Free Surprise Me by Deena Goldstone

she’s openly grinning, simply entirely happy to be here. “Did he get a job?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “Wasn’t that part of the bargain?”
    “It was.”
    “Are you going to send him back?”
    Daniel looks stunned. “No, of course not. He’s my son.”
    In the kitchen he pours her a glass of cold lemonade and sits down at the kitchen table to read the pages. All the windows in the room are open to catch whatever breeze might be brave enough to come, and the door to the backyard stands open, as well. Isabelle walks to it as Daniel reads.
    What she sees is a large and overgrown space, but there are old fruit trees struggling along at the back of the lot and a flagstone patio that would be welcoming when the weather was cooler.
    She doesn’t turn around. She knows that behind her Daniel is reading her work, but the two of them are very far from those beginning days when she needed to monitor his reactions.
    Daniel reads quickly. He’s mainly interested in the scene between Melanie and the motorcycle cop who stops her just minutes after her last robbery. Isabelle hadn’t paid enough attention to that scene. It was an opportunity to see Melanie scared and then rising above it, using all her moxie to take control of the situation. And this time, in these pages, Isabelle has done it.
    Melanie’s car is pulled over. The cop approaches. Her heart is thumping through her chest. This is it, she thinks, this is where it all ends, but no, the cop is talking to her about a nonfunctioning rear taillight. He tells her he has to write her a “fix-it ticket.” And that would be the end of it, she would be off the hook, but Melanie can’t leave it be. She provokes. Ah, good, Daniel thinks as he reads. This is what he had been hoping she’d do.

    Isabelle stands in the doorway and sheds her heavy robe. She’s supposed to turn it in, she knows, along with her cap, which she thinks one of the twins took from her, but in her hurry to get to Daniel, she didn’t do it. Under her robe she wears the thinnest of sundresses and a pair of bikini underpants and that’s all. She knew it was going to be blisteringly hot. The hem of the dress barely covers her thighs, and the top looks more like a chemise with ribbons for straps.
    Daniel focuses on the expanded final scene Isabelle has written. Melanie gets out of her car and asks to see what the cop is talking about. They walk around to the rear and he points to the left taillight. The red plastic is cracked. The light doesn’t work. Does she see? The trunk, just inches away, is filled with objects stolen less than ten minutes before, objects taken at random—a set of steak knives, a quilt off one of the beds, a crystal pitcher, two dresses. Small and useless things.
    The adrenaline rush, perversity, heedlessness, push Melanie on. She brings up the robberies with the cop. Everyone in the neighborhood is talking about them. Who could be doing this, robbing all these houses?

“Professionals,” he tells her, head down, writing out the ticket, paying little attention. “The jobs are too clean for amateurs.”
“Maybe it’s just a really smart amateur,” Melanie finds herself saying for the thrill of it, to see if she can teeter on the edge and not fall off. “Maybe it’s somebody with a point to make. Or maybe it’s an act of desperation from someone who feels like he has no other avenue. Maybe these robberies are saving someone’s life.”
The cop looks up at her quickly. Has she said too much? Crossed the safety line? His eyes don’t leave hers, and she makes herself stare right back at him as if the secret she owns wasn’t pushing against the back of her throat, desperate to leap out.
“You’ve been watching too many cop shows,” he tells her finally, and smiles.
She smiles back. “I guess so.”
    Yes! Daniel is pleased: so much better. He looks up from the pages to see Isabelle standing there, her back to him, her body outlined against the flimsy cotton of her