Public Secrets

carried in her womb. And always of Darren as he giggled and ran his tractor over the turkey rug.
“Miss?”
Emma blinked and focused on the uniformed doorman who stood waiting to help her from the cab.
“Checking in?”
“Yes, thank you.” Mechanically, she paid off the driver, walked into the lobby to registration. She took her key, forgetting for the moment that this was the first time she had stayed alone.
In her room she opened the discreet Gucci carry-on, by habit neatly folding her lingerie, hanging her clothes, setting out her toiletries. Once done, she picked up the phone.
“This is Miss McAvoy in 312. I’d like to arrange for a rental car. Two days. Yes, as soon as possible. That’ll be fine. I’ll be down.”
There was something else that had to be done, though she was afraid. Picking up the phone book, she opened it, skimmed through to the Ks . Kesselring, L.
Emma noted down the address in her neat hand. He was still here.

“A RE YOU GOING to eat all morning, Michael, or are you going to cut the lawn?”
Michael grinned at his father and shoveled in more pancakes. “It’s a big lawn. I need my strength. Right, Mom?”

“The boy doesn’t eat right since he moved out.” Pleased to have both men at her table, Marge filled the coffee cups. “You’re skin and bones, Michael. I’ve got the best part of a nice ham I cooked earlier in the week. You take it home with you.”
“Don’t give this deadbeat my ham,” Lou objected.
Michael lifted a brow, then doused the remaining pancakes with Aunt Jemima. “Who you calling a deadbeat?”
“You lost the bet, but I don’t see my grass getting mowed.”
“I’ll get to it,” Michael grumbled and snatched another sausage. “I think that game was fixed.”
“The Orioles won, fair and square. And they won over a month ago. Pay up.”
Michael gestured with the sausage. It was a conversation they’d had every weekend since the World Series, and one they would undoubtedly continue to have until the first of the year when the bet would be paid in full.
“As a police captain you should be aware that gambling’s illegal.”
“As a rookie, assigned to my precinct, you should have better sense than to make a sucker bet. Mower’s in the shed.”
“I know where it is.” He rose, swung an arm over his mother’s shoulder. “How do you live with this guy?”
“It isn’t easy.” Marge smiled and patted Michael’s cheek. “Be sure to be careful with that weed whacker around the rosebushes, dear.”
She watched him go out, slamming the screen door as he had always done. For a moment she wished he could be ten again, but that feeling passed quickly, leaving a quiet pride. “We did a good job, Lou.”
“Yeah.” He took both his and Michael’s dishes to the sink. He’d aged well, putting on less than ten pounds over the last twenty years. His hair was fully gray now, but he’d kept most of it. Though he occasionally realized he was uncomfortably close to sixty, he felt better than he had in his life. Due, he thought as he put his arm around Marge, to his wife’s diligent watch on things like cholesterol and sugar.
As for herself, Marge had settled contentedly into middle age. She was as trim as she’d been the day they’d been married. Nothing kept her from her twice-weekly aerobic classes. Her hair was colored a flattering ash-brown.

Five years before, she’d gotten what Lou had thought was a bee in her bonnet about starting her own business. He’d considered himself indulgent when he’d stood back and let his “little woman” open a small bookstore. He’d been kind and considerate, like an adult patting a child on the head. Then she had astonished him by showing a keen and often ruthless head for business. Her little shop had expanded. Now she had three doing brisk business in Hollywood, Bel Air, and Beverly Hills.
Life was full of surprises, he thought as he heard the mower gun. His wife, who had seemed content for years dusting furniture and baking pies was a businesswoman with her own accountant. His son, who had breezed carelessly through college, then had spent nearly eighteen months drifting, had enrolled in the police academy, without saying a word. As for himself, Lou was giving serious thought to something that had always seemed years off. Retirement.
It was a good life, Lou thought, drawing in scents of sausage and roses. On impulse, he spun his wife around and planted a long hard kiss on her mouth.
“The kid’s going to