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He hadn't slept the night before, and so when Delgado tossed the takeout box with the cold empanada in front of him, his stomach rolled, and he pushed it away from him. Besides, after last night, he couldn't be sure she hadn't poisoned it. "No, thanks," he muttered, and rubbed his too-dry eyes.
Delgado shrugged. "Suit yourself," she said, and took a hearty bite of her own empanada. "You know," she said as she sat down opposite him at the small, round table, "whatever is eatin' you, you gotta let it go."
"Thanks for the advice."
"Jesus Christ, Flack. You think you're the only cop who's ever lost a family to the job?"
"Naw, I don't," he snapped. "The point is, I wanna be one of the few that doesn't. I don't want my son growin' up thinkin' of me as that bastard who made his mother cry."
Like Gavin's bastard kid probably did, whispered a malicious voice inside his head. Or like you did. You loved your father as a kid, but there was no denyin' he was a bastard who made your mother cry. Your sister, too. The proof was in their red-rimmed eyes as they washed dishes or colored pictures on the livin' room floor. It was the stain of This Job is More Important Than You, and it wore them down, made them dull. You saw what it did to them, and you swore that when you had a family of your own, you'd never do that to them, never disappoint them like that.
But you did, and long before now. Rebecca's spent more than one birthday alone, and on your third weddin' anniversary, the Rangers tickets she paid an arm and a leg for went unused because you were interrogatin' a child-rapin' murderer. By the time you got home, your anniversary and the game were long over. She tried to tell you it was all right, that there would be other chances, but you know it hurt her because you saw it in her eyes as the hairbrush she was holdin' tried to comb the pain away. You know she learned her lesson, too, because she never tried for such a personal, thoughtful gift again. Now it's socks and ties and shirts, maybe a watch. Nice and safe. Why should she bother puttin' her heart into anything when it's gonna wind up with a six-digit badge number tattooed into it?
How long before your son learns that lesson, too, just like you did? Maybe it'll be at his first birthday party. Right about the time he's shampooin' with his cake, you'll get called out to investigate a bloater in the East River. If you're lucky and Rebecca is merciful, she'll only put the snapshots with you in 'em in the photo album so Junior won't know that some dead skeeve was more important than him.
Rebecca won't be able to cover for you by the time he's five, though, even if she wanted to. He'll be old enough to notice that you're not at his kindergarten recital, where he's onstage dressed as a stalk of celery in honor of nutrition. He'll come off stage cryin', and it won't be you who has to clean up the mess. Nope. It'll fall to Rebecca to explain why your seat is empty without admittin' that somebody else's son mattered more than your own. Don't worry, though. By the time he's nine, it won't hurt anymore when you don't show up because he'll have learned just to pretend you're dead.
That was assuming he was even still in his son's life by then. He'd been waiting all night and through the morning for his disposable cell to vibrate, but it never had. It had just been a dead weight in his sock, and now he was beginning to wonder if his old man had even bothered to talk to Rebecca. For all he knew, his father had just hung up the phone, smoked a cigarette, and gone back to bed, and Rebecca and Junior were long gone.
He wondered where she might have gone. There was beyond the wall in Grand Central, of course, but he doubted that was her first choice. It was too close to the site of his betrayal, and there was always the risk that their paths would cross again. There was Florida, too, Whiting's Glen or St. Augustine or Tallahassee. If she stayed on the right side of magic, he might be able to track her to one of the universities, but if she'd decided that what she thought he'd done had voided all their promises, he was screwed. He knew jack shit about the magical enclaves scattered around the country, and that was his fault. She'd volunteered to tell him whatever he wanted to know about the Wizarding world, but he hadn't wanted to know. The more he knew, the more real it would be, and the greater the possibility that his Junior would leave him for it someday. So, he hadn't asked, and now he was paying for it.
The worst-case scenario was that she'd packed up and taken him to Scotland, back to the school where she'd been forged into the woman he'd married. Scotland might as well be the moon as far as visitation was concerned, assuming he ever got any to begin with. Even if she consented to it, he couldn't just hop a plane to Scotland twice a month. He'd be lucky to make it twice a year.
That's no way to be a father. That's a damn sperm donor with namin' rights. You swore to yourself that if you ever had kids, you were gonna be a responsible father and a hands-on dad. You were gonna love 'em and protect 'em and teach 'em right from wrong, and you were gonna be around for the fun stuff, too, like their first words and first steps. You were gonna watch mind-numbin' hours of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues and give 'em piggyback rides into the kitchen to see their ma.
If she takes him to Scotland-or anywhere else on that side of the barrier-none of that's gonna happen. You'll get a snapshot and a couple'a letters a year and maybe a phone call from a voice you won't recognize, one with England in his mouth instead of New York. He'll dutifully tell you about his friends and his schoolwork, and maybe he'll even tell you about the new guy who's bonin' your girl.
An image of Rebecca in someone else's arms danced before his eyes, and his stomach cramped. He saw her in all her glory, pale and naked and writhing underneath another man while his son slept in an adjacent room. He imagined her telling this phantom stranger that she loved him, that it felt so good, that he was her Prince Charming. And he imagined his son calling him Daddy.
"I gotta-I gotta go," he said abruptly, and stood.
"Not again," Delgado said, and rolled her eyes.
"Hey, fuck you, Delgado," he snarled, and reached for his leather overcoat.
He had one arm inside the jacket when the phone vibrated. He was so startled that he jumped. He bent down to retrieve the phone from his sock and stepped on the overcoat. His feet tangled in one another as he tried to step off, and he staggered backward and fell onto the bed with an ungainly flop, telephone clutched in one hand.
"Fuck," he swore, and flipped open the receiver. "Pop?" he shouted breathlessly into the receiver. "Pop, did you talk to my girl? Was she still there? Did you convince her to talk to my captain?"
"Yes, he did," came the soft reply, and he was helpless to stop the rush of breath that escaped him.
"Rebecca? Oh, my God, doll. It's not what you think. What you saw. I can only imagine what you're thinkin', but I swear. I swear on Junior it wasn't that. It was just work, doll. That's all. I would never-," He was babbling, but he didn't care. As long as she was on the phone, she wasn't gone.
"Hey," she said, and when he continued to babble, "Don!"
He stopped, heart in his throat and fingers slick and tight around the cheap plastic of the receiver.
"Your father came by last night and explained everything. At least, I think he did. My New York is usually good, but I'm not so fluent in Sleepy Old Bastard."
Relief made him giddy, and he tittered. "So-so you know that I never-that it was just-?"
"Why didn't you tell me, Don?" she snapped. "If you had just told me what you were doing, I could've sucked it up. Instead, I-," She suddenly sounded brittle and on the verge of tears.
If you'd told her, she wouldn'ta had to spend most of the night thinkin' you were fuckin' somebody else and laughin' at her behind her back, his father supplied helpfully.
His relief dissolved in a wave of hot shame. "I know I shoulda," he said quietly. "I know. I just thought it would be better if you didn't have more to worry about on top of takin' care of Junior. 'Sides, the DA swore it was only a two-day job."
"Well, an Arithmancer he ain't," she said primly, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to quash a bray of laughter.
"I love you, Rebecca," he blurted, and suddenly, his heart was pounding inside his chest.
Say you still love me. Say we can fix this. Say you'll still be there when I come home, that I'm still gonna get to bundle up Junior for his first trip into the snow, that we're still gonna go to Central Park so that I can take you ice-skatin' with me. Tell me that I'm still gonna taste snow on your mouth, and the February 2nd is still the best day of your life.
"I love you, too, Don Flack, but make no mistake. I will not be your fool, so if you want out, you tell me right now."
He rose from the bed and went into the bathroom, away from Delgado, who had been listening to his end of the conversation with undisguised interest. He shut the door and sat on the toilet. "The only thing I want is to come home to you and Junior."
"Did you fuck her?" Crude and unflinching.
"No," he answered without hesitation.
"Did she see your lovers' triangle?"
Lovers' triangle was Rebecca's name for the triangle created by his bellybutton and the spars of his hipbones. She said it was a place more intimate that his cock and balls because it was usually seen only by lovers and doctors.
Doctors sure as hell saw yours, didn't they? A whole team of them. And nurses. And fuckin' Mac, of all people. For a while there, it was on display for anyone who wanted a goddamn gander. They invaded her sacred space, and once you were out of the hospital and healed up enough to stand it, she devoted a lot of time to reclaiming it. That first night you were together after the explosion, she was almost more interested in it than in your dick. She constantly returned to it with her hands and her mouth and tongue. Not that you minded. The soft, wet blade of her tongue on the hard, rigid flesh of your scar was exquisite and left you a shuddering wreck even before her fingers curled around your strainin' prick.
And then there was that time the Christmas after the bombin', long after you thought her cryin' was finished. What had started as a backrub was rapidly escalatin' into somethin' decidedly more lewd under the old mistletoe. She was mouthin' the Triangle, hot and frantic and oh-so-good. You kept waitin' for her to go lower and make your bells jingle, but she never did. She just kept nipping and kissing and laving her way over your skin.
Mine, she whispered feverishly. Mine. Mine. When you lifted the hair that had fallen in front of her face, you realized that she was cryin'.
That killed your hard-on in a hurry, and you gathered her up. Rebecca, what's wrong?
She dissolved into hard tears then, the kind you hadn't heard since you came home to find her in the shards of broken dishes, and the only word she'd say was mine. You could only hold her and rock and wait for it to subside.
Yeah, doll, you told her. It's yours. Nobody's but yours. I swear. Ssssh.
That was the true end of her mournin' what Lessing did to you. Oh, she still has plenty to say when the rumors of another appeal start swirlin', but they're not broken, her words. They're strong and clear and full of dignity, and the hysteria and confusion that used to scour your heart is gone. She picked herself up and got back in the game after that inexplicable night of worship and purging at the Triangle, and you've never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
"No, doll. She didn't. Nobody but you has since the night we met. I told you it was yours that night under the Christmas tree, remember? And I meant it."
"I want to put my mouth there," she said quietly, and the aching longing made his mouth go dry.
"And I want you to," he answered. He was wryly amused to hear his voice emerge in a rasp.
"Do you?"
"Yes. God, yes." He closed his eyes and imagined her doing just that, naked and wanton and reverent as her lips wrote hosanna over his shivering, eager skin. His throat was a pinhole, and his balls were suddenly heavy inside his boxers.
You better open your eyes before Delgado kicks in the door and finds you playin' trouser trumpet, his father suggested, and his eyes flew open. He double-checked the door to make sure it was locked.
"You, uh, you doin' okay?" he asked.
"Better than last night. I think the DA thought I was some crazy woman off the street when I went to see him this morning."
"You talked to the DA?"
"Well, yelled would be a more accurate word," she conceded. "Your father said I should."
"I'm so sorry about alla this," he said. "I didn't mean to leave you and Junior alone so long. I-they just showed me those pictures, and I had to take it."
"I know, babe."
"Hey, is Junior okay? I didn't see him with you last night."
"That's because he was with your mother. She wanted some time with her 'precious grandbaby', and I thought I could do some shopping. I picked him up after my holy crusade to the DA's office."
"So he's good?"
"Someone wants to say hello," she said, and a moment later, the unmistakable sound of Junior gurgling came through the receiver. In the background, he heard Rebecca say, "Say hi to Daddy."
His chest constricted, and he closed his eyes against the sudden scald of tears. "Hey, buddy," he managed. It's your old man. You takin' care of your ma?"
Junior squealed.
"Daddy loves you, Junior. He misses you, but I'm gonna be home real soon. Daddy loves you."
Rebecca's voice, distant and amused. "Junior, no. Don't put that in your mouth. You don't know where that's been. That's nasty." Junior's gurgles receded, and Rebecca returned to the line. "He's definitely your son. He was mouthing the phone."
"Give him a kiss for me?"
"I will."
"So…we okay now, you and me?" Shy.
There was a long silence. "I'm still pissed at you for letting me think that you were fuc-that I-that you-," She stopped, and he could hear her struggling for composure. Finally, she said, "We still need to talk, but it's nothing that can't be fixed. Junior and I'll be waiting when the chase is over."
"Yeah?" He felt light-headed.
"I love you. You just do what you need to do and come home. The bed's too empty without you." She was crying now. He could hear the soft, sad intakes of breath.
Oh, my girl, he thought. I'm so sorry for bein' my father's son.
"I'm comin' home soon, doll, and there's never gonna be another undercover assignment. I love you, you hear? Don't you ever forget that."
"Okay." Thick and muffled. "I have to clean the Junior slobber off the phone. Be safe out there, my love."
My love. The endearment pierced his heart even as it skipped a beat. In a moment of panic, he began to sing. "I guess you'll say, what can make me feel this way? My girl." It was stupid and juvenile and off-key, but it coaxed wobbly laughter from her, and it was enough. He blew her a kiss and hung up.
As soon as this was over, he owed his father a beer or ten and his wife and son a lifetime of tenderness, but right now, he had a dirtbag to catch. He slipped the phone into his sock and opened the bathroom door.
"Hey, Delgado, I got dibs on that damn empanada. I'm starvin'."