Second Chance

Chapter 17

AFTER A FEW MORE GIDDY HUGS with Jill, I made my way home to my apartment on Potrero Hill.

It was the second floor of a renovated blue Victorian.

Cozy and bright, with an alcove of wide windows overlooking the bay. Martha, my affectionate Border collie, met me at the door.

“Hey, sweetie,” I said. She wagged up to greet me and threw her paws against my leg.

“So, how was your day?” I nuzzled close, smooching her happy face.

I went into the bedroom and peeled off my work clothes, pulled up my hair, putting on the oversize Giants sweatshirt and flannel pajama pants I lived in when the weather turned cool. I fed Martha, made myself a cup of Orange Zinger, and sat in the cushioned alcove.

I took a sip of tea, Martha perched in my lap. Out in the distance, a grid of blinking airplane lights descending into SF1 came into view. I found myself thinking about the unbelievable image of Jill as a mom... Her thin, fit figure with a bulging belly... a shower with just us girls. It made me chuckle. I smiled at Martha. “Jilly-bean's gonna be a mommy.”

I had never seen Jill look so complete. It was only a few months ago when my own thoughts had run to how much I would have loved to have a baby. As Jill said, I wanted some of that, too. It just wasn't meant to be.

Parenting just didn't seem like the natural occupation in my family.

My mother had died eleven years before, when I was twenty-four and just entering the Police Academy. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and my last two years of college, I helped take care of her, rushing back from class to pick her up at the Emporium, where she worked, preparing her meals, watching over my younger sister, Cat.

My father, a San Francisco cop, disappeared on us when I was thirteen. To this day, I didn't know why I had grown up hearing all the stories - that he handed his paycheck over to the bookies, that he had a secret life away from Mom, that the bastard could charm the pants off of anyone, that one day he lost heart and just couldn't put the uniform back on.

Last I heard from Cat, he was down in Redondo Beach, doing his own thing, private security. Old-timers down in the Central district still asked me how Marty Boxer was. They still told stories about him, and maybe it was good someone could think about him with a laugh. Marty who once nabbed three perps with the same set of handcuffs... Marty Boxer, who stopped off to lay a bet with the suspect still in the car.

All I could think about was that the bastard let me tend and nurse my mother while she was dying and never came back.

I hadn't seen my father for almost ten years. Since the day I became a cop. I'd spotted him in the audience when I graduated from the police academy but we hadn't spoken. I didn't even miss him anymore.

God, it had been ages since I had examined these old scars. Mom had been gone for eleven years. I'd been married, divorced. I had made it into Homicide. Now I was running it. Somewhere along the way, I had met the man of my dreams... I was right when I told Mercer the old fire was back.

But I was lying when I told myself I had put Chris Raleigh in the past.