Free Just Fall by Nina Sadowsky Page B

encouraged his intellect and made him go to Sunday school. She was both mother and father to him, took him fishing, played catch, made him lunches, checked his homework.
    She finally retired at the age of fifty-nine, just after Bertrand had been born, anticipating a new chapter of relative leisure and the joy of helping to raise her grandson. She died abruptly of a heart attack just three weeks later.
    Missing her is still an acute ache in Lucien’s heart. Yet he is grateful his mother had met Bertrand before she died, also grateful that she had loved Agathe, and that she was proud he had become a cop.
    After his mother’s death, Agathe’s family had become his own. Her parents, Therese and Moses, her sister, Gabrielle, and Gabrielle’s husband, Peter, all of them had embraced him even back when they were still just dating, but after his mother’s sudden death it was even more so. He remembers the pride that swelled in him the day Moses had asked Lucien to call him Dad. He has done so ever since.
    Agathe. He had been understandably distracted while talking to her at the scene of the murder; had held the phone away from his ear and just let her rant, until a subordinate asked him a question and he had unceremoniously ended the call. But he loves his wife dearly, loves their son, and knows he will love this new baby about to grace their lives. Agathe was his high school sweetheart; he has loved her every day of his adult life. She is also the person who grounds him, soothes him, is his respite from the brutal debasement he faces daily. When the creeping shadows of man’s seemingly infinite capacity for ugliness and evil threaten to overwhelm, Agathe provides light and grace.

    Now, as Agathe answers her phone, it is clear her bad temper has dissipated. That is the way it is with Agathe. Her temper flares, bright and hot, floods out of her in a torrent, and then fades away, leaving cheerful good humor.
    Lucien apologizes about his reaction to the news of their second baby. He assures her he loves her and is happy to expand their family. He can hear their Bertrand gurgling softly in the background and his heart expands. Maybe they will have a girl this time, a little sister he can raise his boy to protect. He shares that thought with Agathe, who is pleased. Her sister, Gabrielle, has one child, Thomas; it is time they welcomed a girl into the family. Agathe asks what he wants for dinner, and when he hesitates, unsure if he will make it home in time, she offers to make a curry with dumplings, his favorite, and so he knows all is forgiven.

The first time Ellie saw a dead body she was twenty-one. It was the night before college graduation. She and her crowd of friends were partying hard, a noisy, carefree last hurrah. The obligatory stodgy dinners with families in town for the ceremony had been endured, then one by one they had peeled away to the house on Rose Avenue where the music was pumping and the alcohol flowing. The house, which had been the central gathering place for this group all of senior year, was a gracious old Victorian, a somewhat battered Painted Lady graced with faded multicolored hues, remnants of her heyday. Given the house’s disreputable history (it was rumored to be a former whorehouse), and current standing as the best party house going, it had been christened the House of Pleasure by its residents.
    The actual residents of the house were four: Jason Briggs (Ellie’s boyfriend, an ambitious business student with a work hard/play hard ethic), Doug Holland (Jason’s best friend, a feckless history major with no fucking idea about what he wanted to do with his life), Shyam Hemarajani (a hard-striving first-generation son of immigrant Indian parents, who possessed a surprisingly scalding sense of humor), and Collette Guichard (a once and forever tomboy, always more comfortable tossing around a football or playing beer pong than any traditionally “feminine” activity).

    Ellie loved Jason, tolerated