Under The Knife

“You know, David, Noah always wanted a brother. Maybe it’s time you gave him one.”

David smiled faintly. “What are you suggesting, Mother?”

“Only what comes naturally to us all.”

“Maybe I should get married first?”

“Oh, of course, of course.” She paused, then asked hopefully: “Anyone in mind?”

“Not a soul.”

Sighing, she laced her arm through his. “That’s what I thought. Well, come along. Since there’s no gorgeous female waiting for you, you might as well have a cup of coffee with your old mother.”

Together they crossed the lawn toward the house. The grass was uneven and Jinx moved slowly, stubbornly refusing to lean on her son’s shoulder. She wasn’t supposed to be on her feet at all, but she’d never been one to follow doctors’ orders. A woman who’d sprained her ankle in a savage game of tennis certainly wouldn’t sit around twiddling her thumbs.

They passed through a gap in the mock-orange hedge and climbed the steps to the kitchen porch. Gracie, Jinx’s middle-aged companion, met them at the screen door.

“There you are!” Gracie sighed. She turned her mouse-brown eyes to David. “I have absolutely no control over this woman. None at all.”

He shrugged. “Who does?”

Jinx and David settled down at the breakfast table. The kitchen was a dense jungle of hanging plants: asparagus fern and baby’s tears and wandering Jew. Valley breezes swept in from the porch, and through the large window, there was a view of the cemetery.

“What a shame they’ve trimmed back the monkeypod,” Jinx remarked, gazing out.

“They had to,” said Gracie as she poured coffee. “Grass can’t grow right in the shade.”

“But the view’s just not the same.”

David batted away a stray fern. “I never cared for that view anyway. I don’t see how you can look at a cemetery all day.”

“I like my view,” Jinx declared. “When I look out, I see my old friends. Mrs. Goto, buried there by the hedge. Mr. Carvalho, by the shower tree. And on the slope, there’s our Noah. I think of them all as sleeping.”

“Good Lord, Mother.”

“Your problem, David, is that you haven’t resolved your fear of death. Until you do, you’ll never come to terms with life.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Take another stab at immortality. Have another child.”

“I’m not getting married again, Mother. So let’s just drop the subject.”

Jinx responded as she always did when her son made a ridiculous request. She ignored it. “There was that young woman you met in Maui last year. Whatever happened to her?”

“She got married. To someone else.”

“What a shame.”

“Yeah, the poor guy.”

“Oh, David!” cried Jinx, exasperated. “When are you going to grow up?”

David smiled and took a sip of Gracie’s tar-black coffee, on which he promptly gagged. Another reason he avoided these visits to his mother. Not only did Jinx stir up a lot of bad memories, she also forced him to drink Gracie’s god-awful coffee.

“So how was your day, Mother?” he asked politely.

“Getting worse by the minute.”

“More coffee, David?” urged Gracie, tipping the pot threateningly toward his cup.

“No!” David gasped, clapping his hand protectively over the cup. The women stared at him in surprise. “I mean, er, no, thank you, Gracie.”

“So touchy,” observed Jinx. “Is something wrong? I mean, besides your sex life.”

“I’m just a little busier than usual. Hiro’s still laid up with that bad back.”

“Humph. Well, you don’t seem to like your work much anymore. I think you were much happier in the prosecutor’s office. Now you take the job so damned seriously.”

“It’s a serious business.”

“Suing doctors? Ha! It’s just another way to make a fast buck.”

“My doctor was sued once,” Gracie remarked. “I thought it was terrible, all those things they said about him. Such a saint…”

“Nobody’s a saint, Gracie,” David said darkly. “Least of all, doctors.” His gaze wandered out the window and he suddenly thought of the O’Brien case. It had been on his mind all afternoon. Or rather, she’d been on his mind, that green-eyed, perjuring Kate Chesne. He’d finally decided she was lying. This case was going to be even easier than he’d thought. She’d be a sitting duck on that witness stand and he knew just how he’d handle her in court. First the easy questions: name, education, postgraduate training. He had a habit of pacing in the courtroom, stalking circles around the defendant. The tougher the questions, the tighter the circles. By the time he came in for the kill, they’d be face-to-face. He felt an unexpected thump of dread in his chest, knowing what he’d have to do to finish it. Expose her. Destroy her. That was his job, and he’d always prided himself on a job well done.

He forced down a last sip of coffee and rose to his feet. “I have to be going,” he announced, ducking past a lethally placed hanging fern. “I’ll call you later, Mother.”

Jinx snorted. “When? Next year?”

He gave Gracie a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and muttered in her ear, “Good luck. Don’t let her drive you nuts.”

“I? Drive her nuts?” Jinx snorted. “Ha!”

Gracie followed him to the porch door where she stood and waved. “Goodbye, David!” she called sweetly.

* * *

FOR A MOMENT, Gracie paused in the doorway and watched David walk through the cemetery to his car. Then she turned sadly to Jinx.

“He’s so unhappy!” she said. “If only he could forget.”

“He won’t forget.” Jinx sighed. “David’s just like his father that way. He’ll carry it around inside him till the day he dies.”

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_00ead2d4-5737-54c2-a4cd-522fa751892e)

TEN-KNOT WINDS WERE blowing in from the northeast as the launch bearing Ellen O’Brien’s last remains headed out to sea. It was such a clean, such a natural resolution to life: the strewing of ashes into the sunset waters, the rejoining of flesh and blood with their elements. The minister tossed a lei of yellow flowers off the old pier. The blossoms drifted away on the current, a slow and symbolic parting that brought Patrick O’Brien to tears.