The Few-Chapter 1

         Las Vegas



         Being a single mother with three kids in grade school and a full-time job in a call center made Julie Walker’s mornings hectic, even when her children hadn’t forgotten their respective chores.

         “Jake!” she called from the kitchen as she slapped peanut butter on some bread.  “I thought I told you to take out the garbage!”

         “I did!” her young son’s voice called from the top of the stairs.

         Rolling her eyes, Julie walked over to the kitchen garbage and stomped the foot lever so the lid would pop.  “I’m looking at it right now and—” 

The rest of her sentence faded from her lips as she looked down and saw a very clean garbage liner.  If the garbage had been taken out then what the hell was that smell?  Had a mouse died in the vents or something?

Julie felt a little tug on her shirt and looked down to see her five year-old daughter, Mary.

“Mommy, it smells bad.”

Julie leaned over and kissed her daughter on the forehead.  “I know, honey.  I’ll find out what it is and clean it up, okay?”

Mary did not look consoled.  “Did Daddy call yet?”

At the question Julie felt a spark of anger, tempered with worry.  She walked away from her daughter and back to the sandwiches.  “No, honey.  Not yet.”

Mary followed her.  “Is he hurt?”

Julie faked a laugh as her knife plunged into the jam.  “Why would you ask that, honey?”

Mary didn’t answer, but looked out the window looking sad.  “It stinks.”

Leave it to kids not to have an attention span lasting longer than five seconds.  Well, for once Julie was glad for it.  She didn’t want to talk about Cameron.  In the two years since their divorce he had been a more dependable non-husband than he had ever been a husband.  Working as a vice cop had put a definite strain on their relationship, since she would go months at a time without seeing him, and when she did see him he looked like some thug off of a movie.  More than that, he usually acted like one, as well.

She didn’t even want to know what kind of drugs he had dipped into or how many women he had slept with.  He claimed there were no other women, of course, but what man wouldn’t make that claim?  Julie wasn’t dumb.  Where there were drugs, sex soon followed.  The two activities were joined at the hip.  And when a man came home after three months of not seeing his wife and just wanted to sleep and play with his kids, what wife wouldn’t suspect he was having his other needs met elsewhere?

Sure, they had enough of a physical relationship to give them three kids, but this wasn’t what Julie had signed up for when she married Cameron.  He had been Highway Patrol then, a very different story.  But he had wanted more—had said his job felt empty.  So he got the job that gave him purpose and left Julie to use his paycheck to raise their three children.

Divorce had been Julie’s threat to get Cameron to choose between his job and his family.  Much to her surprise, his family lost.  He was in the middle of a huge case, he had said.  He claimed he couldn’t leave and that what he was doing really was for his family—for their future.

Julie hadn’t listened to anything he said after that.  She saw how Cameron looked at their kids, even if he didn’t look at her very much anymore, and had convinced herself that he would choose them over his job.  When he didn’t, he left her no choice but to follow through on her threat and file for divorce.

Nothing had hurt her more.  She still loved him.  Always had, and divorce couldn’t change that.  It only made it official that they were now living separate lives.

One good thing had come from the divorce, however.  Cameron had never had more contact with their children.  Whereas before he was only home for a few days every few months, he now saw them every other week.  Julie allowed him to stay at the house if he needed to, and pretended she was doing him a favor when she did so.  In truth she prayed that he would ask to stay over.  And more than that, she prayed that he would come to her after they were done tucking in the kids and she had placed his blankets and pillow on the couch.

He had come to her two weeks before, on his last visit, sliding between the sheets, his breath hot on her.  She had nearly cried as she reached out for him, feeling the body that had become hard and unfamiliar to her.  He had piercings in places that made her shudder, and his once clean-cut hair was now kept shaved, which he compensated for by growing thick lamb chops.  She didn’t dare ask about the scent that clung close to him or the fearsome-looking tattoos that covered his chest and back; but she caressed them anyway, because she was one of the few people who knew the gentle heart that beat underneath them.

And once they were spent and tangled, she kicked him out.  He asked to stay, his arms holding her gently, but Julie knew that if any of their three children noticed Daddy was sleeping in ‘Mommy’s room’ then she would have some explaining to do.  So instead of turning into him, wrapping herself around him, and giving them both what they wanted, she had turned her back and informed him where the door was.

Julie hadn’t slept a wink that night, and spent the last two weeks thinking how she would do things differently the next time he found time to visit.

Only he didn’t come.

He had never done that before—not since their divorce.  Once he said he would be somewhere, he was there.  It was that damn police training.  Cameron was literal and punctual to a fault, so for him to not show up and not call to explain why he had left his kids hanging was unprecedented.  Julie wanted to be mad at him, but there was a sick ache in her stomach that wouldn’t quite let her.

But who could be anything but sick when surrounded by that stench?

“Hurry up!” she called out to the house in general, slapping two decorated slabs of bread together into a sandwich and sliding them into a baggie.  “Bus in five minutes.  Finish brushing your teeth and get down here.”

There was another little tug on her shirt.  Mary again.  “Will you call Daddy?”

“I tried, honey,” Julie said, squatting down and handing her daughter her lunch box.  “He didn’t answer, remember?”

“Can you call him again?  We were at the store then.  Maybe he didn’t know it was us.”

Julie didn’t feel need to explain caller ID technology to her daughter, so she kept it simple.  “I left a message.  He knows to call us, Mary.  He will as soon as he can.”

Mary’s eyes were as big as saucers when she looked up at Julie, tears sliding around their corners and welling up in her eyes.  “Can I call him?  He always answers when I call and I’m ready for school early.”

Julie glanced at her watch and fought a groan.  Technically there was time, and Mary had dressed herself without help, which was something she rarely did.  But mostly it was the eyes that did Julie in.

“Fine,” she agreed, grabbing the phone.  “You want me to dial for you?”

Mary shook her head.  “No.  I know which button it is.”

Julie handed off the phone and walked to the base of the stairs.  “Jake!  Alex!  Mary has you both beat, now get down here!  We’ve got to be out the door in three minutes!”

“Coming!” they replied in unison.

“Hurry!” she called for good measure, walking back to the kitchen to finish their lunches and finding Mary standing by the window with the phone hanging at her side.

“Mary, if you want to call Daddy, you have to do it now,” she said grabbing two paper bags from a drawer.

“Shhh!” Mary said quietly.  “Can’t you hear it?”

“Hear what?” Julie said throwing two juice boxes into the bags.

“Stop and you’ll hear it,” Mary said fervently.

Impatient, Julie humored her daughter nonetheless.  And then she heard it.  Cameron’s ring tone.

“He’s here!” Mary squealed when she saw her mother heard it, too, and unable to look out the kitchen window to the back yard, ran to the back door.

Her chest tightening inexplicably, Julie followed her daughter, opening the back door to find an empty yard.  She couldn’t hear the ringing anymore and realized that his voice mail had picked up.

“Can Mommy see the phone, Mary?” Julie asked as she gently removed the phone from her daughter’s hands.

Mary looked at her, confused.  “Where is he, Mom?”

‘Mom,’ not ‘Mommy.’  Why had her daughter chosen this moment to make that switch?  It added to the spookiness of it all.

Julie pressed redial on the phone, letting Cameron’s ring tone answer the question she could not.

It was only a matter of seconds before she heard the ringing again.  It was coming from… above them, which was odd.  Julie looked to the roof, which was definitely where the ringing was coming from, and stepped further from the house to get a better view.  She didn’t see a thing, so she moved more to the side of the house, which had once been used for parking their boat but had now turned into a type of toy graveyard.

Once she was on the side of the house, Julie dropped the phone, and then quickly followed into the ground.  “Omigod,” she choked, and then couldn’t stop saying the phrase over and over until her daughter came toward her.

“Do you see him, Mommy?  Is he on the roof?”

Leaving the phone where it was, Julie raced to her daughter, roughly snatching her up and holding to her breast as she carried her into the house.

Yes, her father was on the roof.  But Julie would die before she would allow her daughter to see him like that.