Bones to Ashes

Ryan took Birdie’s end of the couch. I took mine, feet tucked under my bum. Again, we established that our daughters were good. Lily was waiting tables at Café Cherrier on Rue Saint-Denis. Katy was doing a summer Spanish course in Santiago, Chile.

My Montreal condo is small. Kitchen, bedroom, den, two baths. Only the main living area is spacious. French doors open from opposite sides, the north set to a central courtyard, the south to a Lilliputian-sized patch of grass.

Stone fireplace. Glass dining table. Yellow and blue Provençal sofa and loveseat. Cherry-wood moldings, window trim, and mantel.

As we talked, Ryan’s eyes roved from object to object. Pictures of Katy. My younger sister, Harry. My nephew, Kit. A ceramic plate gifted from an old woman in Guatemala. A giraffe carving purchased in Rwanda. Rarely did his gaze meet mine.

Inevitably, we drifted into shop talk. Safe, neutral ground.

Ryan had been working special assignments since the death of his partner several years earlier. He described his current investigation.

Three girls missing. Two others found in or near water. And now there was the Lac des Deux Montagnes floater. Six in all.

I told Ryan about the burn victim, the Doucets, and the Rimouski skeleton en route to my lab. He asked who was responsible for the latter. I described my meeting with Hippo Gallant.

Ryan said Hippo was inputting on his missing persons and DOA’s. Thus, we drifted into the inevitable Hippo stories. The time he left his gun behind in a gas station men’s room. The time he pulled a suspect from a culvert and ripped his pants up the ass. The time a collar took a dump in the back of his cruiser.

Conversation was genial and friendly. And brotherly as hell. No mention of the past or future. No body contact. The only references to sex were those made by Charlie.

At ten-thirty Ryan rose. I walked him to the door, every cell in my brain screaming that what I was debating was a lousy idea. Men hate being asked what they’re feeling. I hate it, too.

Not for the first time, I ignored the advice of my instincts.

“Talk to me, Ryan.” I laid a hand on his arm.

“Right now Lily—”

“No,” I blurted. “It’s more than Lily.”

The cornflower blues refused to meet mine. A beat passed. Then, “I don’t think you’re over your husband.”

“Pete and I have been separated for years.”

Ryan’s eyes finally locked home. I felt something hot coil in my belly.

“Operative word,” he said, “‘separated.’”

“I hate lawyers and paperwork.”

“You were a different person when you were with him.”

“The man had been shot.”

Ryan didn’t reply.

“My marital status never mattered in the past.”

“No. It didn’t.”

“Why now?”

“I hadn’t seen you together.”

“And now that you have?”

“I realize how much you care.” Before I could speak Ryan added, “And how much I care.”

That stunned me. For a moment I could think of nothing to say.

“Now what?”

“I’m trying to get by it.”

“How’s it going?”

“Not well.”

With that he was gone.

As I lay in bed, emotions battled inside me. Resentment at the feeling that Ryan had suckered me in. All the asking. Then the striving to keep things light.

Annoyance at Ryan’s cowboy-done-wrong act.

But Ryan had one valid point. Why didn’t I divorce Pete?

I take offense slowly, store insult until the end of time. Ryan is the opposite, affronted quickly, but quickly forgiving. Each of us reads the other well.

Ryan was light-years beyond feeling slighted or piqued. His signals were unmistakable.

So, mostly, I felt sadness. Ryan was pulling away.

A tear slid from the corner of one eye.

“OK, wrangler.” Spoken aloud in my party-of-one bed. “Adios.”

7

H ARRY HAS LIVED IN TEXAS SINCE DROPPING OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL her senior year. Long story. Short marriage. Her concept of phone etiquette goes something like this. I’m up. I want to talk. Dial.

The window shade was oozing toward gray when my cell phone sounded.

“You awake?”

I squinted at the clock. Six-fifteen. Like a pilot whale, Harry needs approximately five hours of sleep nightly.

“I am now.”

My sister once had this motto printed on a T-shirt: Never complain, never explain. While she’s lax on the front end, she’s crackerjack on the back, following her whims and offering no apologies for the outcome.

She offered none now.

“I’m going to Canyon Ranch.” Harry is blond, leggy, and trying hard to look thirty. Though that checkpoint was cleared a decade ago, in kind light, in the right clothes, she succeeds.

“That makes how many spas this year?”

“Rump’s dragging, tits are starting to look like thirty-eight longs. Gotta eat sprouts and pump iron. Come with me.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m selling the house.”

The abrupt shift left me off balance. “Oh?”

“Butt-pie was an egregious error.”

I assumed Butt-pie was husband number five. Or was it six? I dug for a name. Donald? Harold? Gave up.

“I think I hinted the man wasn’t a girl’s dream come true.”

“You hinted he was stupid, Tempe. Arnoldo isn’t stupid. Problem is he’s got just one string on his fiddle.”