Chapter Thirty-two
A Word from Mom
A Month Later
The smell of gingerbread baking reached him even before he went up the front steps. It was the first bit of comfort he’d felt for weeks.
There was mail in the mailbox and he took it out as he opened the door.
“Mom? You home?”
Mrs. Hardin came out of the kitchen, stood in the doorway and took a good look at her son.
“You look like hell. What’s going on?”
“I need to talk to someone about—well, about something.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“In a way.”
She looked at him in that brisk way she had, sizing everything up in a single piercing glance.
“Sit down,” she said. “I’ll make coffee.” She went back into the kitchen.
In the living room, Bart dropped into the blue wing chair. His mom was right. He did look like hell. There were dark circles under his eyes and he had lost some weight. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days, his face was stubbled, his hair was shaggy around his shirt collar and he seemed to have slept in his jeans and white shirt. A half-dead animal washed up on the beach looked in better shape.
His mom came back into the room. A tall-backed Chippendale chair was close to the wing chair, and she sat there, where she could see Bart’s face clearly, lit by the afternoon sun.
“Now tell me. What’s wrong?”
“It’s so stupid, Mom. It’s just so stupid. You remember that girl that came here with me, a few weeks ago?”
“Of course I remember her. Annie. Annie Cornell.” With all the trouble a police officer could get into, girl trouble was probably not so serious. Unless—
“The news was full of her for a few days,” she said. “I’d hoped to see her again before she left. I liked her.”
“I liked her, too.”
“So? So far, I don’t see a problem.”
“Yeah. Well, it didn’t work out.”
“What happened?”
“You saw what happened. She made me look like a jerk!”
“She did? How? I didn’t see how you looked like a jerk.”
“Oh, Mom, not you, too.” Bart’s face flashed his impatience. “Lindy was Dad’s horse. If Lindy had been stolen while Dad was alive, wouldn’t Dad have been the first one to track down the kidnappers? Do you think he’d have let some little slip of a thing—that’s what the captain keeps calling her, a ‘little slip of a thing’—come along and do his job for him? A job he was supposed to be doing?”
“And that’s what this is about?” She was relieved; it could have been something much more serious. “That’s what has you looking like an unmade bed?”
“I can’t help it, Mom. The guys were all razzing me. And the press was all over the unit, like somehow we weren’t doing our job—saying some out-of-town tourist who can’t weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds came along and solved the case and captured the bad guys single-handed.”
“And what did she say about all this?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He looked away, unwilling to meet his mother’s eyes.
“Did you talk about it?”
“I tried to.”
“And?”
“She called me stupid.”
“She didn’t strike me as the kind of girl who calls people stupid.”
“I was trying to get her to understand.”
“And she didn’t?”
“No. She didn’t understand at all. I tried. But she’s impossible.”
Mrs. Hardin sat quietly for maybe a full minute while Bart glowered at the carpet. She studied him closely. Then she spoke, in that quiet, centered way she had that he’d learned to listen to.
“Bart. I didn’t raise my boy to be a fool. And you never gave me any reason to think you were a fool. Well,”—she smiled, a little indulgently—“maybe there were a few days here and there in your teens—every teenager has some pretty foolish days—but those days don’t count.” Then, more seriously, she said, “No, Bart, I’ve had every reason to be proud of you. Proud when you joined the force. Proud of how you’ve conducted yourself as an officer—and I don’t mean only the special commendations, I mean your behavior day in and day out. I was proud when you made sergeant. I was proud of how you helped me when Dad died, helped me get through those black days, when I felt as though I’d died, too.
“But if ever I saw a man behaving like a fool, I’m seeing it now, Bart. Here, you bring home this really nice girl, a girl who’s smart, sane, well brought up, well educated, independent, and lovely, and I thought, the minute I met her, now here’s a girl who’s good enough for my Bart.
“And then, on top of all that, what does this impossible girl do? She performs an act of bravery and skill that not one person in maybe a million could do, and not only that, she does the entire city of New York a big favor, not to mention the New York Police Department, its mounted unit—and by the way, a huge personal favor for you, too, Bart.
“And how do you say thank you to this very special girl who’s done so much for us all? You get all bent out of shape because she’s the one who did it instead of you. Is that how they trained you? Is that how your dad and I trained you? I’m ashamed of you, Bart. You’ve earned plenty of points for bravery and honorable behavior. Surely you can acknowledge it when someone else earns a few of their own. Surely bravery and skill can be shared. It’s not like you’re the only one who’s supposed to be wonderful. Des Hardin was never like that. And Bart Hardin shouldn’t be, either.”
Bart was silent, his eyes fixed on the photo of his father.
“Well,” his mother said. “I’ve said my piece. You think about it, dear. I have a cake in the oven.” And she stood up and left the room.
He did think about it. “A girl good enough for my Bart.” That’s what she said.
But maybe I’m not good enough for her.
And with that thought, he remembered Annie’s words: “I don’t know why I bothered to see you today.” And she called him stupid.
Well, not really. She said what I said was stupid. Not the same thing. I don’t even remember what I said. Probably it was stupid. I said a lot of stupid things that day.
He went into the kitchen where his mom was sticking a cake tester into the pan of gingerbread. It needed another five minutes.
“She called me a Caped Crusader, like I was someone in a comic book.”
“Oh, Bart, honey. I think that’s your nicest quality. And I think Annie thinks so, too. She was probably mad. What did you say that made her mad?”
“I can’t remember. Something about her thinking she didn’t need me to take care of her.” He no sooner said that than he realized how condescending that would have been. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You think?”
He turned a chair around and straddled it. He watched his mom as she got out a cake rack. He watched her preparing a frosting for the gingerbread. He watched how she wiped her hands on her apron, took a couple of pot holders off a hook on the wall and got the gingerbread out of the oven. He loved watching his mom in the kitchen.
“I said a lot of dumb stuff that day.”
“A man in love usually does say a lot of dumb stuff.”
Leave it to Mom to put it plain like that. With a single word. That’s all it was. One word. But he couldn’t say it right off. He needed to let it sink in.
And when it did, he gave his mom a straight look, eye to eye. He felt a huge space open up in his chest. About three hundred pounds of misery slid off him, dissolved, melted, disappeared, vanished. He looked at his mother as though beams of light were radiating off her head.
“You’re right, Mom. I am in love with that girl. And I let her get away.”
The look from his mom was like a slow drill, right into his heart. He’d been brought up well and he understood what that look meant.
“I know, Mom. I will make this right.” He stood up. “It’s going to take some work, but I’ll make this right. Beginning right now.”
“Sit down,” she said. “The coffee’s ready. And I’ll cut you a piece of cake.”