if my best friends had said the same things. I have to say, though,
that Simon did talk to me more in the early days, about his family and growing
up and what he hoped for in life. It was once we were married that he became
more serious, more reserved, more impatient when I asked him for something he
didn't think he should give. Men did
not,
in his view, wash dishes." She gave a wry smile.
"And why are we talking about my ex-husband? Do all trails lead to Rome?"

Connor lifted his wineglass to her. "Ex-girlfriends,
boyfriends, husbands and wives are one of those subjects couples have to get
out of the way right up-front. Didn't you know that?"

"I'm not very experienced at this," she reminded
him.

"Oh, yeah." He let a smile play around his mouth.
"Well, them's the rules."

"Oh, are they?" She tilted her head coquettishly.
"I haven't heard about
your
girlfriends yet."

He sipped wine, shrugged. "Nobody serious to tell
about."

"Never?" Mariah looked incredulous. "In your
whole life, you've never fallen in love? What about … oh, sixth grade?"

He laughed. "Yeah, I had a big crush on a girl in my class.
Can't even remember her name. I do remember that she sat in front of me for a
whole month, and her hair smelled like lilacs. I wanted to touch it so bad.
When she wore it in a ponytail, I yanked it until she hit me."