Love You More: A Novel

Oh God. This case was gonna hurt.

“Sounds like she and the husband got into it,” Bobby was saying. “He overwhelmed her, knocked her to the floor, so she went for her gun. Only afterward did she discover her daughter missing. And realize, of course, that she’d just killed the only person who could probably tell her where Sophie is.”

D.D. nodded, still considering. “Here’s a question: What’s a trooper’s first instinct—to protect herself or to protect others?”

“Protect others.”

“And what’s a mother’s first priority? Protect herself or protect her child?”

“Her child.”

“And yet, Trooper Leoni’s daughter is missing, and the first thing she does is notify her union rep and find a good lawyer.”

“Maybe she’s not a very good trooper,” Bobby said.

“Maybe, she’s not a very good mother,” D.D. replied.





6


I fell in love when I was eight years old. Not the way you think. I had climbed the tree in my front yard, taking a seat on the lower branch and staring down at the tiny patch of burnt-out lawn below me. Probably, my father was at work. He owned his own garage, opening up shop by six most mornings and not returning till after five most nights. Probably, my mother was asleep. She passed the days in the hushed darkness of my parents’ bedroom. Sometimes, she’d call to me and I’d bring her little things—a glass of water, a couple of crackers. But mostly, she waited for my father to come home.

He’d fix dinner for all of us, my mother finally shuffling out of her dark abyss to join us at the little round table. She would smile at him, as he passed the potatoes. She would chew mechanically, as he spoke gruffly of his day.

Then, dinner completed, she would return to the shadows at the end of the hall, her daily allotment of energy all used up. I’d wash dishes. My father would watch TV. Nine p.m., lights out. Another day done for the Leoni family.

I learned early on not to invite over classmates. And I learned the importance of being quiet.

Now it was hot, it was July, and I had another endless day stretching out before me. Other kids were probably living it up at summer camp, or splashing away at some community pool. Or maybe, the really lucky ones, had happy, fun parents who took them to the beach.

I sat in a tree.

A girl appeared. Riding a hot pink scooter, blonde braids flapping beneath a deep purple helmet as she flew down the street. At the last moment, she glanced up and spotted my skinny legs. She screeched to a halt beneath me, peering up.

“My name is Juliana Sophia Howe,” she said. “I’m new to this neighborhood. You should come down and play with me.”

So I did.

Juliana Sophia Howe was also eight years old. Her parents had just moved to Framingham from Harvard, Mass. Her father was an accountant. Her mother stayed home and did things like tend the house and cut the crusts off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

By mutual agreement, we always played at Juliana’s house. She had a bigger yard, with real grass. She had a Little Mermaid sprinkler head and a Little Mermaid slip and slide. We could play for hours, then her mother would serve us lemonade with pink curly straws and thick slices of red watermelon.

Juliana had an eleven-year-old brother, Thomas, who was a real “pain in the ass.” She also had fifteen cousins and tons of aunts and uncles. On the really hot days, her whole family would gather at her grandma’s house by the South Shore and they would go to the beach. Sometimes, she got to ride the carousel, and Juliana considered herself an expert on grabbing the brass ring, though she hadn’t actually gotten it yet—but she was close.

I didn’t have cousins, or aunts and uncles or a grandmother near the South Shore. Instead, I told Juliana how my parents had made a baby when I was four years old. Except the baby was born blue and the doctors had to bury him in the ground, and my mother had to come home from the hospital and move into her bedroom. Sometimes, she cried in the middle of the day. Sometimes, she cried in the middle of the night.

My father told me I was not to talk about it, but one day, I’d found a shoe box tucked behind my father’s bowling ball in the hall closet. In the box had been a little blue cap and a little blue blanket and a pair of little blue booties. There was also a picture of a perfectly white newborn baby boy with bright red lips. At the bottom of the picture, someone had written Joseph Andrew Leoni.

So I guess I had a little brother Joey, but he had died and my father had been working and my mother had been crying ever since.