Harry
For almost a week now, Natalie had been avoiding Harry. He pulled onto the main road through town and spotted one of her tow trucks coming toward him, heading in the opposite direction. His heart rate sped up. Grace told him that she went to the doctor’s appointment with his girlfriend. Natalie was still talking to the family, so that was something. And she hadn’t made any “decisions” regarding the fate of his child. He breathed a little easier knowing this information, but he wanted to know how far along she was and the potential due date.
As the truck flew past, he looked out his side window. His chest ripped open and spilled everything onto the floor. Natalie was behind the wheel. She was lifting heavy chains and shit? While pregnant? Oh hell, no. Apparently, Harry had become a Neanderthal in the last week. He made a U-turn and raced after her. The light ahead turned red. Harry switched lanes so he could pull up next to her. He rolled down the window and honked the horn. She glanced over and her mouth fell open. When she didn’t roll her window down, he honked again and shouted. “Put your window down!”
She mouthed, Why?
He made a roll-your-window-down motion with his hand. She cracked the window. “Where you headed?”
“Pull a car out of the woods by the ravine. Just off the road.”
“Whose car?”
“Don’t know yet, it was empty. Rudy called me.”
“All right, I’ll follow you.”
She waved him off. “That’s not necessary.” The green light ended their conversation. She easily pulled ahead with the hemi under her hood.
“Dammit, Natalie, wait.” He pushed the accelerator to the floor and gripped the steering wheel tighter. Of all the places she was going, why did it have to be anywhere near that damn ravine? It was bad enough she had bailed his ass out of the snow back in January. He tailed her out of town, keeping right on her bumper, allowing no other cars to get between them. For some unknown reason, this seemed all important, like if he didn’t something was going to happen to her and his unborn child. Natalie’s eyes appeared in her rearview mirror every so often. At one point, she shook her head, and was likely giving him the mental finger.
They rounded the curve together. Rudy had parked on the opposite side of the road from where she parked her rig on the shoulder. The officer jogged across the street to meet her.
Harry stopped behind her. As he got out of his Buick, he lost sight of her when she rounded the front of her tow truck. “Nat!” She didn’t answer. “Where are you?” Sweat dampened his back and an irrational fear crept up on him. This damn spot messed with him every time. The very sight of the ravine made him crazy. “Natalie!” he shouted while he made his way toward the front of her vehicle. He hadn’t even bothered to look into the woods for the stuck car. Not until he saw she was okay. Harry had a flash of the one time he’d lost Grace at the mall for ten minutes. It had been the longest ten minutes of his life. The dread that someone had stolen her was so intense he nearly threw up. Fortunately he had trained Grace to find a security guard or policeman if she ever got separated from him. “Nat—”
“Over here,” she said.
“Where?” He came around the front. “Oh, thought I lost you for a moment.”
She chuckled. “Where did you think I went?” Bafflement washed over her features then she smirked. Harry wanted to hug her but his body wouldn’t cooperate. He froze and scrunched up his face. Perspiration beaded on his forehead. He wavered on his feet, reaching for the truck and placed his hand on the hood. “What’s wrong, Harry?”
He rubbed near the base of his throat. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Looking kinda pale there,” Rudy remarked.
Harry couldn’t breathe well. He tried taking short inhales then long, nothing helped though. He leaned his butt on the bumper, bent at the waist with his hands on his knees. A hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed.
“What’s wrong? You’re scaring me,” Natalie said with concern in her voice.
“I’m…all right. I hate…this,” he said between gasps.
“What do you hate?”
He closed his eyes.
“Do we need the paramedics?” Rudy asked.
“No,” Harry wheezed. “Where’s the…car?”
“Forget the car,” she told him, leaning down so her head was close to his ear. “What do you hate?”
“I lost Gracie.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What happened to Grace? I just talked to her this morning.”
“At the mall.” He couldn’t look at Natalie’s face.
“You’re not making any sense.” She rubbed his back.
“I lost her at the mall once when she was six. All I could think about was finding her, saving her from God knows what. Then when I found her, I worried about what I would say to her mother if the worst had happened. That was the worst day of my life.”
“Oh, Harry.” She sniffled. When their eyes met, hers were shiny with unshed tears.
“Losing a child is something no parent should have to go through.”
“You hate this ravine, don’t you? That’s what this is about. No it’s not…not entirely. I hear what you’re saying. You never want to go through that.” She stroked his hair, which had an amazing calming effect on him.
Harry placed a palm on her lower belly. “How many weeks are you?”
“Not weeks, months. Just over three.”
He finally took a deep breath and stood upright. Second trimester meant no termination, right? They were going to have a baby in six months. Wow. How would Brayden take the news? He hoped well. Did he already know? “Is the baby…how’s the baby?”
“Fine, I guess,” she sighed. “I have another ultrasound and more testing in a couple of weeks. But I heard the heartbeat and doctor says it sounded strong.”
“Oh yeah?” He smiled broadly, couldn’t help himself. Rudy smiled. “Yeah, I’m gonna be a dad again, so what? Go ahead make an old man joke.”
“Harry…” Natalie started but Rudy interrupted.
“Whoa, is that what I overheard? You won’t get any over-the-hill jokes from me. Congratulations, you two.” He clapped Harry on the back. “That’s great news.”
“Thanks.” Harry glanced at his girlfriend. She set her lips into a thin line and cast her eyes downward. No one spoke for a minute.
“Let’s get this car moved,” Rudy said, and headed toward the tree line.
Harry shrugged at Natalie when she looked up. “Was that okay?”
Natalie closed her eyes briefly. “You don’t have to stay, we got this.” Her voice was full of contempt.
“What did I do, I’m sorry if—”
“You don’t get what you just did, do you?”
“Why don’t you tell me.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “You don’t understand.”
No. I’m clueless.
“Ask your daughter, I’m sure she’ll explain it to you.”
What the hell did he do? “I thought…”
She put her hand up, silencing him, and walked away. “Go back to work,” she called over her shoulder.
“I am at work,” he called as he followed her to the woods.
“Rudy and I can handle an abandoned car without you.”
Harry kept his mouth shut; arguing wasn’t going to help anything.
Deep rutted tracks led to a dark blue car with California license plates. Cam’s to be precise. It sat in between some trees, twenty feet or so from the road. The front tires were stuck in the mushy ground. Dried mud splatters caked the sides of the car and wheel wells.
Harry peeked in the driver’s side window. He pulled on the door handle. Amazingly, it was unlocked. Nothing out of the ordinary stood out to him at first glance. Leaning into the car, he opened the glove compartment. Only the Owner’s Manual was in there, but the center console contained a small piece of folded up newspaper. He shook it open and read the small article.
An unknown suspect set a warehouse on fire Sunday evening. In the blaze, the body of a woman (name withheld) was discovered. It is believed she may have already been deceased at the time of the fire. Police and ATF officials are asking that anyone with information about the crime, please step forward and call this number…
Harry swore under his breath. He wasn’t sure why the article was left in there. What he did know, was that the car was cleaned out. Even the carpets looked like they had been shampooed recently. The leather brief bag he’d seen while the car was parked at the hospital was gone. If Cam had skipped town, why would he leave his car behind? And in the woods, where it would seem suspicious? He wanted Harry to find it.
“What the hell?”
“Did you find something?” Rudy asked.
“Yeah, newspaper clipping. The article is a couple years old, about a fire in California.”
“That’s odd, considering it looks like the rest of the car is empty.”
“Yep, definitely strange.”
Natalie backed the tow truck into the woods as far as she could without getting stuck in the mud herself. The door slammed and she came around and grabbed the cable at the back of the flatbed. “Gotta yank her out first before I can lift her,” she said to no one in particular. After attaching the thick steel cable to the back end of the car, she returned to the controls. The vehicle slowly crept over the ground toward the truck. Next she went for the heavy chains.
“We’re doing that,” Harry said sternly, waving Rudy over. The man followed the command, but hesitated when Natalie threw him a dirty look.
“They don’t weigh that much.” Her voice softened when she looked at Rudy. “Honestly, I’m fine. I don’t need your help.”
Harry had watched many tow truck drivers hook up cars, he knew what to do. He gently moved her out of the way and got to work. She groaned, stomped back to the cab, and got in. Fifteen minutes later, he approached the driver’s window. Natalie rolled down the window. “Finished?”
“Yeah, take it to—”
“Took you long enough, I could’ve been gone by now.” She stared straight ahead.
“Take her to the impound lot.”
Nodding, she zipped the window shut.
Fuck, what had he done wrong?
* * *
When got back to the station Harry laid the newspaper clipping on his desk. He took out his phone and dialed Grace. Much to his annoyance, he needed her advice. It wasn’t that he needed her advice that specifically bothered him, rather he needed anyone’s advice at all. His daughter picked up on the second ring.
“Everything’s fine,” he told her right away. She always worried if he called unexpectedly during the day. Cop’s daughter’s curse.
She giggled. “Okay.”
“I need,” he inhaled deeply, “I need your opinion on something.” There was a long pause. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah, Dad, I’m just surprised. About what?”
“You know about the baby.”
“Of course, we already talked about this. You have my support. I told you that.”
“I know, and thanks. She’s in her second trimester already, did you know that?”
“Yes, I was at the doctors with her.”
Harry rubbed the back of his neck. He’d missed the appointment. He was a shit. “She told me and I thought this was great news. Rudy was there and I told him she was pregnant.”
“You did what? Ah…I didn’t think she’d made a decision yet.”
“She’s in her second trimester.”
“So? You don’t realize what you did?”
“No. I thought everything was okay.”
“It probably is. I mean, I think more than likely she’s going to have the baby, but you stole her choice from her.”
“Her choice?”
Grace sighed. “Dad, she’s scared, and I would be too at her age. Heck, I’d be scared now if I was pregnant and I’m a lot younger.”
Shit! “I forced her hand….”
“I’m sure you were just excited to share the news, and I think she will understand that. Later. Much later. But now, I’d be on my hands and knees groveling if I were you.”
When had life become so complicated? The woman you love gets pregnant and you love the child with everything you have. Simple, right? Wrong. Christ, they hadn’t slept in the same bed together in a week. Hell, even the same house.