3 Can You Picture This? Read Free Page B

chairs was empty, so I felt relief that Richie wasn’t done yet. But when I got to the chairs, I also noticed that the door to the interrogation room was open and the light was off.
    Hurrying out to the lobby, I didn’t see Richie or Rob there either. I asked the receptionist to page Rob. In a few minutes he appeared looking a little confused.
    “Where’s Richie?” we both said together.
    Rob started talking right away. “When we were finished we thought you must have gone to the car, since you weren’t in the hallway. So Richie went out to your car.”
    “I was in the bathroom,” I said. “He’s probably waiting out there for me.”
    But he wasn’t.
    I retraced our route, reversing it and driving from the police station to my home, impatient with every traffic light, but no Richie. I didn’t know if he had a cell phone or not, but at any rate I didn’t know how to contact him. And when I got home his bike was still parked next to the carriage house. I left again, thinking he might have walked a different way. Again, no luck.
    By then I was worried, but not yet frantic. I called Rob on his cell and told his voice mail of my concerns. I called George, and left a little more detail since he hadn’t been in on the interviews. I even called Michael to see if he had Richie’s cell phone number, but there was no answer. I called the Quincy Whig, but the newspaper employee told me they were not allowed to give out private numbers.
    I returned home and decided to stop thinking about Richie, knowing he would turn up sooner or later. As I entered the house, I heard the TV and the sounds of laughter. The picture I saw in the living room was one that made my heart smile. My grown-up kids, Adam and Sarah, were sitting on the couch watching TV and laughing. For a brief moment it brought me back to their childhood days when they’d watch cartoons together on a Saturday morning. Sure it was Saturday morning now, but near lunchtime instead of early morning. But when I got inside far enough to see what they were watching, I saw the TV was turned to the Cartoon Channel.
    “Some things never change,” I said as I wiggled between the two of them on the couch.
    Adam lowered the sound with the remote and put his arm around me. Sarah did the same on the other side of me.
    “We made a Mommy Sandwich,” Sarah said. Same thing she used to say when she was small when both kids hugged me at the same time.
    This was a slice of heaven. “You guys hungry? It’s lunchtime.”
    “Nope,” Sarah answered. “We just finished breakfast a little bit ago.”
    “Okay. Remember we’re going out to dinner with George tonight.”
    Adam said, “Yep, we remember and were just talking about it. We want to meet the guy you’ve hated all our lives and then suddenly love.”
    “Wha…‌wha…‌what?” I sputtered. “How did you know about that?”
    Sarah and Adam both smiled as Sarah answered for them. “You have a lot of brothers and sisters. Most of them are very happy to share the latest news with their sweet niece and nephew.”
    Adam joined in, “By the way, when is Clancy coming home? We saw your note that she was at the dog park, but shouldn’t she be home by now?”
    “Yeah. I see Gus’s car outside. I’ll run over there and see.”
    I wiggled out the opposite of how I wiggled in, and realized that when the kids were here I missed them more than when they were gone. It didn’t make sense, but when they were away at school I knew they were fine and they were happy. But when they were home I looked ahead to when they had to leave and it made me sad. Dumb.
    I went over to Gus and Georgianne’s place, knocked on the back door and let myself in. Gus walked into the kitchen, put his finger to his lips, and beckoned me to follow him quietly. So I did. We walked through the kitchen, breakfast room, and dining room, and reached the room that Georgianne called a parlor, I saw her sound asleep and snoring on the old-fashioned velvet