Lennie kissed Gloria on the cheek. 'God, this is the first time I've ever seen her look her age,' he thought. "I'll see you at your brother's place", Lennie said. 'I hope her jerk of a brother can be civil for a few hours,' Lennie thought as Detective Spivak approached him. Lennie asked the other detective for a few minutes, described his car to him and asked him to wait by it for him. The other mourners, who were mostly Gloria's family and a few people from the 2-7, dispersed to give Lennie a private moment at his daughter's graveside.
"Cath baby, what do I tell this guy? I mean if he does this favor for my snitch, then Jones gets what's coming to him, but that won't bring you back to us." He knelt down and touched her gravestone. "One of the first things I tried to teach you was that two wrongs don't make a right," he told the headstone.
Suddenly, Lennie found himself flashing back nearly twenty years, to a time when he and Gloria had just separated, and he had the girls in his crappy little apartment. He was trying to stay sober while his girls were with him, and Cathy was trying, trying desperately to let Daddy know she loved him and missed him. According to the shrink that Lennie loathed, Cathy was at an age where children did a lot of "magical thinking". They tended to blame themselves for their parent's breakups and think they could affect reconciliation. Cathy would flip those unruly black curls of hers, and flash her blue grey eyes that were so like his, at him, and he was then pretty much helpless at being a disciplinarian. So there he'd been trying to lecture about how she shouldn't hit her little sister for whatever she'd done wrong because, "after all, two wrongs don't make a right," when she'd flipped her hair and said impudently, "Oh, Daddy," and he knew he was lost. She was all of seven and she could totally manipulate him.
Aside from the infidelities from both sides of the bed that had broken up their marriage, one of the things that Gloria just couldn't abide about Lennie was his inability, in her eyes, to be an affective parent. He might be a tough cop at work, but he let his little daughters walk all over him and Gloria wasn't about to raise a pair of spoiled brats.
Lennie suddenly realized he had to go talk to detective Spivak. He'd left the guy waiting a long time. Lennie pushed his way up from his knees; feeling like these last few weeks had aged him a few decades. He kissed his fingers and then touched Cathy's name on the gravestone.
"Bye bye for now, baby. I know what you want me to do. I'm not sure why it took me so long to realize what you'd want." And with those parting words he trudged off to speak to Spivak.
