then what sounded like “can you hell” but the line was dead. I scrolled through the contacts menu on the phone and hit send when I came to Ray’s name.
The waitress came by again. “We have a no-cell-phone policy,” she said.
Of course you do, I thought. You should also have a no-home-perm policy, too, but of course then you wouldn’t be able to work here. I got up and went outside through the back entrance so I wouldn’t have to see la famille Crawford again. The phone rang in my ear and, after five or six rings, went to Ray’s voice mail. “Ray, call me back.” I walked to the front of the restaurant and caught a glimpse of Crawford and his family inside.
I stood for a moment on the street corner watching the bustling activity on the avenue. After a few moments of thought, I made another call. The message was short and to the point, and the decision, I hoped, not one that I would live to regret.
“Hi, Kevin? Yes, tell your brother I’d love to meet him.”
I dropped Kevin’s dinner off at the dorm where he lived. On my short drive home, I thought about running into Crawford, a situation that could not have been more awkward. I wish I had been able to keep my cool, but something about seeing him with his daughters and his wife made me lose whatever modicum of composure I actually had. And from what I had heard about his wife from the little he told me and from the details that his detective partner, Fred—who as luck would have it was also engaged to Max—had filled in, she was a veritable Mother Teresa, lovely and kind and devoted to her daughters. Crawford had said that they would be getting divorced, but when? It was not something that I felt we could delve into at the Steak House in any meaningful way.
I thought about my impulsive decision to green-light a date with Kevin’s brother. A minor twinge of guilt gnawed at my insides; I was really crazy about Crawford, probably more than I ever had been about my ex-husband, but what was I supposed to do? How long was I supposed to wait while he figured out his personal life? Denial is a powerful thing, however; by the time I had reached my exit off the Saw Mill River Parkway, I had completely justified going out with Jack McManus and felt much better about things. I hadn’t paid too much attention to what Kevin had told me about his four brothers, but I seemed to remember that one brother was a little too into Madonna and liked to “vogue” at family parties. He also had another brother who was really into Star Wars, and had an adult-sized Chewbacca costume that he donned every Halloween. I prayed that neither of them were named Jack.
I pulled into my driveway and gave a nod to Trixie, who looked at me as she always did, tongue hanging out to one side, her black lips pulled back into what seemed like a huge smile. It was nice, after having adjusted to living alone, to have someone or something greet me every evening.
Darkness had settled over everything in the backyard and I carefully picked my way around lawn furniture and trash cans to get to the back door. Damn that nonexistent motion-detecting light. At least there was no ex-husband lounging on my patio furniture. I managed to insert my key into the back door and get into the kitchen without much of a problem and my eyes began to adjust to the blackness of the house. I flicked on the kitchen light and dropped my bag onto the table. It was in that instant of doing the familiar, the normal, the rote, that I noticed that I wasn’t alone.
Sitting at the kitchen table, the ends of his wrists bloody nubs, was Ray, my ex-husband, a tortured look forever etched on his handsome, lifeless face.
Crawford walked into the precinct that evening; he was pulling a double shift so that he could have all of Saturday night and all day Sunday with his girls. He had left the girls with his aunt Bea; although they were old enough at sixteen to stay in his apartment by themselves, he preferred them to be there when his aunt was in the apartment downstairs. She rarely left after six in the evening unless there was bingo at the church or some devotional