Unlucky 13

Chapter 29

I opened the front door to our apartment on Lake Street, and Martha came tearing around the corner from the living room. She threw her front feet hard against my solar plexus and sang her special welcome-home anthem.

I stooped, kissed her, ruffled her coat, and followed her back to the room where my husband was rising from his big chair, coming toward me, arms open.

“Maria Teresa just left. Julie’s had her bottle and her bath and she’s sleeping,” he said, giving me the biggest hug. “She made chocolate pudding for us, and, yes, I took Martha for a good long stroll.”

“Thank you, Joe. What a day I’ve had.”

“Did you eat?”

“Hah. No.”

“Come on, my sweetheart. I’ll heat up some meat loaf and you can tell me all about it.”

I looked in on Julie, who was sleeping like a lamb. Without warning, I flashed on her first months, when Joe and I were afraid that she might die—a memory that was too, too awful. I shook the thought away.

I straightened Julie’s blanket, kissed my fingers, and touched her cheek. I whispered, “Sweet dreams, baby girl.”

I turned to see Joe waiting for me outside her door.

“I turned off my phone,” he said. “And I unplugged the landline.”

“I should turn off my phone, too, right?”

“How about it, Linds? Go off duty. We need some quality time, you and me.”

Turning off my phone was the easiest thing I’d done all day.

Joe served up meatloaf and green beans on a blue-and-white plate at the dining table, and he joined me in having a glass of Merlot. I asked for a refill, then attacked a bowl of pudding.

I took a long bath while Joe sat on the toilet seat and we talked together about my day of corporate go-nowhere interrogations, Yuki and Brady’s magical honeymoon, and a scene of bloody awful domestic violence. He told me some good news. He’d been tapped for a consulting job, home-based, laptop variety.

We went to bed early in our blue bedroom with soft city lights glowing through our windows. It was a blessing to make love and not think about the phone ringing.

And throughout it all, little Julie slept.