MC had taken advantage of a middle-of-the-night phone call that kept her mother busy for a few minutes. Probably Aunt G, since the call came in on the family’s private line. She’d slipped down the back stairs and out of the house.
MC needed to see her emails, and her parents, the last of the Luddites, had no home computer. Anyway, there was no need to upset her family. They were only trying to protect her.
But MC needed action. No more reminiscing in her old bedroom, with its overabundance of nostalgia. Enough staring at the walls that still held her Duran Duran posters. Her mother had turned Robert’s room into a sewing area and John’s into a den for her father, but had left MC’s nest nearly intact.
“My boys have their own bedrooms, in our same zip code,” Rose had said. “My daughter needs a place to come home to.”
Often enough over the years MC had heard how she still looked like a teenager—small-boned, thin face with a boyish haircut. And flat-chested, MC thought with a grimace. She was sure that was the impression she gave tonight, in her latex pants and her nephew William’s shocking blue helmet. MC refrained from curb-jumping; still she knew that if a sleepless Revere resident happened to look out his window, he might think she was a late-night runaway kid tearing through the streets.
She zipped around the corner of Revere Street and Broadway, sailing past Oxford Park and Pomona Street, where her best girlfriends had lived. Annie, Claire, Valery, Joanie. She remembered how they would all give up potato chips and candy for Lent, then eat double helpings of rubbery packaged cupcakes.
MC needed to be in her own apartment, to maintain a semblance of independence, even though her landlords were also her parents. And she couldn’t wait another minute to check her email messages for the misdelivered memo, or whatever, that Wayne allegedly crossed the country to warn her about.
She took a deep breath, relaxing her tight hold on the handlebars. At least it wasn’t Jake who’d followed her from Texas. MC touched her cheek. It wasn’t as though Jake had bruised her or anything. Except her ego. And it was only once or twice that he’d slapped her. Lightly. Still it killed her to lie to Aunt G. She should have told her the truth, but it was too embarrassing. A smart girl from a loving family, salutatorian of her class, a graduate degree in chemical engineering, a great career, and she’d let some jerk knock her around. Maaaaa would never have stood for that, nor Aunt G.
She remembered wonderful summers in California when she was little. Aunt G had always treated her like a grown-up, introduced her to scientists and engineers and programmers. Dr. Karen this, and Dr. Annmarie that. A little too obvious—they might as well have worn signs saying FEMALE SCIENTIST ROLE MODELS, but MC had loved it. Especially an all-nighter one time with Dr. Marcia, who’d let her help change spectrometer plates every half hour through the night, and write the data on gray graph paper with blue lines.
MC slammed her fist against the handlebar. Damn. All those strong women in her life, plus the gentlest of fathers and brothers, and she’d let them all down. For a loser. Maybe living near her family again would give her a new start, get her out of the depression she couldn’t shake. She was ninety percent of the way to being over Jake, ninety percent toward chalking it up as a temporary lapse in judgment.
She pushed ahead on William’s bike, deliberately overworking her calf muscles until they ached.
Wayne Gallen had said the email was incriminating. To whom? She hadn’t looked at her computer since her return. Once she got serious with her computer, she reasoned, she’d have to look for a job, and she wasn’t ready for that. Life Plans was too big a category to handle, but now she was curious about what could have driven Wayne across the country. He’d refused to give her details.
MC slowed down to make the turn onto Tuttle Street. Her plan was to ride the entire length of the one-way street to check for strange cars before doubling back and turning into the mortuary driveway. As if she’d know an enemy car from a friendly one. Or a stranger from a Tuttle Street resident. She hadn’t lived in the neighborhood long enough to tell the difference.
As she cruised by a new sedan in the shadow of a tree, she had the impression that there was a person, maybe two, slumped in the front seat. She tensed, then let out a long breath. Her loud whoosh cut through the still fall air. Probably a couple of teenagers making out. She knew what that was like.
But the sedan seemed out of place—the nicest car by far, among the old hatchbacks and pickups parked in the driveways. To play it safe, MC rode through the backyards on her return up the street. If someone were checking everyone who came by, he’d think she was a guy who disappeared into a house at the end of the street. She half rode, half walked the bike around the lawns and vegetable gardens, ending up at the storm door at the rear of the mortuary.