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specific
nature of his taunt. During the brief period in which he had filled
her life, her inability to keep even weeds alive had been a running
joke between Anthony and herself.
    She looked at
him carefully, observing the minutia of detail; the strong line of
his jaw, the smooth, blemish free skin of his cheeks, the short
sandy blond hair; every aspect of his being as she remembered him.
After so many lonely and bewildering years, the only man Charlene
Osterman had ever loved was kneeling beside her. She wondered how
the mysteries of the universe could unravel so quickly and cruelly
around her.
     
    Stephanie Beach wasn’t
happy. She’d spent an hour in the crèche playing with a despondent
five-year-old girl named Jennifer. As Stephanie saw it, Jennifer’s
problem was that she didn’t seem to understand how to play with any
of the toys, as if she didn’t have any idea how to react to them.
Stephanie had resigned herself to acting out improvised movie
scenes with broken action figures on her own for half an hour and
her reward for this? She was now strapped in to the booster seat of
the Toyota and her father appeared to be harboring the expectation
that she would just keep quiet about it.
    “I’m on the
phone honey, just a minute okay? John, yeah, John it’s David can
you hear me?”
    The voice on
the other end of the line was deep and commanding, “David, I’m not
supposed to be talking to you, do you understand?”
    David tried
again to motion for Stephanie to be quiet, glancing over his
shoulder sternly as she tried to kick the back of his seat.
    “John, I don’t
understand what’s going on. They seem to think I’m involved in all
of this somehow.”
    There was
silence on the other end of the line. David didn’t know if
Undersecretary Carlton was being maliciously evasive or just
cautious.
    “John, do you
know what the hell they’re talking about?”
    The quick
inhale of breath from the back seat reminded David that he wasn’t
supposed to use the “H” word in front of Stephanie and he mouthed a
silent apology to her through the rear view mirror. The voice of
John Carlton blared over the car’s speakers, “David, I’m getting a
lot of flak about this already. You better be damned sure about who
you talk to from now on, okay?”
    “John, they’re
saying you didn’t even call me while I was on vacation.”
    “David, I’m not
getting into this with you. What you discuss with the FBI is your
business, and it’s sure as shit going to stay that way.”
    Stephanie drew
in breath again, feigning shock at the mild curse. She would be
sure to guilt her father about his failure to protect her delicate
ears from the harsh world, he certainly deserved such chastisement
… crèche indeed. Chastisement. She ran the word through her teeth,
tongue, pursed lips, and back to her tongue, the silent incantation
curling the corners of her mouth. She had been struggling through Les Misérables since seeing the movie (she would tell anyone
who cared to listen that she was reading it, although mostly, she
jumped about the tome, battling with sentences here and there.)
Chastisement was a heavy word, with heavy meaning, and she loved
it, at least this week. She patted her back pack contentedly,
feeling the edge of the thick volume there, her mind wondering off
to the slightly violent fantasy of clobbering that listless waif
back at the creche with the full force of French literature.
    Back in the
car, safe from Stephanie’s flights of fancy, but facing up to the
harsher realities, David’s fingers gripped the steering wheel
tightly, “John, I’m heading into the office, I need to talk to you
about this.”
    Undersecretary
Carlton coughed to clear his throat, “David, you can’t come into
the office. You need to lawyer up, and make sure whoever you get is
damned good. Make no mistake John, your name is shit around these
hallowed halls right now. You have royally screwed the pooch on
this. Say Hi to Stephanie for