One Cold Night

blurt it out here, in front of a stranger? Officer Johnson stood off to the side, waiting for his precinct detectives to arrive.
    She sat back down on the curb and pulled her BlackBerry out of her purse.
    Dave doesn’t know yet. She began the e-mail to Lisa a little incoherently, she realized, but she wasn’t a writer and she felt too disordered to make a solid beginning. But I’m going to tell him as soon as I can. I wanted you to know first so you wouldn’t be the last to know the biggest secret of your life. Only Mommyand Daddy and I and now you know about that time honey.
    Susan sent the message, sated with the memory of Lisa in her arms as a newborn baby, so soft and floppy and perfect it made her shiver to think she might have given her up for adoption if her parents hadn’t stopped her. There was so much more to tell Lisa. She opened another e-mail.
    Let me tell you about your father. His name was Peter Adkins. I haven’t seen him since way back then and the truth is, my darling, the truth is the truth is he never knew about you. Go ahead and hate me. I deserve it. Facts: I was fifteen and he was seventeen when we made you, we both lived in Vernon and went to the same high school, he was popular and I was not, he was a pretty good student and I was a terrible student (except in dance, ceramics and strangely math), and you are very much like him in some ways, the good ways. Peter was an amazing boy just loaded with charm and yes Lisa yes we loved each other. He made me feel beautiful before I ever really saw myself in a mirror. But I don’t have to tell you that people are complicated. When I got pregnant things began to change with us and —
    Dave sat down on the curb beside Susan. She sent the second e-mail with its last unfinished sentence, and zipped the BlackBerry back into her purse’s outside pocket. He glanced at her with a warm smile, then rested his arms on his bent knees, clasping his hands together. He was such a good man, honest, and truly nice in a way that cut through all his layers. After the horrid ending with her first love, Peter, the conundrum of Lisa appearing in her teenage life and the parody of dating she had experienced in her earlyyears in New York, Susan had come to distrust men — until Dave, whom she appreciated and adored completely. She reached over and wove her fingers into the knot of his hands. As soon as possible, she would get him alone and tell him the truth.
    A gold sedan drove slowly up the street and pulled to a stop behind Officer Johnson’s squad car. A bright red leaf fluttered out of the car when the driver’s door opened, reminding Susan that it was autumn, and a beefy man in black leather emerged, crushing the leaf beneath his boot. He was followed from the passenger’s side by a petite Hispanic woman in tight jeans, a hot-pink knit turtleneck and a short jean jacket. She paused to put on some cherry-colored lipstick, smacking her lips together and leaning back into the car to place the lipstick on the dashboard. She looked about Susan’s age, in her late twenties, and the man seemed older. He took off his leather driving cap to tissue dry his scalp — sweating, strangely, in the cold early-morning air — and she saw that his pate was bald around a halo of light brown hair.
    Dave stood up, leaving Susan’s left side suddenly bereft of warmth. She got up and walked over to join him and Officer Johnson in greeting the detectives.
    “Yeah, Zeb? Whaddaya got?” The woman’s voice was high-pitched and staccato. The man stood beside her, rubbing his hands together, then cupping them to catch steamy puffs of breath.
    “Teenage girl didn’t come home,” Johnson said. “This is the family. Susan Bailey-Strauss and Detective Dave Strauss, Seven-eight.”
    Dave again displayed his shield. Susan was impressed by the immediate response it always got from other cops.
    The woman elbowed her partner. “Yo, baby, first-class, you gotta listen to him no matter what.”
    The man nodded gravely to Susan and then looked at Dave. “Detective Alexei Bruno, Eight-four. Trust me, ignore this one; she’s the pain of my existence.” He had a heavy Russian accent.
    “Son of a bitch doesn’t know pain,” the woman said, “but I’m telling you he will. Detective Lupe Ramos.” She offered her manicured hand to Dave first, then Susan, adding a just-between-us-girls wink.
    Susan tried to hold herself steady in the moment, to trust that Dave would know how to handle