Free Point No Point by Mary Logue

hung up, Claire sat and stared at the drawer. She knew the test was finished. In under a minute, in the privacy of your own work bathroom, you could find out if your life was going to change beyond recognition.
    She didn’t know what she would do if she was pregnant, but she couldn’t see having a baby at her age. She had a feeling Meg would be fine with it. Her daughter might even think it was funny, exciting and possibly a little ridiculous. That’s what Claire would think about it if it were happening to another woman her own age. She had heard of women in their mid-forties having children, but she couldn’t imagine retiring and still having a kid at home.
    Her guess was that Rich would be pleased if she found out she was pregnant. He had been a good father to Meg, even though she was not his own child. He liked all the parts of being a couple better than Claire did: the joint checking account, the deciding what car they needed next, the divvying up of the
    chores, even the compromises. Especially the compromises. He did all that stuff better than she did.
    She could just see his face looking down on his own progeny with pride. He’d probably be better at changing diapers than she was. At least breast-feeding would be out of his scope.
    She pulled the drawer open and yanked the paper towel off the stick.
    A negative sign.
    It was negative and her heart sunk and then bobbed back up again. No baby blues.
    Not pregnant, which meant she was starting to slip and slide into menopause. No babies ever again. Looked like that part of her life was truly over.

CHAPTER 8
    W ant to go swimming?” Amy teased Bill as they drove across the railroad tracks in Maiden Rock and headed down to the park and the beach. She knew how much he hated the water. He didn’t even own a swim suit. She herself needed to lose about twenty pounds before she’d look decent in a suit so maybe it was good he didn’t like to swim.
    Bill squinted his eyes in what she liked to call his safari look. “I did my one swim for the summer. Plus, the water is turning that weird shade of green it gets in later summer.”
    “Some kind of harmless algae,” Amy reassured him.
    “I’m not going in. No way,” Bill said.
    “Not even if we see something out in the water, say just ten feet or so off the dock? You wouldn’t jump in and retrieve that?”
    “No, but I’d hold your clothes for you so you could do it. I’d be there to pull you back out of the water.”
    “What a guy.” He slowly drove the squad car closer to the dock. “Why don’t you stop here? Who knows, there might be tire prints or something. Wouldn’t want to mess them up.”
    “I think you’ve been watching too much TV. Doesn’t happen like that in real life. Besides, we don’t even know if this is where they put the body into the water.”
    “It’s my very educated guess. As someone famous says in a much fancier way, the simplest solution is most often right. I’m hoping that whoever dumped our John Doe’s body was A, in a hurry, B, drunk, C, careless and D, assuming it would never be found. If any or all of those factors are true, we might find something.”
    Bill looked over at her with an impressed expression on his face. “You’re so organized. I bet you were good at school. You should have been a school teacher, not a cop.”
    Amy thought back to her two years at a junior college before she went into the police academy. “I thought about it, but cops make more money and get to retire earlier. Plus I figured I’d get to meet more guys.”
    “Now the truth comes out.”
    She giggled as she stepped out of the squad car.
    They both looked out toward the dock and the water. There had been no rain for over a week so Amy didn’t really expect to see any tire prints. Slowly they walked toward the dock, searching the ground. The few tire marks that were clear looked like they had been made by bikes. Amy saw twist-off tops, cigarette butts, and a gum wrapper, but nothing that