Brian was the best version of himself that Sunday, charming and polite without trying too hard. He and her mother wound up talking about novels that Becks hadn’t read, early twentieth-century fiction, Upton Sinclair and John O’Hara, all the worthy books she’d missed in her headlong pre-law rush. I had a lot of long bus trips, Brian said. He explained the Internet to her mom without being condescending. He listened to the mildly embarrassing stories she told about teenage Rebecca, She almost failed her driving test, not that she couldn’t drive, she was just so stressed about it—
Becks was stressed? No way.
Rebecca could feel Eve settle in as the afternoon passed. “I really have to go,” she said around five.
“Sure you won’t stay for dinner?” Brian asked.
“Bri’s a great cook.”
“He cooks too?”
“Just this and that, not like I know what I’m doing.”
“Come on, Rebecca, walk me to my car.”
* * *
Rebecca came back to the apartment expecting to find Brian excited. Instead he sat on the couch, staring morosely at the television. She knelt in front of him, rested her hands on his legs. His eyes were flat, exhausted.
“What’s wrong, babe?”
He ignored her.
“Brian. What is it?” Her confusion was real. “She loved you, Bri, you know she did. You know what she said? He’s a keeper.” She had actually said, He’s a keeper, don’t blow it. Thanks, Mom.
He didn’t speak.
“Come on, Bri?”
“I wish I had a family like yours.”
* * *
He went to a knee as they were picnicking in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her surprise was genuine. They’d been together just five months. Her surprise and her pleasure. Yes, she said, yes yes yes. The day was perfect, a bright blue May afternoon, finals just over. On Monday she’d start her internship with Poynter Stone, a corporate law firm based in Philly. She was near the top of her class. She could have wound up at a high-end New York firm. But Poynter suited her because of its criminal defense practice. Even before she started law school she’d seen the degree as a means to an end.
By the end of her sophomore year at Wesleyan, she’d grown sick of the intellectual pretension around her. Worst of all was the way the kids talked about cops. Criminals with badges. Her uncle Ned, her dad’s brother, was a Boston police sergeant. He wouldn’t even take a free cup of coffee.
She decided to do something about it. At Thanksgiving break junior year, she told Ned she wanted to join the Boston police.
“Wesleyan to the BPD?” Ned was fleshy and strong, shaped like a keg, with oven-mitt hands. He looked her up and down, appraising her. “You’re serious, huh? Let’s go to Drakes.”
He seemed grim, but the invitation thrilled her. She’d heard him talk about Drakes. Cop bar at the edge of Roxbury, where he worked. District B-2, worst neighborhood in Boston.
He wound through the city’s streets like he was on autopilot. She tried to talk, but he turned up the radio. Late November in Massachusetts meant loooong nights. Only 7 p.m., but the sun seemed to have been gone forever. A freezing rain coated the windows.
He parked outside a two-story concrete building with a single reinforced window. No sign.
Inside, a dingy room reeking of smoke. Two jukeboxes, neither plugged in. A television playing Wheel of Fortune. Everyone in the place looked like Ned; they all had the same bulk in their shoulders and arms.
“New girlfriend, Neddie?” the bartender asked. “Little old for ya.”
“My niece.”
“Niece, sure, right.”
“Nah, true.”
Ned’s accent was thicker here than at her house.
“Rebecca goes to Wesleyan. She wants to be a cop.”
“Yeah?” one guy said to her. He was kinda cute, black hair, thirty or so. “Joking, yeah?”
“No.”
“Fucking idiot.”
“Thinks she’s gonna toss her college degree,” Ned said. “So she can do some good. I thought we should enlighten her about the realities of law enforcement in underserved communities.”
He brought her to a booth. For a solid hour cops came over to tell her horror stories. Getting domestic violence calls from cockroach-infested apartments until the calls turned into murders. Fourteen-year-old girls pimped by their boyfriends, sold to a dozen guys a night. Fifteen-year-old boys shooting each other in the head for the chance to sell a couple hundred dollars of crack. Menageries straight from hell, dead cats and half-starved pit bulls. On and on, each tale worse than the next. In the early nineties, Boston had plenty