Good With Children

“That’s the summer you were in Telluride.” And now Rory remembered Samantha returning to Sultan and saying her boss had been shot and had died, although she’d never said any more than that. Samantha had hated Telluride, though she’d liked the work. Rory was torn between demanding to know everything and showing a little restraint. It’s just morbid curiosity, she thought. Anyhow, Seamus already told me what happened.

“What was she like?”

Samantha’s blue eyes grew curious. “You like him?”

Rory waved a hand casually, indicating indifference.

Expression skeptical, Samantha said, “Well, Janine didn’t talk about him much. In fact, I’d worked for her three weeks before I even knew she had kids. And she was nursing the littlest one then. When she talked about any of them, it was her oldest daughter; then her daughters, plural. So it was a while longer before I knew she had boys.”

“What did she talk about?”

“Work. Batterers. Perps. Domestic terrorists, as she called them. Psychopaths, sociopaths. Big into psychology. Very…Almost masculine. Though I don’t know why I’m saying that. She used slang a lot. Lots of profanity, too. She could be pretty abrasive, but she was also sweet with her clients. You got the feeling she’d been through some stuff herself somewhere in the past.”

Rory considered that, weighing it with what Seamus had told her.

“Did she say anything about him?”

“Well, the gun was an issue. I mean, when I knew she was carrying it, I asked her if she was okay owning a gun with kids in the house. She said, ‘Look, I don’t let my husband tell me what to do.’ Then, she went through all the safety precautions she used and said she was teaching her oldest daughter to shoot. And that girl must have been, like, ten. She also said, ‘But we’re not telling him. He doesn’t get it.’”

I don’t get it, either, Rory thought. Had Seamus ever learned that Lauren’s mother had given her shooting lessons? “She must have been through an assault or something herself,” she mused aloud.

“If she had been, she never told me. Janine was convinced this one client’s ex-husband was insane and was going to kill her. I mean, he did threaten her, in pretty disgusting terms, and she had a restraining order against him. He was a scary guy.”

Rory wondered if Seamus had been frightened for his wife. Or had he discounted her fear. Had the accident with the gun been an accident?