The Good Girl

There’s a knock at the door. I start, as I always do, and a thought crosses my mind: Mia?

 

I’m entangled in white Italian lights, testing them in the electric socket and attempting to unravel twelve months of knots. I’m never quite sure how the knots are able to form inside the plastic bins in the attic, and yet every year, as certain as the unmerciful Chicago winter, they do. Celtic Christmas music spews forth from the stereo: “Carol of the Bells.” I’m still in my pajamas, a striped silk set—a button-front shirt and drawstring pants. It’s approaching ten o’clock and so the pajamas, in my mind, are considered acceptable though my coffee has gone lukewarm, the milk drifting toward sour. The home is a mess: red and green plastic storage bins sprinkled here and there, lids removed and tossed where they won’t be in the way. There are branches of the artificial Christmas tree we’ve assembled every year since James and I rented an apartment in Evanston while he was finishing up his law degree. They’re stacked in piles across the living room. I’ve looked through the boxes of ornaments we’ve collected over the years, everything from Baby’s 1st Christmas to those beaded candy canes the girls made in third grade. But these are the ornaments that rarely make it to the tree, forced to remain in the box and collect dust. I was always insistent upon a lavish tree for others to admire at holiday parties. I hated the chintzy clutter that filled other homes on Christmas, the snowmen and bric-a-brac that people collected over the years.

 

But this year, I vow, the girls’ ornaments will be the first I hang.

 

I rise from the floor, leaving the lights behind. I can see Detective Hoffman peering through the beveled glass. I open the door and welcome a gust of cool air that rushes in to greet me.

 

“Good morning, Mrs. Dennett,” he says, welcoming himself into my home.

 

“Good morning, Detective.” I run a hand though my uncombed hair.

 

His eyes peek around the house. “Doing some decorating, I see,” he says.

 

“Trying to,” I respond, “but the lights are all tangled.”

 

“Well,” he begins, removing a light jacket and setting it on the floor beside his shoes, “I am an expert at untangling Christmas lights. Do you mind?” he asks and with a sweeping hand I tell him to help himself, grateful that someone is here to finish the burdensome task.

 

I offer the detective coffee, knowing he will accept because he always does, certain that he takes his with cream and sugar and a lot of it. I rinse out my own cup and refill it, returning to the living room with a mug in each hand. He’s kneeling on the floor, delicately prying the string of lights apart with the tips of his fingers. I set his coffee on a coaster on the end table and sit on the floor to give him a hand. He’s come to talk about Mia. He’s asking about some town in Minnesota: Have I been there, or Mia? I tell him no.

 

“Why?” I ask and he shrugs.

 

“Just curious.” He says that he saw some photographs of the town; it looks beautiful. A harbor town about forty miles from the Canadian border.

 

“Does it have something to do with Mia?” I ask and though he tries to elude the question, he finds he can’t. “What is it?” I persist.

 

“Just a hunch,” he says, and then admits, “I don’t know anything. But I’m looking into it,” and when my eyes beg desperately for more information, he vows, “You’ll be the first to know.”

 

“Okay,” I concede after a moment of hesitation, knowing that Detective Hoffman is the only one who cares about my daughter nearly as much as me.

 

It’s been nearly two months since Gabe Hoffman started showing up unexpectedly at my home. He comes whenever he has the urge: a quick question about Mia, some thought that hit him in the middle of the night. He hates it when I call him Detective just as I hate it when he calls me Mrs. Dennett and yet we keep up the semblance of formality when, after weeks of discussing the private details of Mia’s life, first names should be routine. He’s a master at the art of small talk and beating around the bush. James isn’t yet convinced that the man is not an idiot. But I think he’s sweet.

 

He pauses in his work, reaches for the mug of coffee and takes a sip. “They say we’re supposed to get a lot of snow,” he responds, changing the subject. But still, my mind is lost on this harbor town. Grand Marais.

 

“A foot,” I agree. “Maybe more.”

 

“It would be nice if we had snow on Christmas.”

 

“It would,” I say, “but it never happens. Maybe it should be a blessing. With all the travel and errands that we have to do around Christmastime, maybe it’s a good thing it doesn’t snow.”

 

“I’m sure you’ll have all your shopping done long before Christmas.”

 

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