Habit by T. J. Brearton

didn’t see other people?”
    “No. She was. Ah, I don’t want to sound cruel here. She was frigid.”
    “You two never . . .”
    “Oh we did. We did. But, you know.”
    “I understand. And there’s no one, not a single name you can think of, someone she may have talked to, even just once or twice?”
    Kettering looked like he was probing his memory. His grimaced and said, “There was a vegetable stand we stopped at a couple of times. She thought the woman who worked there was nice. A little blue hair.” He held up his hands. “That’s it.”
    Brendan nodded. “Okay. If you think of anyone, anyone or anything else at all, you’ll please call me, alright?”
    “Alright.”
    “Okay,” said Brendan. “Almost finished.”
    Kettering said nothing. The armor of his convivial nature, it appeared, had been penetrated.
    “What about Rebecca’s child?”
    Light came back into the man’s eyes again. Brendan saw a few things Donald Kettering seemed to countenance at once: protectiveness, love, pain, and vulnerability.
    Like a parent, thought Brendan.
    “Leah,” said Kettering, pronouncing it lay-uh .
    “Leah? That’s the girl’s name? Is she yours, Donald?”
    A tear slipped out of the corner of the man’s eye, which he wiped away with a knuckle. “No,” he said. “She’s not.”
    Brendan’s voice was soft. The room was very quiet. “So she was Rebecca’s child with another man. When did you first meet her?”
    “Not until Rebecca finally moved in. She brought Leah up only a few times. Once was . . . I guess two years ago. I convinced her to go to the mall with me in Rome. They have a, uh, you know, a studio there.” He frowned. “I know it’s old hat, getting pictures done in a mall – everyone just snaps cell phone pictures today. But I wanted to. It was our anniversary.”
    “I understand,” said Brendan. “That was a nice idea.” He shifted a little in his seat.
    Kettering looked positively broken. He hunched forward, staring down at his desk.
    “Did you ever meet Leah’s father?”
    Kettering’s head came up, and something flashed in his dark eyes. “No,” he said. “And she never wanted to talk about him. Rebecca just . . .” Now he pushed back from the desk, the chair pealing out another rusty squawk, and turned his head to the side and put a hand to his mouth. He was a man showing frustration; it was an outlet, perhaps, from grief. Like putting on a happy face might be.
    “She was just . . . she just did as she pleased, like I said. If she didn’t want to do it, she didn’t do it. Didn’t want to get married, didn’t want to move in. Leah mostly stayed away from the area. And I would say, ‘Just come up here full time. I have enough money, you don’t need anything. We can make a home for Leah. We can make a life.’” He reached out his hands then, as if seeking to embrace that phantom life, and then dropped them on his lap and blew air out of his lips. “But I guess little Boonville, little hick-ville, wasn’t it for her. I don’t know what was it for that girl. It wasn’t me, I know that. It wasn’t this. But she was after . . . something.”
    He turned, finally, and looked at Brendan, and his mien evoked a kind of man-to-man attitude now. “I don’t even live in Boonville. I have a beautiful place in Alder Creek. Right on Kayuta Lake. Just beautiful. Perfect place for a kid to grow up. Just . . . you know.”
    “I know,” said Brendan consolingly. “Can you give me the name of Leah’s father?”
    “Eddie,” Donald said. “That’s all I know.”
    “Thank you. Last question, Donald. Can someone, maybe one of your employees, place you here between seven and nine this morning?”
    Kettering stopped and inhaled through his nostrils. He folded his hands together for a moment, and seemed to be getting a hold of himself. “Of course. You can talk to Jason Pert, right out at the counter. He comes in at eight, after I open the shop at seven-thirty. Or Community