Free With Child by Laurie R. King

finally she would be just another cop who gave up the fight, a woman who couldn't cut it with the big boys, a lesbian who wasn't as good as she thought. And no, she was not exaggerating the importance of this night's bottle of wine that she held in her hands, because she had at last admitted that if she opened it, the wine would be drinking her, not she it, and if knowing that, she went ahead, then she was also being consumed by tomorrow's bottle, and Friday's...
    And oh God, who would care? She put the point of the corkscrew to the foil over the cork, and no further.
    It was, oddly enough, Jules who pulled her back from the edge, that annoying young reminder of yet another responsibility unmet. The thought of Jules was bracing. Maddening, but bracing, like a slap in the face. She put the bottle away and made herself a cup of hot milk in the microwave, then sat with it at the kitchen table while she sorted through the mail.
    Junk mail, bills, catalogs,
Psychology Today
and the
Disability Rag
for Lee (at least she hasn't changed the addresses on her subscriptions, Kate thought with black humor), and two letters - one for Lee, one from Lee.
    She put everything but this last in a precise stack, largest on the bottom and smallest on top, the lower left corners aligned. She leaned the cheap envelope addressed to her in Lee's heavy black pen against the saltcellar, then took a swig from her mug, grimaced, got up and found an apple and a piece of leathery pizza in the refrigerator, and ate them standing at the sink. Then she took a can of split pea soup from the cupboard and two slices of bread from the refrigerator, opened the can, put half of the soup into a bowl and put that in the microwave oven, dropped the bread into the toaster, ate the soup, ate one slice of toast plain and the other with a sprinkling from the clotted shaker of cinnamon sugar, reached into the cupboard for the bag of coffee beans and then put them down on the sink and turned and took three steps to the table and ran a finger under the flap of the envelope and pulled the slip of paper out and smoothed it open on top of the table with one rapid hand before it could burn her. Then, because it lay open before her, Kate read Lee's brief letter.
    "Dearest Kate," it began. That was something, anyway. Doing well, getting stronger. Learning to use a hatchet, could Kate believe that? Wearing one of Agatha's flannel shirts and a down vest, cold mornings. Beautiful trees. Strong hills on wise islands. Pods of orcas in the Sound. All of burgeoning nature helping her to find herself, transferring the energy of the hills into her body. Still confused, though, and sorry, so very, abjectly sorry, to be putting Kate through this, but...
    But she couldn't say when she would be home. But Kate couldn't come to visit. But she couldn't tell Kate what to say to her clients, her friends. But as soon as she had her head together, Kate would be the first to know, be patient. "Love, Lee."
    Kate looked down at her hand on the table. She had clawed the page together into her fist and it lay there now in a tight wad. She opened her hand, picked at the edges of the letter, smoothed it onto the tabletop with long movements of her hand as if trying to bond it to the wood of the table. She leaned forward, stood, pushing the chair away with the backs of her knees, and turned away.
    Beaten, flayed, and too weary to weep, Kate went upstairs to bed.

    Thursday's brightest spot came early, when Kate succeeded in running two miles and still managed a (very slow) near jog coming back up the hill. The rest of the day went downhill fast.
    On Friday, Hawkin was back, and she and Calvo went out to the Sunset and arrested the dead child's father, a pleasant, rather stupid, frightened, unemployed eighth-grade dropout who had been abused himself as a child and who sobbed uncontrollably when Kate read him his rights, then - sure sign they had arrested the right man - fell asleep in the squad car from sheer