"I didn't mean to —" Rosa Hidalgo tried to interject, but Kate plowed on.
"Now she's a human being, as close to being a normal kid as you can get with a brain like hers. She's got friends - kids her own age, not just one inappropriate friendship with a cop." She put an ironic bite on the word cop, and again ignored the other woman's protests. "I know you people live in a hothouse down there, and I can see that Jani has a load of problems of her own, but I really think you'd be doing Jules a great service if you'd just back off and let her find her own way. Stop coddling her on the one hand and watching her like a hawk on the other, waiting for signs of mental and emotional problems. Give her a chance, for God's sake. Try trusting her."
The final exhortation came out more as a whine than as a command: Kate's rage had deflated as quickly as it had grown, leaving her with a bad taste in her mouth and no choice but to sit while the woman across from her earnestly explained the need for therapy and guidance and supervision. By the time she got rid of Rosa Hidalgo, Kate was feeling like a sullen teenager herself, more firmly convinced than ever that Jules was on the rightest possible road.
But, oh my, she thought as she climbed back into the muddy rubber boots, it was fun to get mad.
Kate half-expected that after Rosa reported back on their interview, permission for Jules's plans would be withdrawn. However, the rest of that day and all the next went by with nothing said, so it appeared to be settled: Jules would come and stay with her from the wedding until New Year's.
With one adjustment to the plan.
On the phone, the afternoon before the wedding, Kate talked to Al, who was at his own place on the other side of town.
"Al, I was thinking. If it's all right with you and Jani, I thought Jules and I might go north for a few days over Christmas. Maybe as far as Washington."
"To see Lee?"
"Possibly. If we feel like it. I had a letter from her last week, asking me to come to her aunt's island for Christmas if I could get it off."
"Does she know you're on leave?"
"She doesn't know anything. I didn't tell her about the shooting, or that I got hurt. I didn't want to worry her, and once I got out of the hospital, it didn't really seem like something I could put in a letter, somehow. She did say she was sorry not to make it to your wedding, that she's writing you and sending you a present."
"Are you two about to break up?" he asked bluntly.
"Jesus, Al, you do ask some good ones, don't you? I don't know. I just don't know anymore. I don't even know if I care. I haven't even talked to her in four months, just these stupid cards of hers. But there won't be any scenes, if that's what you're worried about. I wouldn't take Jules into that. I really haven't made up my mind one way or another. I just wrote and told Lee that I'd leave a message at the post office by the twenty-third if I decided to come - but if we do, it'd just be for the day, or maybe overnight, depending on the ferry schedule, but then we'd leave and go do something else. Does Jules ski?"
"Better than I do. Which isn't saying much, I admit."
"Maybe we could go to Rainier or Hood, then. If Jani approves."
"I'll talk to her, but I doubt she'll have any problems with it. Do you want the car?"
"I'm going to take the Saab off its blocks. And if driving turns out to be a problem, we'll come home. I'm not going to risk passing out or anything while I'm driving Jules. You know that, Al. I'd never put Jules into danger."
Al talked to Jani, Jani talked to Kate, Kate talked to Al again, and after that, she called the car insurance company, and finally went downstairs to see if she could get the Saab down from its blocks and running.
Half the department seemed to be in the church, from the brass to the foot patrols, contrasting oddly with the ethereal academics Jani had invited. It was an afternoon affair with an informal potluck-style meal afterward in the church hall, when the motley friends rubbed shoulders and piled their rented plates high with dishes ranging from tamale pie and Jell-O salad to spanakopita, vegetarian spring rolls, and hummus.
But the real surprise of the day was not the sweet, honest innocence of the ceremony, nor seeing an SFPD lieutenant talking football with a Chinese professor of mathematics and a black lecturer in women's studies, nor even the quartet of two cops, a graduate student in history, and a technical writer singing dirty rugby songs. The real shock was the newlywed couple's daughter: Jules had a new image. With a vengeance.
Her waist-length braids were gone overnight. In their place stood a cropped black bristle nearly as short as Kate's, with a longer mop on the top held in place with a thick application of gel. Her makeup, though admirably restrained, added five years to her age, and the short jacket, short skirt, and short heels she wore made it equally apparent that this was not a child, but a young woman. Jani could barely bring herself to look at her daughter, merely shooting agonized glances at her from time to time, but Al seemed for the most part amused, even proud, at the transformation. The younger males present were attentive; Jules was aware of them, as well.
When the wine had begun to flow and the conversations flourish, Kate found herself standing next to Al over a platter of barbecued chicken wings. He was looking over to the other side of the room, where Jules in all her self-conscious punk splendor was talking animatedly with her new stepbrother, Sean, a serious, handsome young man a head taller than his father. Kate leaned over to speak in her partner's ear. "Quite a family you've got there, Al."
"Isn't Jules something else? The fledgling takes on her adult plumage. God, I thought Jani was going to die when Jules came home looking like that on Friday. She'll settle down."
"Jules? Or Jani?"
"Both."
The noise in the hall rose higher, and Kate escaped for an hour, to sit in the Saab under the shade of a tree and drift in and out of sleep. When she felt restored, she went back into the hall, to find that an impromptu dance had started up in one corner with a portable tape player. She found a chair in a corner, talked to various colleagues, then Jani, and then Al's daughter, until eventually the tables of food had been reduced to a shambles of scraps and crumbs, the new couple fled out the door, suddenly realizing that they were going to be late for their plane, and the life began to seep out of the party. Jules, flushed with exuberance and reluctant to let go of her triumphal entry into maturity, eventually remembered the shaky state of her guardian and pulled herself away from the nineteen-year-old premed student she was dancing with. Kate drove first to the Cameron apartment so Jules could fetch the bags she had packed earlier and to empty the refrigerator, and then to the house on Russian Hill. They stayed the night in San Francisco, and on Monday morning, they emptied Kate's refrigerator, as well.
After that, the girls were on the road.
ELEVEN
Fragments of conversation from the road north:
"Oh hell. I don't think I turned off the coffeemaker."
"You did."
"You're sure?"
"Positive. And you locked the back door and turned off the oven and checked that the upstairs toilet wasn't running."