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Amelia
October 25, 1993
Dear Pete,
We are expecting a baby. I hope you have babies already or that you will soon. I’m so excited to be settled in an apartment in San Diego. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I started buying little white outfits, books and blankets. We planned to wait a bit longer, but this was a very happy surprise.
I hope you’ll write me at this address and let us know how you’re doing. We miss you and love you, Pete.
Amelia
I set the letter down, tears blurring my vision. Pete had probably been in this very apartment when he read that letter—maybe even sitting in the same worn wood kitchen chair I was sitting in right now.
How had that felt, getting a letter from the woman he thought he was going to marry and probably have babies with, saying she was expecting a child with his brother?
I loved my parents. Nothing would ever change that. But when she wrote these letters, what was my mom’s intent? It seemed like she was trying to absolve herself of the guilt she felt. And for Pete, each letter must have reopened his wound.
After sliding the letter back in its envelope, I put the stack back in a kitchen drawer, feeling better the moment the letters were out of sight.
Though I wanted to lie down and mindlessly scroll on my phone, I had a lot of stuff to carry to the dumpster behind the building, and I planned to pile the items I was donating to a local charity in the Chronicle’s back room.
The busier I was, the less time I’d have to think about my mom, my dad, and my uncle.
“I’ll see if the chief is in,” Barb said the next morning, giving me her usual warm smile.
Grady was definitely in. What she meant was, I’ll see if the chief feels like dealing with you right now, but we had an appointment and I wasn’t leaving.
“He says you can go on back,” Barb said. “And I love that sweater. It’s a beautiful color on you.”
I looked down at the emerald-green cardigan I’d ordered online and said, “Thanks.”
When I reached Grady’s office door, he seemed to be engaged in a conversation with a cat.
“Do I piss on your stuff?” he asked the black cat, who stood on his desk with its head cocked. “No, but I might start if you don’t knock this shit off, Radar. I brought you smoked salmon and got you those treats you like. What more do you want from me?”
He sprayed some sort of cleaner on his desk and wiped it away with a paper towel, catching a glance of me as he threw the towel away.
“Oh, hey,” he said. “Come on in.”
I smiled as I walked through the doorway. “Don’t let me interrupt your conversation.”
He gave me a pointed look and passed me a stack of papers. “I redacted some things. Let me know what questions you have.”
I looked at the log of calls the SBPD had gotten in the past week, the type of call shown beside a date and time for each one.
“What’s W-W-O-W?” I asked.
“Wrong way on a one way.”
I nodded. “I’ll need more on the DUI.”
The cat, Radar, jumped into Grady’s lap. Grady tapped keys on his keyboard, unfazed.
“Is Radar yours?” I asked.
“He’s more of an office cat.” He looked up from the screen and met my gaze. “I’ve got the DUI up. Let me know what you want to know.”
I wrote the DUI information in my notebook and also got the details on a tourist who’d been arrested for assault last weekend. Then I closed my notebook and sighed softly.
“What’s on your mind?” Grady asked.
Where to even begin? There was so much on my mind, and my supposed best friend back home, Blaire, never had time to talk. I wanted to open up to Grady—the first person who had asked me what was on my mind in a long timebut I didn’t want it to turn into an argument.
“I’m having trouble sorting out the city budget information,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t think it would make sense to anyone who doesn’t work with it all the time,” he said. “It’s not just you.”
His kindness made the well of emotions inside me overflow.
“Am I arrogant for trying to run an entire newspaper on my own?” I asked, my throat tight. “I don’t want the employees to lose their jobs, but I ask myself about a dozen times a day what the hell I’m doing.”
“You’re not arrogant.”
I waited for a punch line. A dig. But as seconds passed, I realized there wasn’t one. Grady had read my mood and realized it wasn’t the time.
I would not cry in front of him. I wouldn’t. But it was hard not to when my usual sparring partner was looking at me with concern in his green eyes. If he got any nicer, I was going to break down. Over the paper and its shoestring budget, over my parents, and over my recent conversation with my boss Kerry, who had told me I needed to get back to San Diego soon if I wanted to keep my job.
