Cross Country Read Free

case?”
    “No.” I’d already asked myself the same question, and the answer had come just as quickly.
    “I can get Sampson or somebody else from Violent Crimes to cover. We’ll keep you up to the second —”
    “Bree, I can’t let go of this one.”
    “This one?” She ran a hand softly up and down my arm. “As compared to . . . what, Alex?”
    I took a deep breath. I knew where Bree was going with this. “It’s not about Maria, if that’s what you mean.” My wife, Maria, had been gunned down when our kids were small. I’d managed to close the case only recently. There had been years of torture and guilt before that. But Maria had been my wife, the love of my life at the time. Ellie was something else. I wasn’t confusing the two. I didn’t think so anyway.
    “Okay,” she said, stroking my back, soothing me. “Tell me what I can do.”
    I folded us both under the covers. “Just lie here with me,” I said. “That’s all I need for now.”
    “You got it.”
    And soon, wrapped in Bree’s arms, I went off to sleep — for a whole two hours.

Chapter 5
    “I SPY, WITH my little eye, a
pink
newspaper,” said Bree.
    “Over there!” Ali was quick to spot it. “I see it! It
is
pink. What kind of crazy newspaper is that?”
    To my family’s surprise and delight, I hadn’t left for work at some obscene hour the morning after I found Ellie and her family dead in their home. Today, I wanted to walk the kids to school. Actually, I wanted to do it most every day, but sometimes I couldn’t, and sometimes I didn’t. But today I needed lots of fresh air in my life. And smiles. And Ali’s giggles.
    Jannie was in her last year at Sojourner Truth, all ready for high school, while Ali was just starting out in the school world. It seemed very circle-of-life to me that morning, with Ellie’s family gone in a blink, and my own kids coming up strong.
    I put on my best cheerful dad face and tried to set aside the gruesome images of last night. “Who’s next?”
    “I’ve got one,” Jannie said. She turned a canary-eating grin on Bree and me. “I spy, with my little eye, a POSSLQ.”
    “What’s a
possel-cue?
” Ali wanted to know. He was already looking around, moving his head like a bobblehead doll’s, trying to spot it, whatever
it
was.
    Jannie practically sang out the answer. “P, O, S, S, L, Q. Person of the opposite sex, sharing living quarters.” She whispered the word
sex
in our direction, presumably to safeguard her little brother’s innocence. No matter, I could feel myself blushing slightly.
    Bree tagged Jannie’s shoulder. “Where exactly did you pick that one up?”
    “Cherise J. She says her mom says you two are, you know, living in sin.”
    I exchanged a look with Bree over the top of Jannie’s head. I guessed this was bound to come up in some way or another sooner or later. Bree and I had been together for more than a year now, and she spent a good amount of time at the house on Fifth Street. Part of the reason was that the kids loved having her around. Part was that I did.
    “I think maybe you and Cherise J. need to find something else to talk about,” I told her. “You think?”
    “Oh, it’s okay, Daddy. I told Cherise her mom needs to get over herself. I mean, even Nana Mama’s down with it, and her picture’s in the dictionary under ‘old-fashioned,’ right?”
    “You wouldn’t have any idea what’s in a dictionary,” I said.
    But Bree and I had stopped trying to be politically correct with Jannie, and we just let ourselves laugh. Jannie had that “crossroads” thing going on these days; she was right at the intersection of girl and woman.
    “What’s so funny?” Ali asked. “Somebody tell me. What is it?”
    I scooped him up off the sidewalk and onto my shoulders for the last half block of our walk to school. “I’ll tell you in about five years.”
    “I know anyway,” he said. “You and Bree love each other. Everybody knows. No big deal. It’s a good