Powers of Arrest: A Cincinnati Casebook by Jon Talton

Author:Jon Talton [Talton, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Women Sleuths, Mystery & Detective, Hard-Boiled, Fiction
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2012-04-30T23:00:00+00:00

Thursday

Chapter Seventeen

Cheryl Beth visited her daughter early that morning. Eighteen years old now: past childhood that went so fast and nearly an adult. She had Cheryl Beth’s face, hair, and eyes. They were nearly carbon copies. She could do anything she wanted, live adventures her mother had never experienced, give her so much to be proud of. Someday give her grandchildren. Cheryl Beth imagined the years of pink dresses and stuffed animals and squeals of laughter over the most trivial delights. She was not like her mother had been, telling Cheryl Beth all that she could not be, subtly upending her dreams at every corner. At eighteen, her daughter would be confident and kind, full of wit and decency, so intelligent it would continually astonish Cheryl Beth.

If only she had lived.

As she had for fifteen years, Cheryl Beth sat on her daughter’s grave, arranged fresh flowers for her birthday, and wept. Time did not heal some things.

Time did not heal this gaping hole in her heart. It did little better than, very slowly, to dull the pain from losing her father when she was nine, that big, rough-handed, laughing bear of a man she had so loved. She had been a daddy’s girl. He had a good job on the L&N Railroad until the day it killed him. She still heard his voice. She still felt that anguish beyond words. Time didn’t heal.

The best you could do was try to take one step forward, then follow it with another, and try to go on. For years, this had been a day Cheryl Beth would take off, even calling in sick if necessary. She could now at least function enough to go to the hospital after saying a long prayer for all the lost children, all the lives that were never lived, the eighteenth birthdays that were marked on the dewy grass of graveyards until they could see each other again at God’s table.

She used her index finger to trace the name on the headstone. The green and gold of the newborn grass mocked her. The trees flaunted their beauty, unconcerned with her cares.

She had lied to Will last night when he asked if she had children. This honorable man and she had lied, as she always did. No: That was always her response. Ask a little more and she would say, the timing didn’t work out. Damned straight. Fifteen years and she still couldn’t talk about it. The only people who knew were her family, and the family of her ex-husband. Their marriage hadn’t survived the death. Cheryl Beth had barely survived. Oh, so many years she had cried an angry prayer of why didn’t you take me? Even now, she could work in any unit of any hospital but peds.

She was put together again by the time she arrived at the hospital and the intensity of the morning shift let her put that one foot forward once again.

At lunch, she had to get out. So she walked up and down the broad lawn that ran from the main entrance to Auburn Avenue.

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