Death Gets a Time-Out Read Free Page A

jokes. Peter says I’ll like anyone who thinks I’m funny, and it’s probably true. Although he’s wrong that that’s the only reason I married him; it was just as important that he makes
me
laugh.
    I introduced Stacy, and Lilly politely shook her hand.
    “So, what are you doing here?” I asked. “You hate parties.”
    She shrugged.
    “Lilly’s being honored tonight,” Stacy said. “Didn’t you look at the program?”
    “Honored?” I asked.
    “For dying of breast cancer on screen,” Lilly said. “I guess they couldn’t find a woman what was really sick to drag up onto the stage.”
    “You’ve performed a profound service,” Stacy said. “Raising people’s consciousness, increasing awareness. You certainly deserve the award.”
    “Maybe,” Lilly said, although it didn’t sound like she really believed it. I had to agree with her. Looking around the room, I wondered how many of the women were struggling in anonymity with the horrible disease from which Lilly had only pretended to suffer. Didn’t they deserve acknowledgment more than she did? After all, when the cameras stopped rolling, she went home. The black cloud never disappeared from
their
skies.
    “So, what are you up to, Juliet?” Lilly asked. “Still solving murders?”
    I smiled uncomfortably. “Not murders.” I shifted my weight. My feet had begun to ache in their too-tight shoes.
    She cocked an eyebrow at me quizzically.
    “Go ahead, tell her,” Stacy said, prodding me in the side with her elbow. “Juliet’s become a private eye!”
    I blushed. I was still a little embarrassed about my new career. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it—on the contrary, I was absolutely in love with the job. I’d finally succumbed to the entreaties of my good friend Al Hockey, whom I had met when I was a federal public defender and he was an investigator in the same office. We’d worked on a lot of cases together, and we stayed friends even after I quit to stay home with my kids. When Al hung out a shingle as a private investigator, he asked me to join up with him. As happy as I was with my new identity as sort-of-working-mother, I had the nagging sensation that there was something almost ridiculous about turning my fundamental nature as a nosy snoop into a career.
    “Really? A detective?” Lilly asked.
    “Well, an investigator. I don’t have my license yet. And it’s only part-time,” I said. At the time Al had made his offer, I’d been slowly going crazy. I know there are women who skillfully and happily manage the transition from full-time, productive member of the work force to stay-at-home mother. I’ve met them in the park. Those are the women who swap homemade Play-Doh recipes and puree their own babyfood from organic produce they grow in their backyards. I’d rather be forced to
eat
the Play-Doh than make it. And I honestly can’t remember the last time I served a vegetable that didn’t come out of my freezer, unless pickles count. Don’t get me wrong. I love my kids with a ferocity that sometimes scares me. I love their dirty little faces and stubby toes. I love the absurdly funny and piercingly insightful things they say, and the way they tangle their fingers in my hair when I lie down with them to take a nap. But the prospect of spending an entire day alone with them fills me with dread. Keeping two people with a collective attention span of three minutes entertained for an entire fourteen-hour day is a task that makes Sisyphus’s look like playing marbles. Half the time I feel like hiring a nanny and getting my bored, frustrated, rapidly expanding butt back to work as a lawyer. I spend the other half convinced that there’s a point to being there day after day, hour after hour, driving from playdatesto piano lessons, doing endless loads of very small laundry, and clinging to sanity with one exhausted fingernail. Al’s offer seemed like a way to do both—be with my kids, and do some work that didn’t involve very short