not want to let her children down.
When Reynolds caught her daughter Sydney looking apprehensively at her,
she smiled as naturally as she could. Sydney was six going on sixteen,
so mature beyond her years that it scared Reynolds to death. She
picked up on everything, missed nothing of significance. Reynolds had
never in her career interrogated a suspect as thoroughly as Sydney did
her mother nearly every day. The child dug deep, trying to understand
what was going on, what their future would hold, and Reynolds had no
ready answers for any of it.
More than once, she had found Sydney holding her crying brother in his
bed late at night, attempting to soothe him, relieve his fears.
Reynolds had recently told her daughter that she didn’t need to assume
that responsibility too, that her mother would always be there. Her
statement had a hollow ring, and Sydney’s face plainly showed a lack of
belief. The fact that her daughter had not accepted this statement as
dead, solid truth had aged Reynolds several years in several seconds.
The memory of the palm reader and her predictions of premature death
had come back to roost.
“Rosemary’s chicken is awesome, isn’t it, honey?” Reynolds said to
Sydney.
The little girl nodded.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Rosemary said, pleased.
“Are you okay, Mom?” Sydney asked. At the same time, she moved her
little brother’s milk away from the edge of the table. David had a
propensity for spilling any liquid within his reach.
That subtle act of motherhood and her daughter’s earnest question moved
Reynolds almost to tears. She had been on such an emotional roller
coaster of late that it didn’t take much to set her off. She took a
sip of wine, hoping it would prevent her from actually collapsing into
a crying fit. It was like being pregnant again. The littlest thing
affected her as if it were life or death. But then her common sense
kicked in. She was a mom, things would work out. She had the luxury
of a devoted live-in nanny. Sitting around whining, feeling sorry for
yourself, wasn’t the answer. So their life wasn’t perfect. Whose was?
She thought of what Anne Newman was going through right now. Suddenly
Reynolds’s problems didn’t seem so bad.
“Everything’s really good, Syd. Really good. Congratulations on your
spelling test. Ms. Betack said you were the star of the day.”
“I like school a lot.”
“And it shows, young lady.”
Reynolds was about to sit back down when the phone rang. She had
caller ID and checked the readout screen. The ID screen came up blank.
The caller must have ID block or his number was unlisted. She debated
whether to answer it or not. The problem was that every FBI agent she
knew had an unlisted number. Ordinarily, though, anyone from the
Bureau would call her on her pager or cell phone, both of which numbers
she closely guarded; and calls to those two she would always answer. It
was probably a random computer dialer and she would be told to wait
until a real person came on and tried to sell her a time-share in
Disney World. Still, something made her reach out and pick up the
phone.
“Hello?”
“Brooke?”
Anne Newman sounded distressed. And as she listened to the woman,
Reynolds sensed that there was something in addition to her husband’s
violent death-poor Anne, what worse could there be?
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” Reynolds said.
She grabbed her coat and car keys, took a bite out of a slice of the
bread on her plate and kissed her children.
“Will you be back in time to read us a story, Mom?” Sydney asked.
“Three bears, three pigs, three goats.” David promptly recited his
favorite nighttime storytelling ritual to Brooke, his favorite story
reader. His sister Sydney favored reading the stories herself, every
night, sounding out each word along the way. Little David now took a
big gulp of milk, loudly burped and then excused himself in a fit of
laughter.
Reynolds smiled. Sometimes when she was tired she would tell the
stories so fast they almost blurred together. The pigs built their
houses, the bears went for their walk while Goldilocks burglarized the