Ransom

“No, he's a stockbroker. None of my boys want to be cops,” he said. He'd been disappointed at first, but now he'd decided it was just as well. It was tiresome, often tedious, dangerous work. Ted had always loved what he did, and was glad he had. But Shirley had always stressed academics and education to them. One of his boys in college wanted to go to law school after he graduated, and the other was in pre-med. He was proud of them. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Ted asked with interest, although Sam was way too young to know. But he suspected the boy missed having his father around, and it was nice for him to have a few minutes to chat with a man. He didn't know Fernanda's circumstances since her hus-band's death, but on the two occasions he'd come to the house, he didn't have the feeling there was a man around, other than her oldest son. And she had the stressed, nervous, vulnerable look of a woman who was coping with a lot on her own.

“I want to be a baseball player,” Sam announced, “or maybe a cop,” he said, glancing down lovingly at the brass star in his hands, and the two adults smiled again. Fernanda stood there thinking what a good boy he was, just as Will walked in. He had heard adult voices in the room next to his and wondered who it was. He smiled when he saw Ted, and Sam instantly told him he was a deputy now.

“That's cool.” Will grinned, and then looked at Ted. “It was a bomb, right?”

Ted nodded slowly. “Yes, it was.” He was a good-looking, bright kid, much like his brother. Fernanda had three nice kids.

“Do you know who did it?” Will inquired, and Ted pulled out the mug shot again and handed it to him.

“Have you ever seen this man around here?” Ted asked quietly.

“He did it?” Will looked intrigued and stared at it for a long time. Carlton Waters's eyes had the same mesmerizing effect on him, and then he handed it back to Ted and shook his head. None of them had ever seen Carlton Waters, which was something. It didn't totally confirm Waters's innocence, but it made his guilt a lot more unlikely.

“We're just checking out possibilities. There's nothing to link him to it for now. Have you ever seen him, Will?”

“No, I haven't.” The boy shook his head. “Anyone else?” Will enjoyed talking to him, and thought he was a good man. He conveyed decency and integrity, and he had an easy way with kids.

“Not yet. We'll let you know.” Ted looked at his watch then, and said he had to go. Fernanda walked him back downstairs and he stood in the doorway for a minute and looked at her. It was a strange thing to feel about a woman who lived this well, but he felt sorry for her. “You have a beautiful house,” he commented, “and lovely things. I'm sorry about your husband,” he said sympathetically. He knew the value of companionship after twenty-eight years with his wife. Even if they were no longer close, they meant a lot to each other. And he could sense Fernanda's loneliness and solitude like a pall that hung over her.

“Me too,” she said sadly in response to Ted's sympathy.

“Was it an accident?”

Fernanda hesitated and looked at him, and the pain he saw in her eyes took his breath away. It was naked and raw. “Probably…we don't know.” She hesitated for a moment, and felt surprisingly comfortable with him, more than she had reason to, and for no reason she could explain, even to herself, she trusted him. “It could have been a suicide. He fell off a boat in Mexico, at night. He was alone on the boat.”

“I'm so sorry,” he said again, and then opened the door and turned back to look at her again. “If there's anything we can ever do for you, let us know.” Meeting her and her children was part of what he liked about his job, and always had. It was the people he met who made it worthwhile for him. And this family had touched his heart. No matter how much money they had, and they appeared to have a lot of it, they had their sorrows too. Sometimes it didn't matter if you were rich or poor, the same things happened to people in all walks of life, at all economic levels, and the rich ones hurt just as much as the poor ones. No matter how big her house was, or how fancy her chandelier, that didn't keep her warm at night, and she was still alone, with three kids to raise on her own. It was no different than if something had happened to him, and Shirley had wound up alone with his boys. He was still thinking about her when he went back to his car, and drove away, and she quietly closed the door.