“Stupid squirrel.”
“Mommy,” daughter Cindy cried out from the rear seat.
“It’s okay, honey.” Bonnie twisted to glance back, straining against the driver’s safety belt. Jonas’s schedule gave her the day off. They’d taken a grocery trip shortcut. She slid right foot from the brake pedal. The Sheriff’s cruiser presented itself a hundred feet ahead. Why’s the car parked here? Bonnie surveyed the city park. Playground swings hung limp. No child swirled down the circular slide. Buggies didn’t hug the huge sandbox perimeter. No visible Jonas McHugh.
After a moment’s thought, she looked at wristwatch: six-thirty. Jonas relieved her for the overnight strike watch until six. She didn’t know who lived on the North Park 100 block without a city directory. She shifted car’s automatic transmission into reverse. At the intersection, she circled the long way around the park. She’d delay planned grocery trip and continue on to her parents.
Bonnie drove to Kanosh’s northern edge. When she encountered the white three-board fence, she turned into the paved horseshoe driveway to park in front of the Victorian house she grew up in. Thankful for wondrous childhood memories, she desired the same for Cindy, although as a single parent the struggle proved difficult. As a child, two cousins visited Bonnie often to play and she’d team up with older sister, Nancy, against them. Winning games lasted as glorious memories. Losing tears forgotten by summer ice cream or a winter’s fireplace and popcorn. Since then, Nancy lived married and relocated to California.
Bonnie clicked apart Cindy’s car seat. Balanced on Bonnie’s hip, Cindy’s tiny finger pushed doorbell button. Inside, Cindy would assume center stage for doting grandparents, especially Dad.
“Boo.” Cindy giggled as Grandpa covered deeply crowed eyes, and then spread apart sinewy fingers. Dad condensed the game, originally peek-a-boo for her. Bonnie didn’t object. Cindy needed a male role model. Dad at the moment represented the best available.
“Candy ... cookie,” Cindy said.
“Not now,” Bonnie’s mother said, appearing behind Dad.
“How’ve you been?” Mother asked. Her gaze traveled beyond Cindy.
“Fine, Mother.” Bonnie couldn’t escape noticing Mother decked out in a favorite bluebird apron. She swore Mother sewed triplicates to avoid an image interruption. “Breakfast smells good.”
“Come help in the kitchen. Let your father enjoy entertaining Cindy.”
In the kitchen with Dad out of earshot, Bonnie asked, “How’s Dad?” She lifted a lid to peek into one of two pots on red electric stove burners. Hardboiled eggs. While physically healthy, both parents battled daily to stay in touch with reality. The implement business Dad built from scratch operated by a hired general manager. The emotional uncertainties gnawed at Bonnie. Last year she baked their joint fifty-second birthday party cake. “He any better?”
“No,” Mother said. “New medication provides stability with occasional glimpses of hope. He won’t run for re-election to the county board next year.”
Mother repeated what Dad blurted out last month before swearing Bonnie to secrecy.
“It takes all his strength,” Mother continued, “to finish the required monthly reading. He’s playing with Cindy, but he sometimes gives me the impression his mind thinks it’s you.”
Bonnie’s rising emotion gathered to well up behind both eyes. Cooking steam diffused on shut tight chilled north windowpanes and a glossy painted kitchen ceiling, a slowly descending imprisoning mist, which accentuated a creeping forlorn feeling. Silent, she crossed fingers for happier news.
“Only yesterday, before he swallowed morning medication, he talked to me as if on our honeymoon. The endearments bittersweet.” Mother dialed burner to warm. “I’ve reconciled myself to the fact he’ll never be the strong man I married. That’s life. What can I say?”
Bonnie hugged Mother. “There’ll be a medical breakthrough.” Bonnie released encircled arms. “Science discovers new cures every day.”
“I pray to God every night you’re right.” From a kitchen cabinet, Mother counted four plates. “I’m happy he remembers leading you down St. John’s aisle to wed Matthew.”
“I am too.” Bonnie reached for the plates Mother held, pivoted, and centered them on four maple table placemats. She counted flatware from a drawer, and watched Mother in a dreamy countenance pause to wipe jittery hands on appliquéd bluebirds before she spoke.
“He’ll often hold the brown Botany 500 suit he wore at your wedding, and gaze at it for minutes at a time. You made him and me so happy.” Mother reached for a wooden spoon to stir oatmeal in a front burner pot. “Í wish countries could exist without war.”
“So do I,” Bonnie murmured. “All of us could live without the nagging pain.”
“I understand love’s heartache never disappears, however, Matthew’s gone.”
Bonnie proudly thought of the American flag that draped Matthew’s coffin. Tri-folded within a glass display case, it rested on an apartment living room lamp table. Bonnie steeled herself.
“You need to love another,” Mother continued. “I’m not saying to forget Matthew. Life, as your father and I have lived, is better shared.” Bonnie hung head unwilling to interrupt what Mother would say next. “And, Cindy deserves a living father, not a framed picture or a flag.”
Bonnie bit lower lip and sighed. “I know. Really do.”
“You dating anyone I would know.” A pot’s bubbling foam distracted Mother.
Thankful for the extra time to think of an appropriately vague, yet plausible, disarming answer, Bonnie instead decided the truth offered less pitfalls and a quicker topic conclusion. “No.” Facial muscles tightened, pressure concentrated around temples. “I’ve had a lot to do at work.”
Mother, with an oven mitt, slid the pot off the burner and faced her. “Don’t know that I approve of a woman working in law enforcement. Too dangerous if you ask me. I worry every day.”
Bonnie separated spoons and the last tinkled against a knife. “Let’s not rehash my decision. I never play the lottery. If I do well, there’s a good chance for advancement.” She heard Cindy run and laugh in the next room as Mother clicked off all burners.
“If you say so.” Mother stepped toward Bonnie. “My impression of Sheriff McHugh is that he never wanted a woman deputy. That’s what church circle friend said he told her husband.”
“M-o-t-h-e-r!” Bonnie let outburst settle. “If breakfast’s ready, let’s eat?”
Assembled at the kitchen table, Cindy, Bonnie, and parents bowed heads in prayer. Cindy, palms together, fingers extended upward, billowed Bonnie’s pride as teacher. Dad rose to wave the door to the porch twice to chase excess heat outside. After the meal, Grandpa guided Cindy outside to swing under a giant oak’s emerging canopy. Rope threaded through two holes in a six-by-eighteen inch oak board created a seat with ends securely tied to a hefty, horizontal limb. Bonnie told the seat board a scrap saved from the wood Dad used to build her cradle more than two decades ago. A cradle heirloom Bonnie rocked infant Cindy in. The out-grown cradle, at the foot of Bonnie’s bed, filled with a collected doll and stuffed animal menagerie.
Bonnie carried dishes to Mother at the dishwasher before they both ambled to the screened-in back porch. Bonnie, from the exterior screen door, waved as Cindy, behind a tree, hid from Grandpa. She guessed hide-and-seek and loved the hours playing that childhood game with Dad.
She gazed at Mother use both hands to sit. “Ethyl says son stopped plans to build a new house now that there’s a strike at Jove Foods.” Mother rocked back and forth, eight-inch knitting needles stuck in yarn tucked at left side.
“Didn’t know he worked there. You’re talking William, right?”
“Uh-huh.