Junk mail, bills, catalogs, Psychology Today and the Disability Rag for Lee (at least she hasn't changed the addresses on her subscriptions, Kate thought with black humor), and two letters - one for Lee, one from Lee.
She put everything but this last in a precise stack, largest on the bottom and smallest on top, the lower left corners aligned. She leaned the cheap envelope addressed to her in Lee's heavy black pen against the saltcellar, then took a swig from her mug, grimaced, got up and found an apple and a piece of leathery pizza in the refrigerator, and ate them standing at the sink. Then she took a can of split pea soup from the cupboard and two slices of bread from the refrigerator, opened the can, put half of the soup into a bowl and put that in the microwave oven, dropped the bread into the toaster, ate the soup, ate one slice of toast plain and the other with a sprinkling from the clotted shaker of cinnamon sugar, reached into the cupboard for the bag of coffee beans and then put them down on the sink and turned and took three steps to the table and ran a finger under the flap of the envelope and pulled the slip of paper out and smoothed it open on top of the table with one rapid hand before it could burn her. Then, because it lay open before her, Kate read Lee's brief letter.
"Dearest Kate," it began. That was something, anyway. Doing well, getting stronger. Learning to use a hatchet, could Kate believe that? Wearing one of Agatha's flannel shirts and a down vest, cold mornings. Beautiful trees. Strong hills on wise islands. Pods of orcas in the Sound. All of burgeoning nature helping her to find herself, transferring the energy of the hills into her body. Still confused, though, and sorry, so very, abjectly sorry, to be putting Kate through this, but…
But she couldn't say when she would be home. But Kate couldn't come to visit. But she couldn't tell Kate what to say to her clients, her friends. But as soon as she had her head together, Kate would be the first to know, be patient. "Love, Lee."
Kate looked down at her hand on the table. She had clawed the page together into her fist and it lay there now in a tight wad. She opened her hand, picked at the edges of the letter, smoothed it onto the tabletop with long movements of her hand as if trying to bond it to the wood of the table. She leaned forward, stood, pushing the chair away with the backs of her knees, and turned away.
Beaten, flayed, and too weary to weep, Kate went upstairs to bed.
Thursday's brightest spot came early, when Kate succeeded in running two miles and still managed a (very slow) near jog coming back up the hill. The rest of the day went downhill fast.
On Friday, Hawkin was back, and she and Calvo went out to the Sunset and arrested the dead child's father, a pleasant, rather stupid, frightened, unemployed eighth-grade dropout who had been abused himself as a child and who sobbed uncontrollably when Kate read him his rights, then - sure sign they had arrested the right man - fell asleep in the squad car from sheer relief.
His interview and confession brought no satisfaction. He was only a cog in a deadly mechanism, grinding on to produce yet more poverty and brutality. He was no killer, yet he killed, unforgivably, his own child.
Al Hawkin was near the interview room when Kate came out. Waiting for her? He dropped in beside her as she marched away.
"Al, good to see you. You should be home; you look like hell."
"How'd it go?"
"We got a confession."
"And?"
"And what? He'll go to prison and get himself a fine set of muscles in the weight room, and when he gets out, he'll find his girlfriend has two more kids by two other men, and everyone will go on beating everyone else, happily ever after."
"One of those days, I see."
"Do you ever think, Al, that maybe someone should just sterilize the whole goddamn human race, admit that it was a mistake, leave the planet to the dolphins and the cockroaches?"
"Often. Let's go get some dinner."
"I can't, Al. I have to see a man about a car."
"What kind of car?"
"A piece of junk, by the sound of it, but cheap."
"Oh, right. Tony said you'd been having car problems."
"I don't have a problem now. I just don't have a car. Three thousand dollars to fix it so it won't quit on me - I don't have the money."
"What's wrong with Lee's?"
"Nothing. Everything. It's too complicated to go into, Al. And Jon lent his to a friend while he's away."
"So where's the car you're looking at?"
"It's just up Van Ness."
"I'll take you; then we can have dinner."
"If I'm buying, it's a deal."
The car proved impossible, too big to park, too shaky to corner, and probably had had its odometer turned back at some point. They went to a Greek pizza house to eat a feta and pesto pizza, and at 9:30 Hawkin pulled up in front of her empty house and turned off the engine.
"Lee's not back yet," he said after a glance at the windows.
"Nope."
"You heard from her?"
"Short letters. They're in her handwriting, but they're not Lee."
"What's going on?"
"Ah, shit, Al, I wish I knew." When he continued to study the side of her face, she sighed and squinted at the house. "She's been getting flaky over the last few months. She said she wants —" She stopped, realizing that she really didn't want to go into Lee's fantasies and desires, not even with Al. "She wants all kinds of things she can't have, in the shape she's in. And she's become secretive. She's never been one to hide anything, but suddenly there were all these things she wouldn't talk to me about - Lee the therapist's therapist, who's always talked over every little nuance, suddenly there were these areas she'd go silent about."
"Any pattern to them?" asked Hawkin the detective.
"Any discussion about the future was off-limits. Her future, our future."
"You think she wants out?" he asked bluntly.
"I did finally ask her that; she seemed, I don't know, shocked. Desperately unhappy that I'd think it. She's just going through a lot of stuff, I think," Kate said weakly. "Part of it has to do with her job - you know she's dropped most of the AIDS therapy? She hated to give it up, but it was too much for her, after the shooting. She doesn't have any stamina. She's seeing a lot more women now, and kids. I thought it might be money that was bugging her, because we still have heavy bills and she's not earning much, but when I suggested we move, she got really upset. I mean, look at this place. The taxes are unbelievable. She could retire on what it would bring, but she wouldn't hear of selling it - 'Not yet,' she said."
"It is a beautiful house."
"I'm beginning to hate it. It's like living in a mausoleum. And that car of hers in the garage - she'll never drive it; she could sell it and buy something with manual controls and still have money left over, but she won't hear of it. Won't even say why, just refuses to talk about it."
They sat in the cooling car, neither of them making a move to go. Hawkin finally spoke.
"She may be finding it difficult to choose a future, having so very nearly had none, and then for a long time able to see only an intolerable future. Choices must be… painful. I just hope for your sake this phase doesn't go on too long."
"I think that's part of it," Kate surprised herself by saying. "I think she's testing me. Seeing just how long my patience will last. Seeing if I still love her."
"Or maybe —"
"Maybe what?"
"Hell, Kate, I'm no marriage counselor. I screwed up my own marriage thoroughly, too, so I'm no one to talk."
"Just tell me. I'm a big girl."