Fic: In the Weeds (3 of 3) | WMC | Lindsay/Cindy | R
Title: In the Weeds (3 of 3)
Author: liz_estrada
Fandom & Pairing: Women’s Murder Club, Lindsay/Cindy
Summary: KMN claims more victims and strikes directly at the club. Last in a series of six loosely related WMC stories. (six? cripes.)
Rating: R for sex, language and violence (though the violence is merely on par with the average thriller novel, it’s fair to call this a long, dark ride.)
Author’s Note: I did up an outline and started pecking away on this before learning that WMC would get three more episodes this spring, so this near 22k word rambler was originally conceived as a show-wrapper tailored to my peculiar, self-indulgent predilections. No plot spoilers here, just fannish speculation.
******
Behind the cottage was a rickety wooden garage which housed a white Chevrolet panel van. On the garage door, unseen, was a hardware store driveway alarm sensor, radio linked to a receiver in the cottage basement.
Officers Cho and Rankin saw the van plates by flashlight and confirmed the 5B partial. Michael Cho nearly pissed himself with terrified glee. Stella Rankin keyed her radio and called it in. “Dispatch, please advise responding units to approach silent. Suspect is likely unaware of our presence.”
Rankin still had her finger on the call button when the first shotgun blast hit her square in the back and sent her flying.
Cho went for his sidearm and didn’t even clear the holster before the second shell tore him down.
******
Claire heard the awful booming noise and jumped clear out of her seat. Cindy heard it, and saw it; behind the house, on an angle, a flash broke through the dark and died, like a torch doused in a barrel. Then it happened again - another booming flash, then silence.
“That was a shotgun.” Claire gave Cindy a look that conveyed what they both knew - neither Cho nor Rankin had a shotgun.
Cindy raised her shaking hands, pressed them to her face. “Oh, god. Oh my god, what do we do? He’s out there.”
“And Jill’s inside.” In what condition, Claire didn’t know. She stiffened her jaw, and a tear got loose down her cheek. “We can’t do anything. Not now.”
Through the quiet night came the sound of an engine starting. Cindy had a better view of the garage, and saw the red backing lights first. “Claire… he’s leaving.”
The cool-headed doctor said nothing; she pinched the ignition key between two fingers and prepared to flee, should they be seen. Both women held their breath as the great white van crept across the field, onto Lincoln, and eased away like a shark ignoring prey. They waited until his taillights slipped around the curve.
Claire palmed her keys and grabbed her .38. “Okay, baby girl. Get the flashlight and the zapper. Let’s move.”
******
Lindsay Boxer was doing ninety MPH west on Lincoln Boulevard, closing fast when her phone rang. Tom Hogan answered the call and put it on speaker.
“He just left! North just shot Rankin and Cho and drove away! He’s heading east on Lincoln right now!” Cindy Thomas shouted. “Claire’s calling for an ambulance, then we’re going in the house to look for Jill!”
“Be careful!” Lindsay cut her flashers and siren, hoping to get the drop on North, and slowed for the upcoming right-hand intersection with Vista.
“I love you!” Cindy yelled, breathless from running scared.
“God knows, I love you too,” Lindsay choked out, just as a white panel van careened around the uphill curve, dead ahead, flashing a left turn signal. Instinct kicked in; her nostrils flared and she smelled blood. Lindsay eased off the gas slightly to give the van some leeway, to let him turn across her path. “No matter what.”
She glanced at Tom, belted in and bracing himself. He dropped the phone and gave a go-ahead nod. Lindsay punched the gas hard and the Jeep charged forward, smashing the van broadside in an orgy of crushed metal and sprayed glass. The dazzling impact set the Jeep flying tail over nose toward a copse of corner lot dogwoods, and the Chevy van into a violent sideways death roll across asphalt and grass. In seconds, both vehicles tumbled to a stop in the deep shrubs.
Quiet healed over the noise-rent night. All was silent, save the hiss of a ruptured radiator, and the snaky whisper of one man crawling through thick grass.
******
Claire ran at the cottage’s flimsy back door and slammed home with her shoulder, busting it open in a shower of splinters. Cindy stayed right on her heels, shining a path of light through the dark kitchen. On the melting vinyl tiles, they saw a little generator, thrumming away and sending power down an orange dropcord which disappeared beneath a kitchen-adjacent door. The bottom of that doorframe held a weak line of yellow light.
“Basement.” Claire tried the knob first this time and the door surrendered without a fight. Cindy zipped ahead of her, tripping down the stairs three at a time. When she hit the bottom, when she saw, she froze in place and nearly screamed. Claire gasped and covered her mouth.
Jill Bernhardt, bloodied and insanely pissed off, but very much alive, stood on tiptoe inside a patch of barbed wire. Her left hand held tight to the ground-wired salvation of a copper and glass rose.
Through clenched teeth, she made a simple, direct request: “Would somebody please move that motherfucking wire.”
******
Lindsay woke upside-down, choking on blood and seeing only a puffy white cloud. Hit the airbag, she realized, due to the stark pain and smelted iron streaming up her sinus from a thoroughly broken nose. She coughed her throat clear, and looked to the empty passenger seat. Either Tom was thrown out or he went to check on North. She reached up to her pants pocket for her clasp knife and punched a deflation hole in the airbag, then sawed through her jammed seatbelt. Falling against the Jeep’s convex ceiling was not fun; her right shoulder shrieked on impact, and Lindsay reckoned something was torn in the crash.
From the near distance came shouting. Her ears rang, marring the words to noise, but she recognized Tom’s voice. Lindsay crawled one-handed through a pool of shattered safety glass, toward escape through the missing passenger window. Quickly, two pops ripped loose, followed by two thunderous, sickening booms.
She froze in place, praying that Tom had somehow gotten hold of a shotgun. As the ringing died away, she heard someone wading through deep weeds.
“Boxer?” North’s voice, close enough to be clear, calling from behind the Jeep. He tapped three times against the bumper with warm, heavy steel. “You alive in there?”
Lindsay reached for her pistol and found an empty holster; the Beretta was nowhere in sight. On her knees, she held still and clutched her knife, waiting for North to pick a side, hoping he wouldn’t simply blast through the tailgate window. Mercifully, his steps carried him to the driver’s side door. Lindsay coiled and launched herself through the passenger window gap, scrambled onto her feet and ran full-tilt toward the demolished panel van, toward the cover of clustered trees beyond. She veered left, and another twelve-gauge detonation sent a clump of steel pellets tearing into a dogwood barely three feet right.
“I guess that’s a yes.” North racked another round and limped after her. His white coveralls showed two dark rips over his sternum - where bullets tore through and snared in a Kevlar vest - and liberal flecks of blackish-red.
She would have kept running, planned, in fact, to head toward the closed visitor’s center on Vista and fend North off with her secondary .22 revolver until help arrived. Backup was likely three to five minutes away. That was the plan, and it probably would have worked, had she not tripped over Tom Hogan’s outstretched legs.
Lindsay hit the ground, lost her knife and breath. Coughing out blood and dust, and angrily assuming her toes snagged on a root, she propped up on one elbow and nearly sprinted away. With no reason but petulant curiosity, like Lot’s wife leaving Sodom, she turned back for a look.
Not a yard behind, Tom sat leaning against a laurel trunk, his hands prayerfully folded on his lap. In the moonlight, his grey sweatshirt glistened black, his torso punched open like a sieve and steadily leaking. Their eyes met; the horror must have shown on Lindsay’s face, because Tom gave her a frail smile. His mouth trembled, lips forming silent words.
“It’s okay. Go.”
She scrabbled across the dirt and pressed both hands against his stomach, trying again to force life on a dead man. “Don’t.” Tears came up like a flash fire. “Don’t go.”
“Linz.” His voice floated out on a dying breath. As the light faded from his eyes, he glanced to his right. Lindsay followed the line and saw Tom’s pistol wedged under his thigh.
When she looked at him again, he wasn’t there.
******
In Claire Washburn’s adept hands, the boltcutters made quick work of the barbed wire trap. Jill kept her feet, but leaned heavily on Cindy Thomas as she staggered toward the corner bench seat. Cindy shucked her long coat and chivalrously wrapped it around the lawyer’s red-streaked, shivering body.
“Gonna ruin the lining,” Jill warned her friend, even as she gratefully eased her arms into the warm sleeves. “The blood won’t stop. He gave me Heparin.”
Claire kneeled and took Jill’s wrist, checking her pulse. Though bleeding from multiple superficial wounds, her heartbeat remained strong and steady. “You’re gonna be just fine. Help’s on the way. Every cop and paramedic in the county, I’d bet.”
Quietly, Cindy sat down and looped a loose arm around Jill’s waist. She laid her swimming head on Cindy’s shoulder. “Please tell me they got the bastard.”
“When I talked to Lindsay a few minutes ago, she was heading after him. Which means he’s probably in cuffs by now.” Even as Cindy said this, she wondered why Lindsay hadn’t called to check on Jill, and why that last call ended so suddenly. With a moment to think, she began to worry. Cindy tensed up and her arm tightened across Jill’s scraped, tender back.
“Easy.” Jill took her hand and whispered, “Easy. She’ll be okay.”
Cindy nodded with a confidence she didn’t truly feel. She crinkled her nose at Jill. “You’re altogether too cool, you know. No vomiting, no crying - are you in shock?” She immediately turned to Claire. “Is she in shock?”
“Can you stop saying shock?” Jill complained.
“You probably are in early stage hypovolemia,” the grinning doctor explained. Claire gingerly patted Jill’s unmarked knee. “It’ll pass once we get your fluids balanced. As for emotional state, that’s a normal stress coping mechanism. It’ll pass, too.”
Even with the revelation that her former lover was a serial killer, with the kidnapping and the torture, the murdered police officers, and the uneasiness that always came when thinking of Lindsay in danger, Jill Bernhardt felt wonderfully detached. “I actually hope it lasts for a while,” she said.
******
Hanson North took the long way round, skirting the edge of the wooded corner lot in hopes of flanking his last victim - and she would be his last. Once Boxer was down, he intended to tuck the shotgun under his chin and litter the grass with the content of his mysterious mind, returning his aberrant genius to nature. No sir, no psychiatrist would get the chance to pick through the Kiss-Me-Not killer’s childhood sexual traumas, his adolescent tortures, the escapes into literary fantasy which eventually led him to the deliverance of self-invention. Good grades and law school and finely-tuned smooth talk - success to hide the abscess, so to speak. No sir, he would rather take his pathology to the grave than become another pathetic case study for -
In the middle of his deep thought, a cheap, toy-like pop rang out and a tiny .22 hollow point bullet entered his thigh. It flattened on impact and tore a nickel-sized exit hole through his hamstring.
North howled and spun one-legged toward the source of the shot. He fired the twelve-gauge blindly into the dark treeline and blew himself off his foot as another bullet snuck beneath the hem of his long Kevlar vest, cracking his pelvis. The shotgun jolted out of his grip, and he roared agony while rolling over to reach for it.
A shadow came between him and the moon. In dreamy silhouette, the night-haired woman with two guns pinned his outstretched hand beneath her boot.
He looked up. Laughed sharp. Tried to find cutting words to remind Lindsay Boxer of his victories and victims, her lost love, and all those years rusted to scrap.
Lindsay brought Tom’s service weapon up and fired a 9mm round into North’s face.
She crouched down and laid the guns in the grass. She tugged her sleeves over her fingers. She replaced the shotgun in his hands, curled them around the pump and trigger guard.
Hearing sirens in the distance, she gathered her weapons, loped toward the road and didn’t look back. Once she caught sight of the little cottage, Lindsay broke into a full run.
******
A reckless stampede down basement stairs brought the one missing club member back into the fold. Lindsay stopped on the landing. Wide-eyed, she absorbed every dreadful detail of the ignoble cellar where her best friend nearly died. Cindy and Claire rose up fast and held still, shocked at the gruesome sight of her battered face, the two guns welded into her restless crimson hands. Jill moved more slowly, but stood and walked forward under her own steam, hoping to show this frantic creature that she was okay.
Lindsay released a sigh that became a sob; she laid the guns on a stair riser and walked into Jill’s arms. Both ached and bled and held on too tight, but the pain was proof of life, and was good. Lindsay wept against Jill’s matted hair and told her she was sorry, so sorry, over and over and over. Jill pulled back and evaluated her face, caked with dirt and flaking red, her once honest nose now hopelessly askew.
“Shit. You look worse than me.”
Unable to laugh yet, Lindsay shook mutely in the stubborn circle of Jill’s arms. Gradually, she steadied, calmed, and met her eyes. “It’s over.”
Jill swallowed hard, then nodded her understanding. From the grisly state Lindsay was in, she knew it hadn’t been easy. Talking about it could wait.
Lindsay looked to Claire and Cindy and repeated the words, the promise that their collective nightmare was ending. Like every time before, she pulled away so carefully, Jill almost didn’t feel it happening. With a decisiveness long overdue, Jill stepped back and let go.
Sirens whooped from the yard as ambulances and patrol cars arrived en masse. Claire gripped Lindsay’s arm and kissed her cheek. “I think your ride is here,” she said to Jill. Then, to Lindsay: “See you at the hospital - and don’t you dare try to tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m not okay.” Lindsay managed to smile at Claire, at Jill. “Be there soon.”
The doctor and the lawyer trudged up the stairs toward care and safety, toward a future with less fear.
In the basement, the police inspector looked to her lover, the wise young reporter, and terror iced her heart. Lindsay knew that if she didn’t speak the truth now, truths would become secrets and beget lies, and that wasn’t the way forward. If Cindy didn’t know the facts about her, what she was capable of, then the love they were so carefully building stood on shifting sand.
She started with the bedrock, the one fact not open to interpretation. “Tom’s dead. North killed him.”
Cindy’s face opened in genuine sympathy. She took a step closer, and Lindsay stopped her with an outward palm.
“I murdered North. He lost his gun and I shot him in the face.”
That brick took a bit longer to situate. “The state would have killed him anyway,” Cindy reasoned. “It saves everyone involved the pain of a trial. This is closure.”
Lindsay squeezed her eyes shut and smiled bitterly, knowing clemency was about to reach its end. “This afternoon, me and Jacobi took Tom home. I left him alone for maybe five minutes, just to see Warren out. When I came back, Tom was in the bedroom with a gun on his heart. I took it away from him, and he hit me.”
“Lindsay! Jesus - ”
“No. No.” She held up her red palm again, quelling the judgment. “I hit him back. He yelled, I yelled, everything came out - and I mean everything. He blamed me for Heather’s death, for losing our baby, and I blamed him for giving up on our marriage, for not helping me catch this fucker before everything went to hell. For once, for real, we weren’t polite, we got it all out.”
Lindsay paused to rub at the itchy clumps of black around and under her nose - which she forgot was broken - and the sudden gush of pain nearly brought back tears. “I think I probably hit him a few more times, I don’t know. Eventually, we just started crying about it all, about what a fuckin’ waste it all was… then he kissed me and we… ”
Cindy was shaking her head steadily by that point, denying a fact plainly in evidence.
“I’m sorry. That moment felt like nowhere,” Lindsay whispered, barely breathing. “Like it wasn’t really happening. I am so…” Tears rolled and her voice cracked like paper-thin china. “…so sorry.”
In silence, Cindy studied the way regret and fear manifested in Lindsay’s shaking body, how her expression cried please forgive me more desperately than sky-writing, even as the body of her nemesis cooled three blocks away, even as Tom Hogan’s blood dried on her hands. Cindy believed that, had he lived, it would have gone no further, because this woman loved her now - now and hopefully for a long, long time. That knowledge salved her heartache, if only a little.
“You are aware that emotional chaos is no excuse for infidelity.”
Sensing doom, Lindsay nodded slowly. “Yes. I know.”
“With the history you two had, I get how it could happen, but on some level I just don’t understand, you know?” Cindy’s voice broke, though she tried to hide it with a harsh laugh and a shrug. “Maybe I can’t understand, because you’re the only person I’ve ever loved like this.”
The declaration left Lindsay thunderstruck, and she responded without guile or art. “Maybe what we’ve got isn’t brand new to me, but it’s… it’s more. I feel more,” Lindsay admitted. “I need you. I want a life with you. If we get out of this somehow, I know we can make it good. I know it.”
Cindy held her ground and aimed to keep a steady tone, despite having the urge to rush forward and melt against Lindsay’s filthy leather jacket. “I may not have a Tom - or a Jill, for that matter - but I have options. Don’t forget that. And don’t you ever - ”
“I won’t.”
“Not ever again.”
“I swear.”
Cindy let go a stuttering breath. This was all too much, too fast, and she reserved the right to be angry at length sometime later, after the earth stopped shaking. “I’m really sorry. About Tom.” And Heather, and Rankin and Cho, and Bass, and Elaine Lewis and everyone else Hanson North victimized. “We’re assholes for even talking about this stuff right now.”
“I know,” Lindsay agreed. “I just couldn’t let it slide. I couldn’t take it.” She scratched at her nose again, more carefully this time. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to go to the hospital and make sure Jill’s okay, maybe have someone fix you up, too.” Cindy smiled at the incongruity of a sheepish, hopeful grin floating beneath Lindsay’s swelling nose and blackening eyes. “Then I want to take you home, get you cleaned up and in bed, then I want to sleep ‘til noon.”
“Most of that sounds reasonable.” Despite it all, Lindsay began to feel normal again, like she might actually survive. “Noon might be pushing it. I’m gonna have a lot of explaining to do tonight, tomorrow… for a long stretch.”
Cindy finally came near enough to touch, and she hooked her arm around Lindsay’s elbow. “How about ten?”
“Eight.”
“Nine,” Cindy countered. “And you let me help clean out the attic.”
Lindsay didn’t see the point in refusing. There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore. “Deal.”
******
Epilogue - Christmas Eve and the In-Between
Splits of dry oak pop and glow in the fireplace grate. White lights twinkle on a seven-foot Douglas fir skirted with presents.
In the kitchen, a man and woman enjoy a convivial argument over which country produces the best vodka.
On the couch, two brothers play War with a deck of cards, slapping queens over jacks and laughing as a border collie steals their cookies.
In the bedroom, two women sit on the floor, trying to wrap an oddly-shaped box and making a hash of it.
“Let Cindy do it.”
“No. I can do this.”
“You have Scotch tape in your hair.” A beat while the tape is carefully peeled loose. “Claire is an excellent gift-wrapper.”
“So am I.”
“Phthbt. You’re worse than me, cottonhead.”
“Fine, suit yourself. They oughta be back soon.” Lindsay holds out her hands, wiggles entreating fingers. “Help me up.”
Jill groans as if hoisting a sack of bricks. “Whoa. You should think about installing a pulley system in here.”
“Get off it, already. I’ve lost fifteen pounds in two weeks and you’re still making fat jokes.”
“With you, the novelty never wears off.” She notes that Lindsay still holds her wrists, is staring at the faded white specks along both forearms. Jill seeks to reassure her. “Hey. I don’t even dream about it anymore.”
Glad to know this, Lindsay squeezes her hands and smiles. She is envious. She thinks about the spring and summer past, how a portion of nearly every day was devoted to something regarding Hanson North and the Kiss-Me-Not case. Legally, there were no problems; her account of that night went unquestioned by her superiors, most notably Captain Harvey Rand, who pinned a gold valor medal to her uniform and promoted her to Lieutenant the week after Tom and Heather Hogan were laid to rest.
Agent John Ashe went home to D.C. with suspicions about Griffin Paar’s death and a brand new watch order hung around his neck. His profiling unit consigned him to a desk job with low travel requirements, but San Francisco SAIC Georgia Folsom made sure his movements were tracked, just in case he ever decided to visit California again. Last Lindsay heard, Ashe was engaged to the sole surviving victim of a rural Maryland rape-murder cult. Maybe he’d finally found someone he could save.
The media went wild early on, until they realized that all of the surviving Kiss-Me-Not principals comprised an insular clique, well-versed in stonewalling. Then came the book proposal: HarperCollins offered a king’s ransom for their first-person accounts. Seeing college funds and early retirement, as well as a definitive end to all the questions, Washburn, Thomas, Boxer and Bernhardt all consented, provided that Thomas serve as sole ghostwriter on the project.
They had control enough to satisfy the public’s curiosity while keeping certain elements private - like who Jill was really expecting at her apartment that night (because it certainly wasn’t DDA Denise Kwon, despite the nasty rumors), how Boxer and Hogan spent their afternoon before the case keyed up (Talking. Just talking.), how Cindy Thomas managed to get proprietary info from Pelham Rehab (stealing is wrong and actionable), what Hanson North said just before he died (“This is just unacceptable.”) - and such as that. The book sold well, and there was talk of a film adaptation, but that was something to worry about next year. Jill Bernhardt decided she wanted Scarlett Johansson to play her, claiming, “I always wanted bigger boobs.”
*
One unforeseen consequence of that eventful day became evident in early May; during her annual visit to the stirrup-and-speculum doctor, Lindsay Boxer learned she was nine weeks pregnant. She spent the rest of the morning numb and quiet, sitting at her desk behind a pile of unsigned forms. Warren Jacobi came upstairs to ask her about trading in his second new partner (Davidovitch smelled like coconut, Juarez chewed with his mouth open), and she stared at him like he’d turned purple.
“The son of a bitch knocked me up,” she said, from somewhere in the upper troposphere. “I thought it was stress, throwing my cycle off, but… I’m pregnant. With a baby.”
Jacobi shifted his feet, stroked his goatee. “I knew I shouldn’t have left you alone with him.”
She furrowed her brows. “How did you know I meant Tom?”
“Anybody else, Thomas would have left your dumb ass.” He paused and cautiously added, “Lieutenant. Ma’am.”
“Aww, shut-up. I haven’t even told her yet.”
“The hell you waiting for?”
“I just found out this morning!” Lindsay covered her mouth, then touched her stomach, as if afraid the yelling would upset the baby. “Jesus wept. What am I gonna do?”
Warren Jacobi couldn’t help it; he laughed at her. Then he told her the blunt truth, like always. “You’re going to take vitamins, get fat, squeeze out a healthy, good-looking kid, then spend the next twenty-odd years of your life trying to make sure it loves you a little more than it hates you.”
“Oh. Wow.” She ruminated on that for a moment, then was seized by a sudden, terrifying realization. “I’m thirty-seven!”
“You’re strong as a plowhorse,” he said, managing to sound both dismissive and reassuring. “If you want this, if it’s the right thing for you, you’ll work it out.”
*
Lindsay had fears, yes, but no genuine reservations. She wanted a child, she’d always wanted a child. Her only concern about taking another shot at parenthood was how her partner would react. She waited until bedtime, until they were settled in and reading by lamplight, and said it with such nonchalance that Cindy wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.
“Doctor Juell says you’re preferent? As in, your gyno likes you more than his other patients?”
“No - ”
“Good, because that’s really unsettling.”
“Pregnant.” Lindsay flattened her lips to an anxious line and said it a third time. “Pregnant. Nine weeks.”
Cindy’s mouth formed a perfect, astonished circle. “Oh. Wow.” She sat there wordless for so long that Lindsay started to fear the worst.
“Are you scared?” Cindy finally asked. Lindsay nodded an emphatic yes, and Cindy set aside her magazine. She peeled back the comforter and straddled Lindsay’s legs, then faltered into uncertainty. She tucked her hair behind her ears and looked up, grinning shyly. “Can I touch?”
“What?” Lindsay puzzled over the request, as Cindy had taken unrestricted liberties with her body since somewhere around their third date. It didn’t seem terribly odd that she would want sex as a way to connect after the big news, or simply to delay discussion until her thoughts firmed up. “Yeah, if you want.” Lindsay dropped her book on the night table and shimmied out of her t-shirt.
She leaned in for a kiss and Cindy gave her a sweet, short peck on the lips, then eased her back to the pillows, alone. Cindy rocked onto her heels, staring at Lindsay’s stomach. She laid both hands on the flat, smooth expanse of skin and lowered her mouth, so close that her breath tickled fine golden hairs, and her voice hummed like a lullaby.
“Hello. Baby. Boxer baby.” She snickered, feeling silly and unsure, until she looked up and found Lindsay watching her with profuse adoration. Then the words came easily, perfectly, as if she knew them by heart. “You’re a lucky kid. You’ll be protected. You’ll be loved. You’ll have a home, and a family. You’ll be strong enough to find your own place in the world. You won’t be afraid of anything… but if you ever are, just tell mommy and she’ll totally kick its ass.”
Lindsay shook with laughter and wiped her streaming eyes. “I’m in management now. I can’t go around beating people up.”
“Fine.” Cindy kissed her belly and whispered to the baby, “I’ll handle the ass-kicking.”
*
December 10th at two in the morning, Jacob Thomas Boxer came squalling into the world, at a trim fighting weight of seven and a half pounds. By Christmas Eve, the kid had pretty much everyone who knew him wrapped around his pudgy little pinkie finger. He ate like a mule, smiled easily, and rarely got stroppy - essentially, all anyone could ask of a newborn.
*
“He’s gonna be trouble,” Jill says, eyeing the gurgling infant, tickling his downy pompadour of smut-black hair. “I foresee a string of broken hearts, stretching from pre-school to the retirement home.”
“This boy will not break hearts.” Claire bumps Jill aside, claiming the prime Jake-viewing spot. She tenderly chucks his chin. “Look at this face - clearly, he’s an angel.”
“Oh, please! That’s how they get you!” Jill insists. “They smile across the craft table, you share your Gummie Bears, you think you’ve got something special. Then they give valentines to booger-eating Kelly, and Amanda with the bowl haircut.”
“If he decides to woo a booger-eater, we’ll have a talk with him,” says Cindy, from the foot of the crib. She curls her shoulders and nestles back further into Lindsay’s arms. “Bowl haircuts are negotiable.”
Lindsay kisses the top of her head. “No, they’re not. There’s some wiggle room for a Flowbee kid, but bowls are right out.”
Claire huffs, amused at her friend’s snootery. “This from the woman who couldn’t even wrap Georgia’s present.”
“Jill couldn’t do it either!”
“Only because it’s a weird-shaped plastic clamshell thingy.”
“I still don’t see why you’re giving a radar detector to an FBI agent.”
“It’s a joke! She drives worse than Lindsay!”
“Bite me, Bernhardt.”
“So that’s your Christmas gift? A gag gadget?”
“Whatever else I’m giving her is none of your business, coppertop - though it may still qualify as a gadget.”
“Mom?” Derek Washburn peeks around the door. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.” “Gummie Bears.” “Flowbees.” “Booger-eaters.”
Flooded with information that makes no sense, Derek decides that all grown-up conversations are bizarre and best disregarded. “Dad and Ms. Folsom are fighting about egg nog.” He slips in beside Claire and lets baby Jake clutch at his fingers. “Me and Nate are bored. Can we take Martha out?”
“Yes, please and thank you,” says Lindsay. “Grab her leash and a baggie, and stay near the house.”
The sounds of stomping boys and a very excited dog fade down. From the kitchen comes the laughter of common ground discovered, the forging of a new friendship.
In the bedroom, four very different women quietly stand guard over a child, and each other. Initially drawn together in professional alliance, they find themselves bound together in every way that matters.
It’s really not a club; it’s a family.
END