Free Time Bomb by Jonathan Kellerman

hating myself each night. You, on the other hand, must have tons of patience.”
    “With kids, yes. Not always with the rest of the world.”
    “So how come you don’t do therapy anymore? Detective Sturgis told me you’re retired. I was expecting an old guy.”
    “I stopped a few years ago, haven’t gotten back yet—long story.”
    “I’d like to hear it,” she said.
    I gave her an abridged version of the last five years: Casa de Los Niños, death and degradation. Getting overdosed on human misery, dropping out, living on real estate investments made during the California boom of the late seventies. Then redemption: missing the joys of altruism, but reluctant to commit to long-term therapy, making a compromise—limiting myself to time-limited consultations, forensic referrals from lawyers and judges.
    “And cops,” she said.
    “Just one cop. Milo and I are old friends.”
    “I can understand that—you both have that . . . heat. Intensity. Wanting to do more than just coast by.” She laughed, sheepish again. “How’s that for sidewalk psychoanalysis, Doc?”
    “I’ll take my compliments any way I can get ’em.”
    She laughed, said, “Real estate investments, huh? Lucky you. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have to work. I mean, sometimes I really despise my job. Maybe I’d opt for Club Med full time.”
    “Your present job can’t be too easy on the old patience.”
    “True,” she said, “but at least now I can close my door, get ticked off, scream my head off, throw something—Carla’s tolerant. I just didn’t want to be losing it in front of the kids—taking it
out
on them. Also, what you were talking about, the chance to
do
something, to be effective—on a large-scale basis—is appealing. I mean, if I can institute something systemic, something that really works, I’m affecting a couple of hundred kids at one time. But what I really hate is knowing what has to be done, knowing how to go about doing it, and having all these stupid roadblocks thrown in my way.”
    She shook her head, said, “I really hate bureaucrats. Then some days I sit back, look at all the crap on my desk, and realize I
am
one.”
    “Ever think of doing something else?”
    “What, and go back to school? Nosir. I’m twenty-nine already. Comes a time you have to just settle down and bite the bit.”
    I wiped my brow. “Twenty-nine? Whew. Ready for the old porch rocker.”
    “Sometimes I feel I could use one,” she said. “Look who’s talking—you’re not much older.”
    “Eight years older.”
    “Whoa, grandpa, tighten the truss and pass the Geritol.”
    The waitress came over and asked if we wanted dessert. Linda ordered strawberry shortcake. I chose chocolate ice cream. It tasted chalky and I pushed it aside.
    “No good? Have some of this.”
    Then she blushed again. From the intensity of her color, she might have offered me a bare breast. I remembered how she’d warded off compliments, pegged her as afraid of intimacy, distrustful—nursing some kind of wound. My turn at sidewalk analysis. But then again, why shouldn’t she be reticent? We barely knew each other.
    I took some cake, less out of hunger than not wanting to reject her. She removed most of the whipped cream from her cake, ate a strawberry, and said, “You’re easy to talk to. How come you’re not married?”
    “There’s a certain woman who could answer that for you,” I said.
    She looked up. There was a crumb of cake on her lower lip. “Gee, I’m sorry.”
    “No reason to apologize.”
    “No, I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. . . . Well, yes, of course I did, didn’t I? That’s exactly what I was doing. Prying. I just didn’t realize I was prying into anything sore.”
    “It’s okay,” I said. “Just about healed. We all have our sore spots.”
    She didn’t take the bait. “Divorce is so rotten,” she said. “Common as brown sparrows, but rotten just the same.”
    “No divorce,” I said. “We were