Page 16 of The Wrong Monster

“Why?”

“That’s how it starts.”

“How what starts?”

“The matching patio furniture. Coordinated wind chimes. Bird feeders.”

Dad laughs in the background again. “Oh, she’s got jokes today.” Mom sighs dramatically.

“We’re thinking it might be nice to retire here.”

Like every other boring old couple.

The thought arrives uncharitably, and I wisely keep it to myself. With lips pursed, I glance around my apartment. It’s a decent size for the city, but nothing crazy. It’s not exactly cozy with all the case files stacked neatly on the dining table and running shoes abandoned by the front door. A legal pad covered in my handwriting is discarded on the coffee table.

Retirement feels about as realistic as taking up underwater basket weaving.

“What would you even do?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“Every time I call, you’re hiking, golfing, sightseeing, or looking at houses. You’re exhausted and you haven’t even retired yet.”

“We’d relax. And I’m half-retired now, honey, remember? I’m only working two days a week.”

“You don’t know how to relax, Mom.”

Another laugh from Dad. “She’s got you there.” I smile, thinking about how, if this conversation were in person, we’d share a conspiratorial look. My weekend restlessness was inherited from my mom.

“Oh, hush.”

A comfortable silence settles over the call, broken only by seagulls faintly crying somewhere on their end of the line. I stare out at the skyline beyond my living room window, absently tracing the rim of my mug with my thumb.

My mind, naturally, chooses that exact moment to remember the man in the hotel suite from two nights ago. I take a long sip of now-cold hot chocolate, wishing for bitter coffee as a distraction instead.

“What have you been up to?” Mom finally asks, the sound of silverware clinking from wherever she is and whatever she’s doing.

Not thinking, I murmur, “I had to drive up to Lake Placid for work this week.”

The effect is immediate. The silence is different this time, heavier.

Twenty-seven years of marriage have made my parents remarkably easy to read. Dad—Ed, technically, though he’s been “Dad” for as long as I can remember—goes quiet too. Not awkwardly. I’m sure that he’s watching Mom carefully, ready to put a gentle hand on her back.

I close my eyes.

Nice going, Matty.

Of all the places in New York, of all the cases I just shut in the last few weeks, I had to bring up Lake Placid.

“Sorry,” I say softly. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Mom recovers first. “It’s alright, sweetheart.”

It’s the kind of answer mothers give when something absolutely isn’t alright, and it’s too high-pitched.

Twenty-nine years ago, Mom went to Lake Placid for a weekend with friends. One of her girlfriends was working at an ice cream shop there and they were about to start college in a few months.

She’d come home pregnant.