Dear Irene by Jan Burke Page A

Lindsey. Thank you.”
    She swayed her weight from high heel to high heel, then said, “Well, I’ve got to go. But I just wanted you to know I’m here for you.”
    “Thanks.”
    Seeing that she wasn’t going to get any more out of him than that, she turned and walked away.
    “See what I mean?” he said with exasperation. I nodded. He didn’t have to say anything more.
    “Look, I’ve got a deadline to make, so I’d better scoot. I appreciate your meeting with me.” I gave him a business card. I added my home phone number, hoping he didn’t think that meant I was hitting on him, too. I paid up and we left.
    Out on the sidewalk, he seemed to relax a little more.
    “This is the first time I’ve felt like someone really wanted to know about her. The other — well, maybe it was just that I was so upset. I still can’t believe it happened. She didn’t deserve this. No matter what she may have done, she didn’t deserve this. No one does.”
    “I agree. By the way — are you familiar with her research and writing?”
    “Yes.”
    “Let’s talk more about that sometime soon — if you don’t mind?”
    “No, no, not at all. Her research was very important to her.”
    He seemed distant for a few moments, obviously remembering E.J. Blaylock. I wished there was something I could say to comfort him. I watched him struggling to learn that trick of functioning with grief — that trick of remembering and forgetting all at once, of letting the ghost walk at your side, but not block your way. I was learning it myself. A close friend of mine had died a little more than six months earlier, and Kincaid’s grief was almost too clear a reminder of that loss.
    But before I could think of anything to say, he came back from whatever world he had mentally wandered into, and we shook hands and said good-bye.
    I thought of Lindsey and how repulsed he had seemed to be by her attentions. I wondered, as I climbed into the Karmann Ghia, if Steven Kincaid’s good looks would make him into a bitter and lonely man.
    I sighed and started the car. The windshield wipers came on.
     
8
     
    “M AYBE WE SHOULD GET A DOG . You like dogs, don’t you?”
    We were sitting in front of a fire that evening, one of our rare evenings at home together, drinking hot chocolate laced with peppermint schnapps, when Frank came up with this idea. We had been talking about our plans for Christmas, which somehow led to talking about my feeling safe when I was home alone in the evenings. Perhaps, after calling him from the Garden Cafe earlier in the day, I seemed more fearful. Whoever had turned on the windshield wipers hadn’t left any prints. Frank had been a little angry with me for not mentioning the parking-light incident, but I couldn’t tell if he thought someone was trying to frighten me, or if he was just convinced I was going over the edge. Now he was suggesting things like new locks, self-defense classes, and dogs.
    “I love dogs,” I said. “And you like them, right?”
    “Yeah, although I haven’t had one since I was a kid. I used to have this great mutt who was some kind of lab/retriever mix. Trouble.”
    “The dog caused problems?”
    “No. Trouble was her name. My dad named all of our pets. When he watched this pup follow me home, he said, ‘Here comes trouble.’ The name stuck. We also used to have a rabbit named Stu.”
    “So
that’s
where you get your sense of humor.”
    “Trouble was great. I swear that dog could understand English. I could say, ‘Go to my closet and bring back my blue tennis shoes.’ She’d do it.”
    “
Blue
tennis shoes? I thought dogs were colorblind.”
    Frank shrugged. “She would have known which ones I meant.”
    It sounded like classic dog-owner bragging to me, but I didn’t want to further impugn the memory of Trouble.
    “I used to have a dog,” I said. “She was mostly a beagle — named Blanche.”
    “Blanche?”
    “Blanche Du Bois.”
    He smiled. “Blanche Du Bois?
A Streetcar Named