Split Black /#Wattys 2021

Chapter Eight

John pulled his detective's unit to the curb in front of his boyhood home. Evelyn Robin opened the door before he was even out of the car. John climbed the steps to the stoop—all these houses had high, square concrete "stoops" —and gave his mother a hug.

"Where were you?" scolded his mother. "I've been waiting for you for an hour."

"I said I'd be here at ten thirty." He looked at his watch. "It's only ten forty-five!" His mother always said the same thing, regardless of how early or late John was. "You look good, Ma," he said.

Evelyn Robin had never spent much time in the sun and looked at least ten years younger than her actual age of fifty-three. She had spent her new salary on herself, replacing her old tent dresses with brand-name clothes, a new cut and color, and jewelry. Today she wore a black pantsuit over her size eight figure, little rhinestones spangling the neck and shoulders, and black leather mules. Yellow stones sparkled at her ears under her strawberry blonde curls, and she wore a ring on each finger.

"You have to help me, Johnny! You'll never believe how they've treated me. Come on in the kitchen, I've put some coffee on. Did you eat? Where's Lizzie?"

"I grabbed an egg sandwich on the way down. I didn't bring Lizzie because I have to go to Hampton PD after this." Normally his mother disapproved of him moving in with anyone; Lizzie had gotten a more enthusiastic reception once Ma had seen her Vogue spread.

His mother had bought a new kitchen table—black wrought iron vines and flowers with a glass top. John sank into gold velvet cushions a foot thick while his mother poured coffee and sliced a homemade coffee cake.

"Thanks, Ma, this'll be good," said John. "Tell me what's going on."

"Didn't Lizzie say anything? I talked to her about it several times. Didn't you get the clippings I sent?"

"Clippings?" John dodged the topic of Lizzie, who never remembered to tell him anything. He'd finally put a message pad by the phone, but it kept disappearing.

His mother frowned. "I sent you a manila envelope of all my columns and the letters that were in the paper. Didn't you get it?" Her eyes pierced him like two blue laser dots across the table.

Oh, shit. You mean I might have had a heads-up about this? "Come to think of it, there is an envelope on my desk that came a few days ago. I'm sorry, Ma. You know I've been spending all this overtime on Pride."

"If it had've been police business, you would have opened it," she groused. But she sent him every single column she ever wrote, religiously, with a plea for reinforcement: "Look what I did!" How could he have known the latest packet was actually a letter bomb?

"So, Ma—what happened?"

"I got fired from the paper, that's what happened! Lizzie didn't even tell you that?"

John gulped. Her grocery-store coffee was too hot and burned all the way down. "You told Lizzie that? No, she didn't tell me." He reached across the table and put his hand over one of hers. "I'm really sorry. If I'd had any idea, I would have called you right away. Why did Andy fire you? I thought he really liked your work."

"Not anymore." Ma bit the corner off a piece of coffee cake barely two inches square. "He said he didn't like what I was writing about."

"What were you writing about?"

"Well, it all started when I wrote something different about those expensive houses at the beach. You remember that column I wrote."

John remembered. Ma had dropped the topic of weight loss for a week and written that the city's beachfront belonged to all the city's people, not just to the privileged few who could afford to buy it all up and make it their private land. It was so well-written it could have appeared in a national magazine. John had been proud, and called her to tell her so.