Jamie Brodie 02 - Hoarded to Death

a minute, then we heard more raised voices.
    Pete gave me a look. “Cleopatra?”
    “Queen of Denial.”
    Pete laughed. We went back to work.
    By the end of the day, we’d gotten rid of all the magazines and newspapers. Jennifer’s bathroom was clear, the paths through the apartment were wider, and the kitchen was in much better shape. Tomorrow, we had all the bags of stuff in the living room and guest room to tackle before we could even uncover the boxes of books. I was starting to think we might not even get to those tomorrow.
    When we left Jennifer's apartment we all felt filthy. We went straight home and hit the showers. Pete and I took a long steamy one together while Val commandeered the guest bathroom. I checked my lung function; it was at 92% baseline. Not too bad for having spent a day in dusty, musty conditions. We reconvened in the kitchen and ate, heating up some leftover chili, and each having a beer to go with it. After we did the dishes, we ended up in the living room, Val on the love seat and Pete and I on the sofa, with another beer for each of us.
    We hadn't talked much about the day to this point, but now we started dissecting it. Pete asked, "What was the thing that surprised you most?"
    I didn't have to think about that. "It was Jennifer's announcement that she wanted kids. That's unbelievable for anyone who knows Kevin, right? 'Cause everyone knows how he feels about kids."
    "Yeah. That bothered me a lot." Pete was pensive. "I was Kevin's partner for four of the five years that he was married to Jennifer, and he never said that they were arguing about having kids. And I think he would have said something. We spent a lot of time sitting in that patrol car and we talked about everything. He said a lot of other stuff about her. I knew that she was hoarding and running up the bills and doing crazy stuff, all of that. But the issue of kids never came up."
    "But you knew he didn't want kids."
    "Sure, I knew. Kev didn't mind being around other people's kids, but the last thing he wanted was any of his own. I never knew exactly what he had against it, but he made it clear. Very clear."
    I nodded. "I wasn't around then, obviously, but I talked to Kev a lot, and he never mentioned anything about kids to me either, and I think he would have."
    Val chimed in. “I’m sure Jeff never knew anything about it; he would have mentioned it to me. I know when our boys were born, Kevin kidded Jeff, thanking him for taking the pressure off his shoulders for producing grandkids for your dad. I remember your dad saying that he knew that the only grandkids would come from Jeff. So everyone knew.”
    I sighed. “Kevin’s always thought that the world is too fucked up a place to bring children into it. And he’s an environmentalist, so he never wanted to add to the world’s population. But it sounds like Jennifer didn’t want to believe it.”
    Pete frowned. "What a mess that girl's brain must be. I hope the show provides enough aftercare funds for her to get some extensive therapy, because she's going to need it." He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me against him. "It's a good thing we're so normal."
    I laughed. "Speak for yourself, sir! I consider myself to be extraordinary, not normal."
    Pete chuckled. "Oh, you're extraordinary all right."
    Val laughed. "What do you think will happen to Jennifer?"
    “ Realistically? The relapse rate for these people is pretty high. Although it is a good sign that she's changed her name. It might indicate that she's ready to make other changes in her life. But it's not a good sign at all that the only people she had to help her with this were her ex-husband's family.”
    Val rolled her eyes. “Yeah, she didn’t want her actual friends to know.”
    I sighed. "It's sad. Kevin married her for some reason. There must be a very valuable person in there somewhere."
    Pete nodded. "They had a lot in common, on the surface. She liked outdoor stuff. She'd rollerblade while Kevin ran, she hiked with us, they'd go camping down at San Onofre. And she loved baseball. Knew how to keep score and everything. They went to Dodgers games all the time, and she never missed one of our LAPD baseball games. But she did display some OCD symptoms. You know who she reminded me of, in a way? The counselor on Glee. Everything had to be in its place and lined up correctly. And she always had wet wipes with her and wouldn't touch any man-made surfaces until she'd wiped them down."
    "Weird that she'd