"Once it's official, you and Leslie should come down to Miami," Raylan says. "I'd be happy to show you around."
"Show us what? Titty bars and pre-school playgrounds? Now that's a real dichotomy you got goin' there, Raylan."
"Nah, I'm movin' up in the world. Willa already graduated preschool. She's gonna be a kindergartener in the fall." He chuckles as he opens the cupboard and pours a finger of bourbon into his glass. "And I don't drink in bars so much anymore. I do my drinkin' at home. It's cheaper."
"I told you daughters were expensive."
"It wasn't a lie," he says.
"Wait until you pay for the wedding. I know you think you got awhile, but take it from me, they grow up fast. How'd she get to be a kindergartener already?"
"I have no idea. I don't think I'm any older. But I do have more gray hair."
"At least you got hair."
It's familiar banter and Raylan smiles as he flops into the recliner and clicks the remote, putting the Heat game on mute. He and Art have gotten into the habit of talking once a week or so and he looks forward to the conversations. The tension that often plagued them during his time in Kentucky is mostly gone, and with Art retiring he figures they have a pretty good chance to keep it that way.
"I'd really like you and Leslie to meet Willa. You haven't seen her since she was a baby." He smiles, thinking of his daughter. "I tell ya, Art, she's somethin' else."
"Leslie'd love that. She showed me some pictures Winona sent. Willa sure is a pretty little thing."
"Takes after her mama."
"Thank God," Art chuckles.
"But she's smart, too," Raylan adds.
"Again like her Mama. She get anything from you?" Art quips.
"She's stubborn and ornery."
"That'd be your genes all right." He chuckles.
"And she hit a homerun in her ball game the other night."
"You been coaching her?"
"A bit. She's gonna be a good little hitter, but she really likes to throw."
"Hmmm. Maybe a pitcher."
"Maybe," Raylan agrees.
"They make more money. Maybe she can pay for her own wedding." Both men laugh.
"Tell ya what," Art says. "Let me get these last couple of weeks over with and we'll talk about it. Leslie has a sister in Raleigh she's been itching to visit. I'd imagine we could tack some extra time on and come down."
"That'd be great, Art." He sips the bourbon. "How's Tim?"
"Why am I always the go-between? Don't you two talk?"
"He rings me once in awhile, usually with a question about something he could find an answer for on the internet."
Tim also sends anonymous packages. Raylan will open an envelope to find a tattered paperback or two, usually a crime novel, but sometimes it's a spy or military story. Tucked throughout the book there'll be sticky notes with a sarcastic comment or two. Raylan always reads the books, passing them on to Sutter or Muñoz when he's done, but he tosses the sticky notes into his nightstand drawer. He's not sure why.
"Sometimes he sends book reviews, too," Raylan adds.
"Poor Tim, not in touch enough with his emotions to say he misses you."
"He's welcome to visit anytime, too. I got a guest room." He takes another swallow. "Do you hear much from Rachel?"
"She calls every so often," Art says. "She likes Seattle. Likes her Chief, although it doesn't look like he's retiring anytime soon. I hate to see her get stuck on that hamster wheel." He sighs. "But, she's got herself a steady boyfriend. This one might be a keeper. She's still got feelers out for Ava Crowder, but there hasn't been anything for awhile now. I told Rachel she's probably either dead or out of the country."
Raylan swirls what's left of the amber liquid around in the glass. "Maybe she's in Fiji surfin' with Wynn Duffy," he says, hoping his voice sounds light.
"Could be. By the way, it is amazing how quiet things have been down in Harlan since you moved away."
Raylan gives a snort. "Don't forget Boyd's gone, too."
"I'm really not sure which one of you was the main cause of all the ruckus. But I do know you were the bigger pain in my ass."
"I miss you, too, Art."
-o-o-o-O-o-o-o-
"You're not my mother!" Tomás yells before slamming the door in Winona's face. She sets the laundry basket down and counts to ten before knocking on the door. These past two weeks with Tomás - Tommy - have tried every ounce of her patience and Richard still hasn't said how long he's staying. She takes several deep breaths.
"I'm going to leave this here. Please bring the basket back to the laundry room after you put your clothes away."
She takes the stack of Willa's things from the top and goes into her daughter's room. Willa's flopped on her stomach, a coloring book spread out in front of her. The new box of 80 some colors Raylan got her is scattered around her on the floor.
"Come help Mama put your clothes away," Winona says.
"Inaminute." She continues coloring.
"No, now, please."
Willa looks up. "Do I have to?"
"Yes."
She sighs, and gets up, carefully stepping over the crayons. Winona slides the heavy drawer open and Willa stuffs the underwear in. "Why is Tommy so mad all the time?" She asks. Of all of them, Willa's had the least trouble switching to the Americanized name Tomás has adopted. She's been calling him Tommy since day one, but that hasn't gotten her any special treatment.
"I don't know, Punkin'." Winona hands her some folded socks and opens the next drawer.
"I asked him to sing the frog song for me." She jams the socks in the drawer. "Do you remember the frog song from last summer?"
"I do," Winona says. She remembers a different, happier Tomás sitting on the patio, Willa on his lap, singing every verse of the old Three Dog Night song "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog". As soon as he'd finish, Willa would clap her hands and say "Again!" and he would sing it over and over. Winona still blames him for Willa's six-month obsession with the slimy creatures that only ended when the neighbors got a new puppy.
"He said it was a stupid baby song." Willa's lower lip juts out.
Winona sits on the bed and Willa climbs into her lap. "I'm sorry. He isn't being very nice to me, either." She wraps her arms around the little girl and rests her chin on Willa's head. Her hair smells like Winona's shampoo, but if she concentrates, she can still get a whiff of the sweet smell she remembers from when Willa was a baby.
"Richard should make him," Willa announces. "Just like you make me put my clothes away."
Winona agrees, but she's not getting anywhere on that argument with her husband. He and Tommy have some kind of truce going, and in front of his father, the boy is polite but distant to her and Willa. When Richard's gone, it's another story.
Yesterday he'd called her a 'bitch' under his breath when she asked him to put his dishes in the sink. When she'd told Richard, Tommy denied it and Richard asked if she could have 'misheard' him.
"I know what I heard, Richard," she'd said.
The boy's smug gaze followed her as she stormed back into the kitchen.
Now, she walks from Willa's room back into the hallway. The basket with Tommy's clothes is still sitting outside the door. "To hell with privacy," she mutters. She picks up the pile and lays a hand on the knob, ready to walk in and throw the clothes at him, but the door is locked.
"Open this door," she says. No answer.
"Tommy? Open the door now." There's still no answer. She considers calling Richard at work, but knows he would only tell her she was over-reacting.
"Brat." She mutters under her breath. She needs to get out of here because she's seriously considering kicking the door in.
"Alright," she says aloud. "Be that way. Come on, Willa," she calls. "Let's go to the library and get you some new books."
"Yay!" Willa shouts as she comes charging out of her room. She skids to a stop by Tommy's door. "Is he coming with us?"
"No, he's not coming," Winona says, loud enough for him to hear in the locked room.
Willa dashes back into her bedroom, returning with Mr. Bear in tow. "Mr. Bear wants a car ride," she tells her mother.
This is odd. When Willa was three and four, Mr. Bear went everywhere with them and Winona's worst nightmare was losing him. Once she accidently left him in the shopping cart at Publix and Willa had screamed without stopping on the ten-minute drive back to rescue him. Lately, though, while Willa still sleeps with the battered stuffed animal, and always remembers to take him with her to her dad's, he mostly remains tucked among the pillows on her bed during the day. Now he's along for the ride. Winona decides it's best not to make a big deal about it.
In the garage, Winona loads Willa and Mr. Bear into the car, humming to herself as she pushes the buttons to set the security system. If Tommy tries to leave the house while they're gone, the alarm will go off and scare the bejeezus out of him.
"It'll serve you right," she thinks.
-o-o-o-O-o-o-o-
A Miami-Dade Police cruiser is parked in front of the house when they return.
"What in the hell were you thinking? Leaving him home alone like that?" Richard rages at her from the front walk as she gets out of the car. Willa follows, clutching her bag of library books and Mr. Bear. Startled by the yelling, she wraps an arm around her mother and buries her face in her skirt. Winona strokes her hair.
"He locked himself in his room. After he yelled at me and slammed his door in my face," Winona says, trying to stay calm. "I thought by setting the alarm he'd at least stay put until we got back. We needed a break from him."
"So you left him! You just left him. Real way to be the adult, Winona." Richard shakes his head in disgust.
She snaps back. "He's a spoiled brat who's being allowed to be disrespectful and..."
"For God's sake. He's just a kid with growing pains. You've been on him since he got off the plane."
She's yelling back now. "I just want a little respect! He can't even be nice to a six-year old!"
"Give him some slack, Winona."
"Slack? You're giving him enough for both of us. He's mean to Willa. He won't do a thing I ask him to..."
"Bitch." Tommy mutters from where he sits, slumped over, on the porch.
"Did you hear him that time?!" She glares at her husband.
Richard points a finger at Tommy. "I'll deal with you later."
"Mr. Ortiz," one of the uniformed Miami police officers responding to the home alarm steps forward, and interrupts them. "Your son was trying to get in to the house, not out of it."
"What're you talking about? You heard her, he locked himself in his room before she left."
The cop points around the side of the house. "Come with us."
As they move to follow him, Winona hears a car door slam behind her. Willa squirms from her grasp, dropping her bag of books on the driveway.
"Daddy!"
She turns to see Raylan making long strides up the sidewalk. Willa runs to him, and he picks her up, settling her on his hip.
"Oh, great," Richard says. "Just great. The cowboy's here."
"What's goin' on?" Raylan asks. Willa tightens her grip around his neck, still clutching Mr. Bear as they come up to Winona.
"Tommy's in big trouble," Willa says.
"You okay?"
Winona nods.
The cops stop and turn around. "Who are you?" The younger one asks.
"Deputy U.S. Marshal Givens. I heard the address on the scanner. That's my daughter." He hands Willa over to her mother and lifts his shirt to show the Marshal's star clipped to his belt.
"What's going on here Officer...?"
"Barnett," The policeman says. "I was just about to show them."
His partner turns to Tommy. "Come on, son," he says. Tommy reluctantly pushes to his feet and follows them, head down, hands shoved into his pockets.
Around the corner of the house Officer Barnett points up to the window of Tommy's bedroom, about ten feet off the ground. "See the way those bricks jut out? Makes a nifty little ladder if you're small." He casts a glance at the boy.
"He's not talkin', but we figure that's how he got down." He pulls back a branch on one of the bushes close to the house. "There's some broken branches here on your bush and he's got a scratch on his leg. Probably fell the last three feet or so."
His partner steps in. "When we got here, he was trying to boost himself through this window over here. Evidently he didn't think about how he was going to get back in."
"Look, he had a fight with his step mother, snuck away and got locked out. No harm, no foul," Richard says. "I'll talk to him."
"Well," Officer Barnett says. "When we pulled up, we startled him and he dropped this." He pulls out a baggie containing ten or twelve small yellow pills and looks at Richard. "Does your son have a prescription for Ritalin?"
Richard shifts his weight from one foot to the other, staring at the baggie. "Yeah," he says. "He was having some trouble in school. He's been taking it for a few months now, according to his grandparents. He's visiting me from Philly for the summer."
Winona sucks in a breath at that new information, and Raylan raises an eyebrow, but neither of them speaks.
"Well, these have a street value of about $30 a pill, which probably explains what else we found in the bag he was carrying." His partner produces a plastic Publix bag with a wad of bills and several gift cards for Amazon and iTunes.
"There's about $400 bucks here, plus the gift cards," he says. "Altogether close to $600."
"Six hundred dollars? Jesus Christ." Richard stares at Tommy who rolls his eyes. "What the hell, Tomás?"
"Sir, we'd like to take a look in the boy's room," Officer Barnett says. "If you don't mind."
"Of course," Richard says. He reaches into his pocket for the house keys.
Raylan shakes his head and Winona turns her back to the two officers, laying a hand on her husband's arm. Their bodies form a circle, shutting the police officers out. "Raylan doesn't think that's a good idea," she says quietly.
"What does he have to do with this?" He makes no attempt to keep his voice low and Raylan responds the same way.
"I'm just tryin' to help. You don't want to let them in his room," he says. "It could open a whole new can of worms.
"When did you become a lawyer?" Richard glares at him.
"I'm not a lawyer," Raylan huffs. "But you're gonna need one. These aren't chump charges."
"Why the hell don't you mind your own business?"
"Richard!" Winona backs away from him and Willa sticks her thumb in her mouth, hiding her face in her mother's hair.
The cops share a who's-in-charge-here glance listening to the volley of words.
"Look, if we decide there's merit, we can come back with a search warrant. We're going to need to take him down to Juvenile Detention and talk to him. You can call a lawyer, or waive that right and just come yourself."
"Get a lawyer," Raylan advises.
"I can call Kit Martin at the firm," Winona says. "He does criminal law."
Richard shakes his head. "Tomás isn't a criminal," he says. "I'm sure there's an explanation."
"The explanation is he was sellin' his medication on the street." Raylan mutters.
"Tell him he can go now," Richard says to Winona.
She catches Raylan's eye and walks back toward the front of the house, letting Richard deal with the cops. "Maybe you could take Willa to your place until we figure out what we're doing? I think this is all upsetting for her."
"I wanna stay with you, Mama," Willa says, raising her head.
"Look," Raylan says. "Why don't I go downtown with Richard? I know the ins and outs and it'll go a lot faster. You call that Kit person. No matter what Richard thinks, Tomás is going to need a lawyer."
She wrinkles her nose. "I don't think he's going to want your help."
He sighs, looking over her shoulder toward the backyard, one hand on his hip. "Well, I can at least offer."
She catches his gaze, holding it. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." He ruffles Willa's hair.
As Winona heads into the house with Willa, the two cops come around from the back of the house, Tomás between them. For once, the boy looks chagrined. Richard trails behind.
"I'm gonna follow you downtown, Tommy, okay? I'm right behind you." He swipes a hand over his face as he watches them load his son into the back of the cruiser.