Read Online The Silver Bear by Derek Haas - Free Book Online Page B

broad smile on her own, and said, “Well, don’t just stand there, Jim, grab his bag. We’re gonna put you in Louis’s room. It gets a little cold at night, but we’ll throw some extra blankets on your bed and you’ll be snug as a bug.” It seemed that once Jake’s mother opened her mouth, she couldn’t stop the onslaught of words tumbling from it.
    Jake smiled and rolled her eyes when Molly wasn’t looking, as if to say “I tried to warn you . . .”
     
     
    THE food covering the dining table was enough to feed a dozen people: peaches wrapped with prosciutto, a warm pear-and-endive salad, a honey-baked ham with a brown-sugar crust, baked beans, and no less than three pies waiting on a side table: pumpkin, key lime, and buttermilk chess.
    “Jake tells us you work for a distribution company?” Jim asked when we had stacked our plates.
    “Yes, sir. It’s just a start until I can earn enough money to begin school.”
    “Oh?” Molly said, more of a comment than a question.
    “Yes, ma’am. I didn’t—”
    Jake rescued me. “Mother—”
    “What? I didn’t say anything.”
    I looked at Jake and nodded, like I had this under control. “My parents died when I was an infant, and I was raised in foster homes, though not by parents you would call ‘loving.’ So if I want to go to college, it’s up to me to pay for it. And I don’t believe in owing the government a nickel, so, like I said, I’m just building up my account.”
    Jim cast a stern eye at his wife, then looked back at me. “Well, I think that is not only a refreshing attitude but an admirable one.” He deftly changed the subject . . . “Well, what did you think of the drive into Nashua? Jake always likes to come in the back way, but I’ve been saying for years the Interstate can slice twenty minutes off . . .”
    “Jesus, Daddy, you’re embarrassing me!” she squealed happily and tossed her napkin at him.
    The conversation stayed in the mundane, and Molly didn’t let anything dampen her ability to dominate a conversation. Her sentences ran together without punctuation . . . I’m not even sure she took breaths. But I loved every minute of it . . . the food, the conversation, the family, and Jake’s hand that made its way under the table to mine. She squeezed it in three pulses, as if to say “I love you,” and I believed she did, believed it like I had never believed anything. And I started to think, we could be like this, Jake and me, thirty years from now, talking over a table to our own child and her new boyfriend. We could be having a meal like this.
     
     
    I left the light on next to my bed so I could read the latest file Vespucci handed me before I left. He had been in the hallway when I returned from a hard run, and I didn’t invite him in. I don’t know why I didn’t, or even if he gave a shit. He just waited for a second, studied my face, and when I didn’t extend the invitation, he turned and left. I had the feeling he knew I was still seeing Jake, that I was going to be out of town that weekend, but I didn’t open my mouth to confirm it. Hell, if he wanted me to kill for him, I wasn’t giving this up. And if we never talked about it again, that was all right by me.
    The name at the top of the file was Janet Stephens. She was a judge in the 5th Circuit Court, City of Boston. She was not married, but had an ongoing relationship with a female attorney named Mary Gibbons. She lived in a town house in the Back Bay, not far from Beacon Street, with a corgi named Dusty. The courthouse was downtown, a twenty-minute walk through the Common from her front gate.
    The picture of Janet revealed a middle-aged woman with a broad forehead and cocoa skin. Her father was black and her mother was white, and she had that beautiful tone found in a lot of offspring of mixed parentage. Her eyes were a piercing shade of green, and her hair fell in tight dark curls down to her chin. Her nose was disproportionately big, however, and it marred