A fusillade of explosions split the air. This was so wrong. She’d seen him today with the kids, witnessed what a natural he was. He should never have done something so permanent. “Don’t you think you’re too young to make that kind of decision?”
“When it comes to kids, I’m a hundred years old.”
She’d been involved with child advocacy too long not to know what cops faced, and in the dim light she thought he looked haunted. “I saw too many dead bodies,” he said. “Not just teens but infants—five-year-old kids who hadn’t lost their baby teeth. Kids blown up, missing limbs.” She cocked her head. “I saw parents on the worst day of their lives,” he went on, “and I’ve promised myself I’ll never have to go through that. Best decision I ever made. It’s hard to do your job when you wake up every night in a cold sweat.”
“You saw worst-case scenarios. What about the millions of kids who grow up just fine?”
“What about the ones who don’t?”
“Nothing in life comes with a guarantee.”
“Wrong. A snip here, a snip there. It’s a damn good guarantee.”
The sky lit up with the grand finale, the bangs, crackles, and whistles ending their conversation. She respected people who understood themselves well enough to know they wouldn’t make good parents, but instinct told her that wasn’t the case with Panda.
Her Lucy-ness was getting in her way again. This had nothing to do with her, other than serving as an omen, a harsh reminder that a lot of men felt the way Panda did about fatherhood, and despite what she’d done to Ted, she still wanted to get married and have children. What if she fell in love with a man like Panda who didn’t want to be a father? One of so many variables she wouldn’t be facing if she hadn’t bolted from that Texas church.
Temple scrambled back from the bow to join them, and they headed home. Panda stayed behind on the boat, so Lucy and Temple walked up to the house together. “There’s something about fireworks,” Temple said as they reached the top of the stairs. “They make me sad. That’s weird, right?”
“Everybody’s different.” Lucy didn’t feel all that cheery herself, but the fireworks weren’t to blame.
“Fireworks make most people happy, but there’s something depressing about watching all that color and beauty die out so fast. Like if we’re not careful, that’s what will happen to us. One minute you’re blazing hot—on top of your game. The next minute you’re gone, and nobody remembers your name. Sometimes you have to think, what’s the point?”
The porch screen door dragged as Lucy opened it. Light from the fake Tiffany lamp hanging in the kitchen spilled out through the windows. “You’re depressed because you’re starving. And by the way … I think you look terrific.”
“We both know that’s not true.” Temple threw herself down on one of the chaises Lucy had covered with a crimson beach towel. “I’m a pig.”
“Stop talking about yourself that way.”
“I call it like I see it.”
The wind had overturned one of the herb pots, and Lucy went to the baker’s rack to right it. The scents of rosemary and lavender always reminded her of the White House East Garden, but tonight she had something else on her mind. “Being vulnerable isn’t a sin. You told me you’d met someone, and it didn’t work out. That puts a lot of woman in a tailspin.”
“You think I found solace for my broken heart at the bottom of a Häagen-Dazs carton?”
“It’s been known to happen.”
“Except I’m the one who broke it off,” she said bitterly.
Lucy picked up the watering can. “That doesn’t necessarily make it any less painful. I speak from experience.”
Temple was too wrapped up in her own tribulations to acknowledge Lucy’s troubles. “Max called me gutless. Can you believe that? Me? Gutless? Max was all—” She made quick air quotes. “‘Now, Temple, we can work this out.’” Her hands dropped. “Wrong.”
“Are you sure?”
“More than sure. Some problems can’t ever be worked out. But Max …” She hesitated. “Max is one of those people who not only see the glass as half full, but half full of a mocha caramel Frappuccino. That kind of rosy outlook isn’t realistic.”
Lucy wondered if it was geography that stood in their way—Max on the East Coast, Temple on the west. Or maybe Max was married. Lucy wouldn’t ask. Although she was dying to know.
But the old Lucy’s tactfulness only extended so far. She set aside the watering can and crossed to the chaise. “I haven’t watched much of
“Dr. Kristi. She’s a fruitcake. Major esophageal damage from too many years of sticking her finger down her throat. All shrinks are nuts.”
“Life experience is sometimes what makes them good at their job.”
“I don’t need a shrink, Lucy. Although I do appreciate the way you keep pointing out how nuts I am. What I need is willpower and discipline.”
