Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,50
on the table. “I have to renew my license.”
“You have a birthday coming up?”
“Today.”
“Hey, happy birthday. What? Forty?”
“Yup.”
“Just a baby,” Koenig says.
“Watch it.”
Webster reads the letter. “I have to get a new pic this time. Do they really think the color of my eyes is going to change?”
“No, but your weight might. You might go gray.”
“My parents went gray in their forties,” Webster says.
“I’ll be bald at fifty.”
“Your mother’s father?”
“I loved the guy. He had an ugly head, though.”
Webster checks the computer that is always open on the center table. “Weather’s going to be great tomorrow,” he tells his partner. “Sixty-eight and sunny.”
“May the gods smile on Annabelle.”
“Hope the gods smile on the soldier, too.”
“Jackson.”
“I knew that.” Webster puts down the letter and sips his lukewarm coffee.
“You OK?” Koenig asks.
“Yeah, why?”
“You look preoccupied.”
“No, you know, the usual. Worried about Rowan.”
“Until six months ago,” Koenig points out, “you hardly ever worried about Rowan.”
Webster says nothing.
“What’s different?” Koenig asks.
“Seventeen?”
“Maybe she’s got a romance going.”
“She does have a romance,” Webster says. “Guy named Tommy. Good kid, as far as I can tell.”
Koenig is silent. He crushes his empty cup and lobs it toward the trash bin. “Rowan’s a straight-up kid,” he says as he unlaces his boots. “These new Timberlands hurt like hell.”
“How long have you had them?”
“Three weeks.”
“Wearing them the whole time?”
Koenig nods.
“Get rid of them, then. You have to be sharp on your pins.”
“Shame.”
“Find someone on the squad who has your foot size,” Webster says as the tones sound a call. He takes it.
“Seizure,” he reports to Koenig. “Twenty-two-year-old female. Known epileptic.”
“Super,” Koenig says, lacing his boots as fast as he can.
Webster cleans the kitchen, moving the silver cube from the center of the table to the sill. There’s a different fortune in the box: Go slowly and be careful. He thinks that Rowan, the previous night, must have given the box another shake, and he wonders what advice she was looking for. After he finishes with the kitchen, he gives the bathroom a punishing scrubbing. The windows are winter-filthy, but he knows that Rowan will tackle them, still tickled by the novelty of the Windex sprayer that sheets them clean. The day is fine, as promised, and Webster from time to time thinks about Koenig and Annabelle and the soldier. Mostly, however, he thinks about Rowan.
It wasn’t so long ago that Rowan used to give him a hug and a kiss when she walked in the door. Then she’d ask him how his day went while she sliced apples for them to eat with a sugar and cinnamon mix. He’d want to know about her day, and she’d tell him—when she planned on hiking with Gina; how she was glad she no longer had to take history; and could he loan her fifty dollars until she got paid so that she and Gina could go shopping in Manchester for good deals on winter jackets? When had that been? October? November? Had the change in Rowan happened gradually or all at once? He can’t remember. It seems to him that one day she gave him a hug and a kiss, and the next day she didn’t. That all of a sudden he no longer knew where she was or who she was with. That by Christmas a petulant tone had crept into her voice, there one minute, gone the next. And that by March, she was questioning his authority and letting him know when he irritated her with his questions and his always wanting to know. He supposed the change had to happen, that it would help when Rowan had to leave in the fall. All that made theoretical sense. What didn’t make sense was the day-to-day reality of not knowing his daughter anymore.
Webster hears the specific whine of Rowan’s Corolla before it hits the driveway. He’s still vacuuming when Rowan comes in, so it isn’t until he turns off the machine that he hears voices in the back hallway, those of Rowan and Gina, a blond genius who might also one day be a beauty once she rids herself of the small landmasses of pimples that cross her facial continent. Webster strolls into the kitchen, hands in pockets. “Gina,” he says, “how are you doing?”
“Hey, Mr. Webster.”
“Hey, Dad,” Rowan says, opening the fridge, the first move she makes whenever she enters the house. “Want some OJ?” she asks her friend.
“Sure.”
“How was work?” Webster asks. “You two have the same shift today?”
Gina’s sweatshirt is dotted with what looks to be meat