I ended the call, put my phone down in the middle of my desk, and stared at it, willing it to ring.
The phone didn’t ring. Well, it did, but not with the call we were hoping for from the mysterious young woman. It had only taken a few days of not being able to leave my desk to turn me into a clock watcher. When Lauren came to pick me up, I already had my messenger bag packed and ready to go and had been watching the second hand on the old clock on the wall, above the window to Ruiz’s office, for two minutes.
I asked her to stop at Gelson’s, even though it was out of our way, to pick up something to grill, fresh vegetables for a salad, and a good bottle of wine.
At Jen’s house, I lit the barbecue and turned the heat low to warm it up. I wasn’t much for cooking, but I knew my way around a grill well enough. Once it was going, I went into the kitchen, got out a big steel bowl, tossed some baby spinach in with the bagged salad, and added some cherry tomatoes and sunflower seeds on top.
Jen didn’t let me know when she was on the way. I hadn’t expected her to. But when she sent a text message to Lauren, I turned up the heat and put the chicken and beef skewers I’d bought on the grill and went back inside to finish the salad.
“What are you doing?” Lauren asked.
“Making dinner.”
She raised her eyebrows and said, “You okay?”
“Why does everybody keep asking me that?”
“Because you had a major concussion a couple of days ago and you’re acting weird.”
“Making dinner isn’t weird.”
“It is for you.”
I stopped what I was doing and looked her in the eye. “I’m okay.”
“You think if you make a nice dinner one time, everything’s going to go back to normal and Jen’s going to forgive you?”
The timer on my phone started chiming. It was time to turn the skewers. I picked it up and silenced it.
She sighed and said, “It’s not about her forgiving you. She’s still blaming herself for letting it happen.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Then you should understand it.”
“You know you’re on the clock, right?” I meant it to sound light and funny, but it came out bitter and hard and I felt like an asshole.
“My apologies, sir. I best get back to work, then.”
She went outside and I expected her to head to her place, but she didn’t. After pacing to the far end of the yard and back again, she took up position with her back against one of the support posts for the pergola and gazed out past the gate and down the driveway. It was a solid sentry post.
Her eye never wavered when I went outside to turn the skewers.
Jen and I ate mostly in silence. She gave me a truncated progress report of the day’s work that didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.
“Thanks,” she said when she finished the last piece of chicken on her plate. “That was good.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “It’s the least I could do after you’ve put me up for so long.”
She drank the last of the wine in her glass. I reached for the bottle to pour her some more, but she stopped me by raising her hand a few inches off the table and showing me her palm. “I’m good.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said.
“Don’t even start.”
“I feel like shit,” I said, looking down at the paper napkin I’d balled up in my fist. “What can I do?”
“Nothing.” The bland evenness of her voice cut me deeper than any shout or cry could have. She looked me in the eye and I could see her recognize the pain I was feeling. “Be patient, all right? It’ll get better.”
She picked up her plate and mine, took them inside, and put them in the sink. In the years we’d been partners, we’d had many disagreements and I’d frustrated her in more ways than I could even come close to remembering, but I’d never felt this kind of distance before. I’d never felt her pulling away the way she seemed to be doing.
All I could think was, But what if it doesn’t?
It was lunchtime the next day when the call came. Jen had another afternoon in court and Patrick was in the valley conferring again with the ATF. Everybody else was out of the squad room, either