LITMIR.BIZ

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with dirty breakfast dishes. “I’ll pass the info along to the Vernon police.”

      I’d learned more about law enforcement jurisdictions than I’d ever wanted to know last year. If Penny had died on base, his office, the OSI, would lead the investigation, but since she died off base the Vernon Police Department had her case.

      Thistlewait continued, “There’ll be an autopsy. It’s just too early to make any leaps in judgment about her death. Maybe she had a spontaneous miscarriage or maybe she got some bad news about the pregnancy between her call to you and her death.”

      I gritted my teeth at his placating tone. “Was there a note?”

      “Computers and e-mail complicate things. It’ll take the Vernon PD a few days to check all the possibilities.” He held up a hand to cut off my next protest. “You were right before, I’ll give you that. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

      I heard frustration in his tone. He was referring to the death of a neighbor last year that had turned out not to be a natural death at all.

      “Just don’t jump to any conclusions before the evidence is in.”

      He unplugged the phone cords and twisted them around the machine. Then he wrote me a receipt. “So you’ll get it back,” he said with a straight face.

      At the door he turned back to me, his voice laced with caution. “I’ll let you know what happens. The Vernon police will probably keep me in the loop as a courtesy. In the meantime, don’t get wrapped up in this.”

      That made me clamp my teeth together again. I didn’t ask Penny to call me right before she died, did I? He thought I was a snoop and a busybody. But then he wiped the anger right out of me when he said sincerely, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

      With the anger gone, that empty, dark feeling flooded through me again as I closed the door. Penny was gone. I clicked the dead-bolt into place and surveyed the scattered toys and the film of dust on every surface. Trivial details. Forget dusting. I’d play all afternoon with Livvy.

      I’d told Mitch about Penny and he’d come home from the base as soon as he could. We’d spent the afternoon playing with Livvy and then I’d thrown together some sandwiches for dinner, but I couldn’t eat mine.

      I put my sandwich back down on the plate and said, “I can’t believe Penny’s gone. Just a few hours ago I was talking to her. And she was so happy.” I felt my throat go scratchy and my eyes watered.

      Mitch squeezed my hand. “I know.” He didn’t say much. All that military training helped him hide his emotions better than I could hide mine, but I could see the sympathy in his look.

      “Where Pen go?” Livvy asked.

      Mitch and I exchanged a look. We had to tell Livvy her favorite sitter was gone. I hadn’t even thought about how I’d do that. Parenting is like that—a three-word question from Livvy and I’m ripped out of my grief, casting about for uncomplicated answers to one of life’s most unfathomable issues.

      As always, I had to parent on the fly. “Penny’s gone to heaven. We won’t see her anymore.”

      “Why she go?”

      The question and her puzzled blue gaze undid me. My throat prickled again and I felt the tears I’d fought off earlier seep out of the corners of my eyes. How did I answer?

      Mitch said, “We don’t always know why things happen.”

      “Pen no go.” She’d picked up on the sadness radiating from me and her eyes turned glassy.

      I swallowed hard and wiped my checks. “I know. I didn’t want her to go either. But heaven is a nice place.” I pulled my paper napkin out of my lap and blew my nose. “There’s no crying there. No sadness. No one hurts.”

      Livvy blinked hard and wrinkled her brow. “No boo-boos?” she asked, her tone laced with doubt.

      “No. No boo-boos.”

      She nodded slowly. “Okay.”

      Mitch wiped his hand down over his face and I knew he was wiping away a tear, although he’d never admit it. “Okay. Dad’s taking everyone to Cobblestone.”

      I shrugged into my coat, bundled up Livvy, and we headed out for a short drive to the trendy little café a few blocks over. It was the kind of place with a patio and umbrella-topped tables outside. Tonight the umbrellas were gone and the wrought-iron furniture looked stark and cold. I felt better as I stepped in the door where mingled smells of coffee and chocolate greeted me. “What do you want to eat?” Mitch asked.

      I didn’t care. “You pick something,” I said. I found a table close to the fireplace and hooked the diaper bag over the chair. After I strapped Livvy in the high chair, I studied the watercolors and oils by local artists on the brick walls.

      “Fire,” Livvy informed me, then shook her head. “No, no.” She understood playing by the fireplace was off-limits. Mitch returned, balancing thick white plates with a blueberry muffin, apple pie, and triple chocolate cake.

      The bells over the door jingled and Oscar Marsali walked in with a newspaper tucked under his arm. Mitch raised an eyebrow at me and I said, “Yeah, invite him over. You can talk turkey.”

      Marsali lived down the street. A widower and a retired linguistics professor, he spent most of his time powering his riding lawn mower around his lawn in the summer, whether the grass needed to be cut or not. Mitch had stopped to chat with him one day when he took Rex out for a walk. When Marsali had found out Mitch was back from a TDY to Turkey, a place that fascinated Marsali, they had a long conversation. Now Mitch stopped to talk to Marsali every few days.

      Mitch waved and Marsali collected a cup of coffee, then stepped delicately, despite his squat build, through the maze of tables to ours. He dropped his newspaper, folded open to the crossword, on the table and sat down with us. “Hello. How are you on this cold night?” He removed his cap with ear flaps and ran his hands over thinning, wiry gray hair, which grew over his collar. His glasses with large lenses were popular around 1980 and magnified the bags under his eyes. Even without the cap flapping around his face, his expression reminded me of a sad-eyed basset hound.

      “Fine. How’s the mall walking?” I asked, determined not to focus on my grief. Marsali was going through hobbies as fast as he could think of them. He liked crosswords, but he’d said, “I can’t do them all day. I have to find something else.” So he’d run through chess and bridge, then moved on to mall-walking.

      “Boring. Container gardening is next at the senior center.”

      I broke the muffin into pieces for Livvy, but she pointed to my plate. “Cake!” she demanded.

      Marsali smiled at Livvy. “Ah, it’s good to be around kids. They make you smile.” He sipped his coffee. “To tell you the truth, I’m a little restless tonight. That news about Penny. It’s horrible. It’s got me shaken up.”

      I blinked. Normally silent and reclusive as he was, this was major soul-baring for Marsali. He always seemed to have an underlying sadness, kind of a lost look. He once told me he missed his wife, and I gathered that he still struggled with her death, even after two years. Although he always looked melancholy, he usually didn’t mention his grief. He plowed on through his days, determined to avoid pity. “I didn’t know you knew Penny,” I said.

      “Well, we do live on the same street. I used to say hello to her and William when we happened to see each other, but once I talked to them at the bookstore. They were looking at crossword puzzle books. So we talked after that. They had me over for dinner. I gave them tomatoes from my garden last summer.” His garden had been another of his attempts to find an outlet during retirement.

      “That she died is terrible, but to think she committed suicide…” He buried his nose in his mug.

      Mitch gave me a warning look, which I interpreted to mean, “Don’t say anything about the answering machine.”

      Ah,

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