The Wanderer. Робин Карр

did not enter his house.

      It was about five-thirty when he walked into the kitchen from the garage. Lou stood at the sink, rinsing dishes. Lou was not Aunt Bee to his Andy of Mayberry. She was sixty, but didn’t look a day of it. She wore fitted jeans, a white silky blouse, leather vest and boots on her young, trim body. Her curly, shoulder-length hair was auburn with some gold highlights and her nails were manicured in bright colors. She complained of crow’s feet and what she called a wattle under her chin, but he didn’t know what she was talking about. Lou called herself his old-maid aunt—she’d never married or had children of her own—but in truth she was young, energetic and feisty, exactly what he needed, even if it did drive him crazy at times.

      Without even turning around she said, “There are tacos. The kids have eaten. Eve is going to take the van to the game tonight. She’s meeting a couple of her friends. That leaves you and me and the kids to go together. In less than an hour.”

      Friday night. High school football. Eve was a cheerleader. A gorgeous, young cheerleader who resembled her mother and caused him to quake in fear every time he looked at her.

      “Did it occur to you to ask me if I was all right with that—Eve taking the van?”

      She turned from the sink. “It did,” she said, giving him a sharp nod. “It always occurs to me. But you say no and argue and then give in so you can pace and grumble. She’s sixteen and a good girl. She’s earned it.”

      He nodded, but he hated it. His ex-wife Cee Jay—short for Cecilia Jayne—had been a cheerleader; he’d been a football player back in Coquille. Cee Jay had gotten pregnant at sixteen. By nineteen, he’d been a brand-new husband with a baby on the way.

      Cee Jay left when Dee Dee was nine months old; that’s when they had moved in with Lou. Cee Jay had been so young when she left—only twenty-three. Mac wasn’t sure why he’d felt so old, as he’d been only twenty-six. But he’d been pretty busy, trying to support his family on two jobs. He was a rookie deputy, working nights, and by day he worked security on an armored car.

      His dirty little secret was that sometimes he didn’t mind the two jobs. But Cee Jay, left alone too much, scrimping to get by and buried in small children, complained a lot. There wasn’t enough money, the house was small, old and falling apart, the kids were out of control, there was no fun in her life and very little attention from her husband, whom she accused of showing up only long enough to throw food down his throat and take off for the next job. She needed more money but hated that he was always working.

      And then one day Cee Jay snapped. She packed a big suitcase, put the kids at the neighbor’s house and waited for him to get home from his day job. “I can’t take it anymore,” she told him. “I’m sick of getting puked on, sick of the diapers and noise, sick of this dump we live in, tired of not being able to get out of the grocery store with ten cents left in my purse. I’ve had enough. I’m leaving.”

      For the past nine years, he had asked himself why he’d been stunned. Her complaints hadn’t changed, they’d just been accompanied by a suitcase. “L-leaving?” he had stuttered.

      “The kids are next door,” she said. “I’m taking my clothes and two hundred dollars.”

      His entire body had vibrated with fear. Dread. Pain. “Cee Jay, you can’t do this to me.”

      “Yeah, well, you did it to me first. I was sixteen, Mac. Sixteen and pregnant!”

      “But you were happy! And you wanted Ryan—you argued for Ryan! Dee Dee was an accident, but you—”

      “And you thought that I had a clue, at sixteen or twenty-two?”

      “Listen, I was only nineteen! So—we were too young, you think I don’t know that? You can’t just leave your children!”

      “I have no way to support them and I can’t take this anymore!”

      “Cee Jay, how’m I supposed to work and take care of the kids?”

      He remembered the sound of a horn honking. She zipped her bag. “I don’t know, but you’ll figure it out. Call your aunt—she always hated me anyway.”

      He had grabbed her by the shoulders and shaken her. It was the harshest hand he’d ever laid to a woman. “Are you crazy? What is this? Is that some guy picking you up?”

      When he stopped shaking her, she said, “There’s no guy! That’s a cab! You want me to call the cops? Let go of me!”

      Of course there was a guy. It took him all of three weeks to figure it out—some pro golfer. At first, the mystery was how she had found the time to have enough of a relationship with him to talk him into taking her away. But he caught on—girlfriends. Young mothers like Cee Jay, running around, swapping kids, stealing time for themselves. Once Mac learned his name and began following his movements through the news, the second mystery followed: why she didn’t come home to her family once the relationship was over, which took only a month or so.

      He fantasized how he wouldn’t make her beg much, just enough to be sure she had had a change of heart and was ready to commit, ready to promise never to do it again. No one could ever know the depth of humiliation at not being able to hang on to the mother of your children. At the time he had lived in Coquille, and it took roughly forty-eight hours for everyone who’d ever heard of him to be talking about how Cee Jay McCain left her young husband and three small children to run off with a golf pro. He spent the next five years nurturing a fantasy that she’d eventually come to her senses and be back, if only to see her children. Then it finally dawned on him to be afraid of that very scenario—that once he’d figured out how to manage, she’d stalk back in and stake some kind of claim. So he got himself a divorce. He had to locate her to do that—she turned up in Los Angeles. They didn’t communicate. She signed the papers, relinquished custody and he let go except for a couple of tiny threads. He hated her for what she’d done to their children. And he was terrified of ever getting involved with a woman again.

      It was with the divorce that they moved to the outskirts of Thunder Point, about thirty minutes east to Coquille, the sheriff’s office. Even if Mac had to go back to the central office, he could commute. It was here, in a down economy, that he managed to find a larger home, one big enough for his family—three kids, Aunt Lou and two Labs.

      Since Mac had lost his parents young and had lived with Lou during junior high and high school, you’d think she’d be as terrified as he was that Eve would slip and fall into some horny football player’s lap and end up with the mess of a life her mother had. They had never talked about it; it had never been voiced. But they both knew what was eating Mac. He wanted Eve to be twenty-seven, settled and safe. Real. Fast.

      And just then his daughter dashed through the kitchen, wearing her barely there cheerleading uniform. Short, pleated skirt, V-neck sweater, letter jacket, long, beautiful legs, and a head full of thick dark hair she wore down most of the time. She had the biggest blue eyes. Her smile was positively hypnotizing; he’d barely paid off the orthodontist’s bill, just in time to start on the next two mouths. Blue eyes ran in their genes but not perfect teeth. If not for the dental benefits offered by the Sheriff’s Department, his kids would have teeth growing out of their ears.

      “I’ll wave to you at the game, Daddy,” she said, rising on her toes to kiss his cheek. “We’re going out after,” she said.

      “Midnight, Eve,” he reminded her. As if she couldn’t get into trouble before midnight. It wasn’t that. It was just that it was all he could take. He needed his kids home and tucked in so he could relax.

      “How often have I been late?”

      “A few times,” he said.

      “Well, not very late,” she reminded him. Then she beamed. “I think we’re going to kick some Raider tail tonight!”

      And he grinned at her. She was his doll; he’d die for her, it was that simple.

      When she was out the door, Lou was shaking her head. “I wish you’d get a life,” she said.