Ellen had turned back to her game.
“Let’s tell Mommy the verdict,” Kevin said as they passed the first huge orange span of the bridge.
“Call her,” Ellen replied, not looking up from her game.
Kevin reached for the cell phone, but realized that he would soon lose the connection as they drove into the tunnel on the other side of the bridge. To his right, he saw a huge container ship getting ready to glide under the Golden Gate out into the Pacific Ocean. Behind it in the bay sat Alcatraz Island, with its faded yellow prison buildings, steel water tower, and flashing beacon. Hundreds of white sails dotted the bay on this sunny June afternoon.
Ellen took a deep breath as they passed the rainbow arch that formed the entrance to the Waldo Tunnel a mile north of the bridge. She had been holding her breath and making a wish in tunnels since she was two years old. Fortunately, this was a short one. Ellen expelled her breath when their van emerged from the tunnel. She would never divulge her wish. She just said that it was the same one as always. Kevin thought he knew it – she had been wanting a puppy for some time.
Kevin dialed home.
Ellen, distracted from her game by the tunnel, snatched the phone.
“Daddy won his trial! And we had ice cream!”
They joined the commute north on Highway 101 through Marin County as Ellen recounted her day to her mother. Kevin reveled in the enthusiasm that Ellen expressed about their day together. When she finally surrendered the phone and returned to her Game Boy, there wasn’t much left for Kevin to report.
“Hi, honey,” Kevin said.
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks. It’s nice to go out with a win.”
Kevin and Diane had been married for twenty-one years. They had met in law school. Although she’d graduated near the top of their class, she hadn’t liked practicing law, and eventually had gone to work as a writer for a legal publishing company. When Ellen was born and with Kevin earning a federal prosecutor’s salary, Diane had cut down to part-time writing from home. Recently, she had stopped taking legal writing assignments from her regular clients, and Kevin wasn’t quite sure why. He knew that she had been depressed since the death of her last parent, her mother, in the past year. An only child, Diane seemed to have lost some of her passion for life since then.
“How’s the packing going?” he asked.
“Well, Ellen’s room is mostly packed up. I just need to get the stuff I’m throwing out into the trash so she won’t try to reclaim it.”
Kevin smiled. Ellen, a pack rat at heart, insisted on saving every piece of paper, Kid’s Meal toy, and art project that came into her possession. It was only through Kevin and Diane’s periodic secret sweeps that Ellen’s room was not totally engulfed.
“I haven’t even begun to think about packing the things we’re taking with us. Moving is so much work. I wish we could just stay put.”
They had just done ten years’ worth of staying put, Kevin thought. He didn’t say anything; he’d learned to listen to Diane complain, and offer words of understanding.
“I’m sorry I haven’t helped much with the move.”
Diane sighed. “I’ll see you in a little while. Don’t let Ellen have more sweets.”
“Of course not,” he said in mock indignation.
Kevin knew Diane didn’t want to go to Holland. A homebody, she was comfortable in Santa Rosa and among their circle of close friends. Kevin hoped the change of scene would be good for Diane, who had finally come around to the idea because she didn’t want to stand in the way of an experience for Ellen that few children got. If Ellen had not been in the equation and it had simply been a matter of Kevin wanting the experience, he suspected he would have been moving to Holland alone.
He wondered what the relocation would mean to them, and what would happen in their marriage. As they had gotten older, the differences between them grew and bothered Kevin more. He was forty-five years old, and he wasn’t yet ready to live on cruise control. With an innate zest for living, he still wanted to have adventures and make new memories, while Diane seemed weighed down and even haunted by old ones.
Kevin had never cheated on Diane, and he was not one to admit failure by divorce. And, of course, there was Ellen to consider now. He was in for the long haul. But he worried that he and Diane were disconnecting, and was scared to death that their marriage had begun to resemble that of the couple in American Beauty.
An hour later, Kevin pulled the van into the driveway. Ellen raced into their sprawling ranch house, leaving Kevin to carry in her Game Boy, backpack, as well as his own things. By the time he headed up the stairs, Ellen was passing him on her way down.
“I’m going next door to play with Lauren,” she said breezily.
“Thanks for a great day, Ellen.”
“Me, too. Love you,” she called back to him from halfway down the stairs.
Kevin’s face broke into a wide smile. He made it to the top of the stairs and put down his load. There were boxes everywhere.
Diane, wearing sweats, appeared in the hall. “I’m pooped,” she announced.
Kevin suddenly felt tired. The adrenaline of the trial and the sugar from the sundae had worn off. It was good to be home, even one that looked like a warehouse. Tomorrow, the movers would be taking everything away to storage – the things going to Holland with them would come along in five suitcases and two trunks. The day after, the family who had rented the house for a year would be moving their belongings in.
“Are we still going out to dinner?” Diane asked.
“I guess so,” Kevin replied. “I’m beat, but I want to take Bud out to celebrate the verdict and his retirement.”
“Whatever.” Shrugging indifferently, she said, “All the cooking utensils are packed up anyhow. And Ellen wants to spend the night next door.”
Kevin didn’t bother changing out of his suit. Diane put on a light blue summer dress. At forty-four, she still hardly ever wore makeup. Her smooth, moist skin and beautiful smile lit up her face, although the smile had not been coming out much lately. Diane wore her brown hair short now, and it was streaked with gray, which she made no effort to conceal. The most striking thing about her was that she didn’t act like she was beautiful; she carried herself with a reserved simplicity and looked good without trying.
Kevin and Diane drove to downtown Santa Rosa and strolled into his favorite restaurant: Mac’s Deli. Mac’s was a Santa Rosa institution; a hole-in-the-wall delicatessen that served huge sandwiches to the town’s movers and shakers. Diane didn’t care for Mac’s – she preferred fancier restaurants when they went out, and also, she didn’t like having to share Kevin with “the entire room” whenever they ate there.
Bud Marcello and his wife, Sherry, were already seated in a booth. The burly FBI Agent had grey, curly hair that looked a bit more unkempt than usual. He seemed to also be making less of an effort to conceal his bulging waistline now that he would no longer be subject to the Bureau’s grooming rules.
Marcello rose and kissed Diane on the cheek.
“Come on,” he said to Kevin with a chuckle, “let’s take our victory lap.”
Kevin winced. As Santa Rosa’s first and only federal prosecutor, he was a bit of a legal-community celebrity. But he shied away from gloating whenever he sent someone on their way to federal prison. Tonight, Kevin decided to humor the gregarious agent. After all, Bud needed to start drumming up business after tomorrow.
“Got your new business cards printed up yet?” Kevin teased.
“Right here,” Bud said, slapping his breast pocket.
Kevin had worked with Bud Marcello for the last eight years. Bud was a tenacious investigator with a keen sense of fair play, and Kevin had come to trust him completely. He was also the most irreverent FBI agent Kevin had ever met. If Bud needed some information, he would bypass the Bureau’s cumbersome procedures and just go get it, leaving FBI supervisors and bean counters tearing out their hair.