“You gave that up.”
“They’ve always been your horses.” She stuffed the paper into a manila folder and stood up. “I just got to rent them in exchange for good behavior.”
Emma was out of the barn, walking toward them. “Hi, honey,” Rachel said, giving Emma a kiss on the part in her hair. It softened him, her lips on their daughter’s hair. It was all he could hope for, to witness that every day. “Go get your stuff and let’s eat,” she said.
Emma went into the house and Rachel stared up at him, leaning on her left hip in a pose he knew well. He swung himself off Tin Man and stood holding the reins.
“When were you going to tell me about this kid she’s seeing?” he said.
“Isn’t that hers to tell?” Rachel said, raising an eyebrow.
“I thought we had joint custody for a reason.”
A military jet flew high above them and they both glanced at it, a silver spark in the sky.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have filled you in. Been a lot on my plate at school. This thing with the boy is new.”
“She says six weeks.”
“Get used to it, Ben,” Rachel said, shooting him an annoyed glance. “She’s going to have boyfriends.”
“What if he’s a jerk?” he said. “What if she’s getting into trouble?”
“We don’t need to make trouble where there’s none yet.”
“I’d like to avoid the other side of ‘yet.’?”
“So would I.”
“Dad,” Emma called from the kitchen window. “Where’s the sweatshirt I was wearing?”
“Look in the hall closet,” he said. “So the professor?”
“Programmer.”
“You like him?” Shut your mouth, Ben. Just shut up. “Play Ms. Pac-Man together and stuff like that?”
“Jesus, Ben,” she said. “He’s a friend, and I don’t have to explain myself to you. Not that you’d listen.”
She hoisted her school bag to her shoulder, disorganized edges of lined paper poking out.
“Besides, how’s Natasha?” Rachel said. “That’s her name, right?”
She and Emma had been talking. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s her name. Just work friends.”
“Work friends.” Rachel smiled wryly. “Emma Eunice,” she yelled at the house. “Let’s go!”
“I need the sweatshirt.”
“If I find it,” Ben called to the window, where he saw his daughter tossing throw pillows into the air, “I’ll bring it to you in the morning.”
Emma stomped out of the house, full of teenage fury.
“What, do we have a train to catch?”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Rachel said. Ben simultaneously echoed the sentiment, and Emma stared at the two of them as though they were a team conspiring against her. For a moment, Ben was tricked into feeling married again.
“Geez.”
Rachel tugged Emma toward her Buick.
Oh,” she said, pulling a thin box from her bag. “Here.” See’s Candies. “For Margaret when you see her.”
Margaret, Ben’s mother, had been diagnosed with early-onset dementia soon after his stepfather died six years ago. Sixty-four years old and her memory was slowly being erased. She was at Leisure World—Seizure World, as the EMTs called it—a home down in Laguna Niguel.
“Nice of you. Thanks.”
A quick smile.
“He pushes your buttons, then?” Ben said, unable to leave it alone. “The professor?”
“Cute,” Rachel said, walking away from him.
He watched them go, a cloud of dust following them down the road. Alone. He was alone, and no doubt he deserved it.
—
HE BRUSHED OUT the horses, a little too roughly, and put them in for the night. In the house, he straightened the decorative carnage wrought by Emma and called in to the station to check his messages: missing elderly found telling jokes in the produce section of Safeway; Rafferty thanking him for the tip on the killer’s small hands; a problem with his articulation on an affidavit for a search warrant on a suspected burglar of hi-fi stereos. Pain in the ass. Nothing from ballistics, nothing from Natasha.
In his bedroom, he opened the sock drawer of his dresser and yanked out the boy’s sweatshirt. No chance Emma would check there. Inside the hoodie he found the boy’s last name scrawled in Sharpie on the tag: Arnold. The fabric stank of sweat and the faint sticky-sweet of weed. He checked the pockets for any plastic bags or shake, any papers. Nothing. According to the white pages, there were two Arnolds in the El Camino Real area: a J. M. Arnold, living in the Bonita Casitas condominiums; the other, a husband and wife, David and Michelle Arnold, 19832 Los Pueblos.
He tossed the sweatshirt on the passenger seat and gunned the cruiser down the dirt road until he hit the light at Junipero. The last of the sun cast saturated light against the shining cars, the street wet-black and ruler-straight, everyone speeding—he could tell by the way they zipped through the intersection to his one-two counts instead of threes or fours. When he turned the cruiser onto the road, everyone throttled down to speed limit—three rows of brake lights, nervous glances at intersections. His car was unmarked, but the silver spotlight above the sideview gave him away.
It took him ten minutes, mostly spent idling at timed stoplights, to reach the house, a ranch with a half-pipe in the driveway. The kid was blasting punk music, and his eyes bugged out when he saw Ben. He jumped to the boom box in the empty garage and flipped it off.
“Dude, what’d I do?” he said, his cool lost now.
“Nothing yet, I hope.”
“What? No, man,” he said, shaking his head. “Nothing. I mean, we’ve kissed, but that’s all.”
It was nearly 7:00, and there were no cars in the garage. The front door was wide open, the house dark and quiet inside.
“Where’re your parents?”
“Mom’s working,” the kid said. “My dad?” He looked at his feet. “You got me.”
He saw this all the time, kids alone at home for hours after school, cooking their meals, drinking their parents’ whiskey, creating trouble where there didn’t need to be any while parents worked their tails off to pay inflated mortgages.
“This is yours,” Ben said, tossing the kid the sweatshirt.
“Yeah, man,” he said. “I let Em wear—”
“Emma.”
“—Emma wear it because she said she was cold.”
“Chivalrous of you.”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
Ben turned to go back to his car.
“How’d you know where I lived?”
“I know a lot of things, kid. I got eyes and ears.”
A BIRD WITH A HOOD OVER ITS HEAD