I recently submitted a rather distasteful story to the manuscripts section. Various responses were received; some puzzled, some troubled, but some understood the message behind the story, which was authentic and recalled vividly in the harshest of terms.

Don't let my grandmotherly smile fool you. My memory is a stinker. It recalls all the dirty details of my life in living color, and I, as the truth-teller of my family, must share every bit of minutiae. I have always been like this. It's a sickness, according to my mother, who prefers to let pain and embarrassing family history get moldy in the basement. Writing these events is not necessarily soul-cleansing and healing. Sometimes, it hurts to dredge these things up.

The healing comes when another abuse survivor says, "I thought I was the only one," and you both become a bit stronger.

My story described being dragged to an orgy by an abusive boyfriend. I was twenty and he was thirty-three at the time. He had total control over me. Over my body, my travel, my money, and my contact with friends and family. I remained steadfastly snarky and belligerent because that was the only freedom I had. I could go along quietly or go along with blackened eyes. I always chose the latter.

The irony of this story was that my abuser warned me not to embarrass him at the orgy because he knew the people who would be there. This would have been hysterical if it was fictional. We were going to an orgy to have unprotected sex and do drugs with perverts, but he was in fear of me saying something to embarrass him. What? How bad does someone have to be to embarrass you at an orgy?

I was not a drug taker, so, when urged to take a puff of marijuana, it hit me hard. I remember standing in the bathroom of the home we were at, thinking it was the next day, and it was all over. The rest of the evening was a blur of being passed around, like that joint, and finally, coming to with my boyfriend dragging me off the husband of his girlfriend, who accidentally ended up at the same orgy.

He wanted to humiliate me by showing me who he was cheating with. I was horrified by my first sight of female genitalia in action and repulsed when he tried to force me to join him with her. He did nothing to me at the time. But for months afterward, I was frequently reminded that I had let him down, and that was why he had to have other women.

Every time he wanted to have other women, he would first beat me so that I’d run out of the apartment to escape his fists. Then, he would be free to bring these women into our bed. I had asked for refuge from so many people in our apartment complex that, eventually, they stopped allowing me to stay with them. I was on my own with whatever I was wearing when he began hitting me — usually in the dead of Winter.

People could see the bruises and cuts. What they could not see was the constant state of anxiety I lived in. Would I have to run away tonight? Tomorrow? The night after? If I ran to a neighbor and banged on their door, would they ignore me or let me in? Not only do abused partners live with constant fight-or-flight anxiety. They live with shame. A deep, intense, burning shame that only abuse survivors understand. I spent years being ashamed of what someone else had done to me.

Friends, family, bystanders, and strangers always commented, “Why don’t you just leave?” They could never understand how completely he owned my life. I had no vehicle. I had no money, as he would scoop up my pay every night I worked. I had no friends who would take me in. No access to help, except when police were called. Then, even the police would tell me I probably wouldn’t stay away, so all they did was postpone another beating. No one ever referred me to a women’s shelter or any other kind of help.

When I attempted suicide to escape, the hospital would send me home with my abuser and enough drugs to kill a herd of elephants, which he would steal and sell. If I ever managed to escape, he promised to find me and kill me or kill my pets. He made good on that promise by running over my dog, Gus, to repay me for running for my life once when I was sure he was going to kill me.

When someone beats you regularly and saps the life out of you, you do what you’re told. If they threaten to kill you when you escape, you believe them. I’m seventy years old and still find myself getting hostile when my actions are questioned, or someone tries to prevent me from going where I’d like to go or doing what I want. Not just a little hostile, but angry, furious. Which is funny to watch, I suppose, because I’m about 4'10" tall. It's sort of like watching an angry munchkin on steroids. And, God help you if you laugh at me.

The anxiety never really goes away completely. The shame, lack of trust, and fury remain with us forever as well. These are the unseen bruises of abuse.

“I’ve booked an appointment for you at the clinic in Baltimore. Here’s the address. You have two days to get there. Don’t be late, and don’t change your mind,” My dance agent, Angel, spat at me tersely, handing me a slip of her designer notepaper before dismissing me.

The road in front of me would be impossible if I kept the baby, I thought. My livelihood depended upon a slim, healthy, not-pregnant body. In two or three months, I wouldn’t be able to waddle onto a stage in my condition; plus, I was working in Canada on a visa and had no health care or permanent place of residence.

Angel had convinced me getting an abortion was the most sensible thing to do, especially considering the father wanted nothing to do with us and had even forgotten how to speak English when I gave him the news. He spoke English fine six weeks ago when he was trying to get me into his bed. Maybe that’s all the English he knew. It didn’t matter. I only called him because I felt a man should know.

I left Angel’s office on Queen Street and wound my way through the streets of Toronto to the QEW, just barely missing an accident in a one-way tunnel that some idiot thought was two-way. The idiot was me, and I had to pull into a parking lot to catch my breath, wipe my eyes, and slow my heart rate before setting off again. I was not in the best emotional shape for this long, shameful trip that was going to end in death for one of us.

Catholicism was firmly in my past, being a stripper and all. Perhaps my old religion was haunting me as I contemplated ending this tiny life. Or maybe it was the fear of a medical procedure, which I was certain would involve a needle or needles. Whatever it was, my mind spun out of control during the scary fifteen-hour drive. Between finding myself lost most of the time and being horrified about what they would do to me when I reached my destination, I’m surprised I didn’t have a stroke or seizure of some kind.

It was just past dawn on Tuesday morning when I pulled in front of a rundown, nondescript brownstone building with no signage other than street numbers that matched the paper Angel had given me. Bottles in brown paper bags littered the sidewalk leading up to the building, and hungover street people leaned against adjacent buildings, sleeping it off. Instinctively, I locked all the doors and kept the motor running. No way was I walking to that building until signs of life appeared through the filthy windows or staff began to show up.

Perhaps I prayed during that time. I can’t remember. I do remember suddenly feeling protective of the little intruder inside of me. Before that morning, “the baby” was simply a phrase, as was pregnant or pregnancy. It was a thing. A condition. It somehow did not relate to me at all. That day changed my definition of what ailed me. I was pregnant. I would be having a baby. A baby was a miracle. Something I had no right to interfere with. I thought, ‘ I wouldn’t even use the restroom in that building. Do I really want to climb up on their germy operating table and let them take this baby out of me here? What a horrible place for a baby to die.’

No way. Just no way. I couldn’t get away from there fast enough as I backtracked through the neglected neighborhood and found my way to Route 81 North. That’s the day I became a mother for the first time. Not the moment of conception. Not the day I received the results of the pregnancy test. Motherhood for me began when the primal urge to protect my child awakened within me. That sacred connection prompts a fierce, savage type of love stronger than the love of a friend or romantic love, no matter how intense. Nothing compares with the love of a mother for her children.

This ravaging love would put me to the test, time after time. Plumbing the depths of my soul and challenging my courage, tenacity, and emotional strength. Then, eventually, it would shatter me, leaving me to crawl blindly through the grey morass of depression, searching for a reason to live.

Love can do that to a person.

My cruiser partner and long-time buddy, Tucker, had invited me to his place so I didn't have to face spending Christmas Eve alone after our brutal call earlier in the night. We had been dispatched to look for a missing senior citizen, who ended up wandering away from a home and freezing to death. We were both pretty shaken up by her death and didn't need to be alone and thinking about what we could have done better to prevent it.

Police work is all about people. The public often forgets that we are people, too. We become connected to our perps and victims through their circumstances. A police officer never completely erases all the calls they go on, no matter the outcome. They always stick in our craws, making us question our reactions and actions repeatedly.

Now that we had arrived at his place, Tuck and I were like two awkward teenagers stealing their first kiss behind camp counselors’ backs as he stumbled up the icy steps to his first-floor apartment. “Watch out for the ice patches, Smitty, er, Darlene.”

He fumbled with the locks and finally ushered me into his home away from the cruiser. “Wow, Tuck, this is nice. You’re more of a homemaker than I am, that’s for sure. Stuff even matches. I’m impressed.”

“I figure if I gotta come home alone every night, I might as well make the place comfy, you know?”

“I haven’t gotten that far yet, I’m afraid. The cruiser is more my style,” I admitted. “Shit, I’ve still got boxes of stuff that I haven’t even opened.”

“You need help? I wouldn’t mind coming by and giving you a hand,” he offered uncomfortably.

Tucker and I rarely socialized with each other outside of work, except for the occasional staff development lunches or Christmas parties. If we needed to chat, we’d wait until we had lulls between calls. Our chats were mostly Darlene’s complaints of the day, with Tuck listening, nodding his head, and rarely commenting. That brought another conundrum to bear. What to call him if we end up rolling in the sack together this morning? I couldn’t call him Officer Tucker or Tuck. I should probably call him John. It would feel weird, though. Although, if he pulled his handcuffs on me, I suppose Officer Tucker would be appropriate.

“Hey, check this out,” Tuck said, switching the lights to a sparkling Christmas tree in a corner of the living room.

“Nice, Tuck, um, John. That feels so weird to call you by your first name. Is it Okay?”

“Well, I’m getting used to Darlene. Maybe we call each other by our official names when we aren’t alone, huh? I know we just had breakfast, but my clock is off, and I want to toast Christmas with you.”

He rummaged around in his kitchen and returned to the living room with a dusty bottle of Glenlivet and two glasses tinkling with ice. He motioned me to the sofa, settled beside me, and handed me my glass. For the first time in_ I can’t even remember if we ever sat this close to each other in all our years of working together.

He pulled me closer to him so my head almost rested on his broad shoulder and lifted his glass to mine. “To a better year for both of us. God rest our little lost Birdy. May she find her Jimmy again,” he said, referring to the senior citizen who had frozen in the snow, searching for her long-lost love.

“Hear, hear! I agreed,” while we drank to our future and Birdy’s past.

I kicked off my boots, curled my feet up under me, finished my drink, and snuggled comfortably into John’s warm body, enjoying not being alone for a change. There was no rush to tear each other’s clothes off or begin pawing each other. It felt almost normal, as if we snuggled on this sofa every night after work. I stared at the twinkling Christmas tree lights until I finally gave in to last evening’s freezing weather, exertion, and the pain of finding Birdy dead in the snow. I wasn’t the only one to succumb, as John was sawing logs before I drifted off entirely.

Our morning came around three in the afternoon, with the smell of toast and coffee wafting into the living room from John’s immaculate kitchen. He had covered me with a hand-knitted Afghan and somehow got a pillow under my head without waking me. I hunted down the bathroom and almost fainted when I looked in the mirror, “Oh, my God. What a sight!” My frizzy red hair was sticking out in all directions, and my rosy cheeks now had scabs from the frost. If I had been worried about carrying on an illicit affair with my co-worker, I would have been relieved of that problem. No one. And, I mean, no one would date someone who looked this bad in the morning.

All I could do was wet my hair, hope for better results when it dried, and steal a glob of Vaseline from John’s medicine cabinet to keep my scabs from worsening.

When I showed up in the kitchen, mortified with how I must have looked in repose, John looked up from the frying pan with a wide smile, “Hey, beautiful, how do you like your eggs? You’re in luck. I’m an excellent cook and haven’t had a victim to experiment on in years.”

“Oh, boy. I look terrible. You need to get your glasses checked, partner,” I quipped, too embarrassed by the truth to take his compliment seriously.

“You know what your problem is, Smitty? You have no self-confidence. You don’t see yourself the way men see you. You are one of those statuesque women with long legs and a great figure. Your red hair is the icing on the cake. Guys love real redheads. Maybe it’s because they’re crazy.”

“Who? The guys or the redheads?” I asked.

“Well, to be fair, probably both. I’ve, um, been crazy about a certain redhead ever since she broke up with her last husband. She doesn’t pay one bit of attention to me. But, someday, she’ll notice me.”

“Oh, really? Who?” I asked, buttering a piece of toast, clueless.

“Well, she and I have known each other for about seven years. We’ve both been through a marriage breaking up together. We spend more time together than we ever did with our spouses and know each other better than we knew our spouses. Guess.”

Blushing from ear to ear, I realized he was making a pass at me, and I had been too dumb to pick up on it. It never occurred to me that John would have the slightest interest in me.

“Didn’t you just call me the ‘most vile woman’ you’d ever met?” I asked pointedly.

“Well, yeah. You are. What’s that got to do with the fact that I’ve been moping around after you like a sick puppy for years and pretending to be all business?”

“I like the way you think, Tuck, er John. I’m vile but not vile enough to chase you away?”

“Nope. Never. Every time you tried to move on from your ex by dating someone new, it was like you were tasing me in the heart.”

“I had no idea. You never seemed the least bit interested in me. I figured you’d written me off as a loser partner you were stuck with, period. Why didn’t you say something?” I asked querulously.

“Because I was afraid you’d chew my head off, sort of like how you’re doing it right now. A partner I was stuck with? The Sarge gave me three chances to change partners, and I turned him down all three times. I couldn’t imagine coming to work and not being with you. That would be worse than my divorces, Darlene. Then my life would be truly empty.”

I dunked my toast in some excellent coffee and slurped it up, with John grinning at me like it was the most adorable thing ever. Wait a few more months of watching me slurp and gobble my food, and we’ll see how adorable I am.

“So, scrambled, fried, or poached, my dear?” he asked, cracking open eggs for our breakfast.

“Umm, fried. Where did you get this bread? It tastes homemade.”

“It is. Every Saturday, I come home from work and make bread for the week. I bake one loaf and freeze the dough for the rest of the week. I told you I’m a spectacular cook. Wait until you taste my lasagna with homemade sauce and noodles.”

“Wow. I usually buy frozen dinners and a bag of apples to get my fresh fruits in. I’m afraid if I let you cook for me, I’ll lose control and get fat.” I whined.

“Good to know we’re back to normal. Darlene’s whine for the day- don’t cook for me, or I’ll get fat!” he mocked in a girly voice, which sounded nothing like me.

“Hey, don’t laugh; all that equipment makes me look like a linebacker for the Giants. A girl has to watch her figure, you know.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve been watching it for you, and you’re doing just fine. You want to spend the afternoon and hang out? We don’t have to get, you know, intimate. I want to spend time with you off the clock.” He persisted.

“Well, I don’t know. I was hoping for a back rub. Last night beat me all the hell up.” I winked at him as he looked at me in surprise.

“Okay, but nothing more,” he promised, “Just a back rub_ fully clothed.”

“Shucks, you’re no fun,” I whined again.

“You’re making this more difficult by the minute, you know? If I’d have known you wouldn’t beat me up, I would have told you how I felt years ago,” he complained.

“Exactly how long have you felt like this? I asked, stuffing my face with more of his homemade bread and fried eggs, which were done perfectly.

“Since you married your last husband. I hated him and never told you because I didn’t want you to think I was jealous. Maybe I hated him because I was. When you split up and spent the next two years almost suicidal, it almost killed me, too.”

“Well, when you split up from Maria, I was glad. I always thought she was a bitch and treated you like a nobody. It really pissed me off. Who the hell did she think she was, anyway?” I groused.

It seemed that John and I were on a revolving marriage rollercoaster; one of us was either in a bad marriage or getting out of one. We’d commiserate on patrols and shore each other up. I never thought much of it, except we were stuck in the confines of a vehicle all day and needed to talk about something. It saved us a fortune on therapists.

He began clearing off the table and filling the sink with sudsy water, when I joined him, “Hey, you cook, I’ll clean. I can’t do what you do with food, but I can wash a dish like no one’s business,” I bragged.

He looked at me skeptically, like I wouldn’t do it right, but then backed down and poured himself another coffee, leaning on the counter, ready to wipe and put away the dishes. After being partners on patrol for all those years, we were a well-oiled machine, and the dishes were washed, dried, and put away in no time. That left us all afternoon for uncomfortable confessions and avoiding the taint of intimacy with each other.

“Hey, if I stay this afternoon, do you have something clean I can put on? This uniform smells like a dead body- oh, yeah. I forgot for a minute.”

“Yeah, if you don’t mind flannel shirts and sweats three sizes too big for you,” he offered, heading for the bedroom to gather something for me to wear.

He returned with a cozy pair of gray sweats, a soft flannel shirt, and a pair of comfy woolen socks, which I grabbed and took to the bathroom, taking advantage of a shower as well. I heard a tentative knock on the bathroom door while scrubbing off my tired, sore body from our adventure in the blizzard. John gently pushed open the door, one hand over his eyes, and placed a towel on the rack for me. Then, he backed out respectfully.

I toweled off with a freshly laundered towel that smelled like fabric softener- what? This man knew how to take care of a house. I should marry him and make him my wife, I thought. There was nothing to be done with my hair. All my frizz remover goop was at home. I tried to finger-curl it and leave it alone to dry unmolested. Curly hair_ the bane of my existence. The clothes were huge on me, but they were clean and warm, and I was thankful to get out of my soiled uniform.

When I came to the living room, he had the TV on and asked what movie I wanted. We settled on an old-fashioned Christmas classic, Die Hard. Before starting the movie, he asked for my uniform and dainties. Yes, he said, ‘dainties’. He would toss our uniforms into the washer and finish that chore.

“Good man. I may have to keep you around, John. You have hidden your talents from me,” I congratulated him.

“Hey, I have to do these things for myself anyway; it’s more enjoyable doing them for two. Let me spoil you for a while, Darlene. You need it.”

“In that case, after the movie, you owe me that backrub if you can find me under all this flannel,” I joked.

“Oh, don’t worry, I intend to keep my promise on that,” he laughed, wriggling his eyebrows at me.

With the washing machine swishing our uniforms clean, he scooched closely to me on the sofa, clicking the remote while he pulled the Afghan over us and nestled his big arm around me. I must admit that was the most relaxed I’d been in years. It felt like home under his wings, maybe too much like home.

The call came in at 9:45 the Saturday before New Year's. All the alarms had gone off at Dickerson Elementary School. That meant the fire department, rescue squad, and my partner and I would be showing up, along with a bunch of other bored officers. Not that we mind boring. Boring is good for us. Boring is safe and preferable to exciting, which can be dangerous.

"Hey, Tucker, do you think Santa Claus got lost on his way back to the North Pole and crashed into the school? Maybe we'll have to ticket him for drunk driving. You can write that ticket. I'm already on his naughty list."

"I'm sure you are, Smitty. You're a very naughty girl. I now know that for a fact," Tucker joked, winking at me.

Tucker and I have been partners on patrol for seven years. Something changed a while ago while we were on a missing person's call. Neither of us has quite figured out what happened. But we have become more than just patrol buddies. That's a problem we have chosen to ignore for the time being. Why mess up a perfect working partnership if the other partnership doesn't last?

Being the first to arrive at the scene of the crime, we pulled up close to the building and did a perimeter search to see if there was a forced entry.

"Yo, Smitty, this guy wasn't very smart! The inside and outside doors are both smashed to shit."

We pulled our service weapons and entered the school back to back, searching for the perp up one hallway and down another. Opening classroom doors, checking them thoroughly, and then closing the doors behind us. The sirens from the firetrucks and other units blared onto the property, and I hit my radio to let dispatch know we were in the building and told them where the breach had occurred.

"Smitty, look, the walls are scratched up and..."

Tucker went down. Hard. Right on his ass. I tried not to laugh at him. But, hell. It was funny, though.

"What the fuck? I slipped on something. Man, I'm too old for this shit," Tuck groaned as I helped him up off the floor once I stopped laughing. "You're a big help, Smitty. I could have taken a hit, you know, and you're laughing your ass off."

"Sorry, but you did an Olympic-style ass dive. It was beautiful. I give you a ten out of ten," I giggled, "Don't worry, I'll give you a back rub tonight and make you forget all about it."

"Shhh. Jesus, do you have your radio on?" Tucker warned.

Not one to take much seriously, I said loudly, "I don't know, Tuck, why? Do you think dispatch will tell everyone we're fucking?"

He just slapped his forehead and rolled his eyes at me as we continued our search of the interior. By then, more units had entered the building, giving us their locations so we didn't cramp each other's styles. We heard something crash down a hallway, and we raced toward the noise to find another officer down. Crouching and looking in all directions, the other officer's partner, Tuck, and I couldn't see anything or anyone who might have attacked him.

"Son of a bitch. I slipped on something, and my feet shot right out from under me," the fallen officer complained.

"No shot?" Tucker asked.

"Nope. Just a slippery fucking floor. Sheesh," The officer said.

We joined the other two officers on our search and heard glass shattering halfway down another hallway. Racing down the hall, my feet slipped out from under me, and I landed on my knees and an elbow; my service weapon spun away from me on the slippery tile floor.

"Seven out of Ten, Smitty," Tucker announced proudly before helping me up. I was tempted to trip him and put him on his back but didn't want to damage him before we went home after our shift. I had plans that broken bones would interfere with.

When we caught up with the other officers, they were inspecting a broken plate glass window in the school cafeteria. Now we knew how the perp had entered and exited. What we didn't know is why. Was it bored kids having fun vandalizing a vacant school building? There wasn't anything worth much in the place besides some computers. Most kids had better electronics at home. So, why?

There was another loud crash outside the cafeteria, and we all rushed to investigate. Laid out on his back was a buddy of ours, Jack. Oh, boy, he was getting ready to retire at the end of the year in just a few days.

"What the fuck is going on? These floors are slicker than snot on a doorknob. We've been slipping and sliding the whole time. I better not have a broken bone. My wife and I are going to Florida on the first of the year, and I plan on playing golf while you suckers freeze," Jack moaned.

We all helped him up and after checking himself out, he declared himself safe to putt. Thank God. Don't mess with a cop one week away from retirement. I touched my radio and let dispatch know the firemen and rescue teams could go home. We had it under control. Whoever had broken in was long gone.

Meanwhile, dispatch had contacted the school's principal, who sent over a few custodians to temporarily patch the broken doors and window. The other officers went on their merry way. Tuck and I waited for the custodians to finish boarding up the glass before our shift ended. Our conclusion: kids breaking into the school, then breaking out of the school. When everyone returns from the holiday vacation, they can do a proper inventory and update us. We could do nothing more except make sure the school was buttoned up, write our reports, and call it a night.

At the diner, we rehashed our exciting evening of mysterious crashes and slippery footing. I was the first to notice it—the brown smudge on Tucker's chin. Then, the wet smear of goo on my uniform's knees.

"Gees, Tuck. What is this shit? Stand up and turn around so that I can see your ass," I demanded.

"Can't you keep your pants on, Darlene? We're in public," he chided, but did what he was told.

Good boy.

"Wow, Tucker, your ass is covered in brown goop."

I checked the bottoms of my shoes, which were caked in the same mess. No wonder we were slipping and falling like the Zamboni had just made its rounds. Not being a hunter like Tucker was, I was clueless.

He started chuckling softly until it turned into full-bellied guffaws. When he caught his breath, he announced, "I've just solved the case, Darlene. Remember when you mentioned Santa getting lost on his way home? I think he lost a reindeer because we've been chasing a god-damned deer through a school all night. It was shitting as it ran, and that's what we were slipping on and landing in!"

"Gross- ew! It's all over me and my uniform. Does it wash out? Can we get new ones? I may puke. EWW! Did it get in my hair? Shit, god-damn fucking Rudolph."

"That's what I love about you, Darlene," Tucker joked, "You are such a lady."

As always, Tucker was more aware of his hunches than I was. Before we hefted Birdy's little body between us for the hike down the hill to the road, he walked closer to the apple tree where Birdy had spent her last moments on Earth. Brushing away the windswept, caked snow from the trunk of the gnarled little tree, Tucker waved me over.

'Jimmy

"Where was she going?" I asked Tuck, troubled that this woman would have ventured out in the storm on some mysterious mission that only she understood.

"Beats me. But I don't think she was out here wandering. I think she knew exactly where she was going. Just a hunch." He replied.

We slipped and slid to a small tree stand in the middle of an old farm field, bordered on two sides with haphazard rock walls that stood two feet high and were covered almost completely by the storm. An unnatural lump was evident in the snow near an old apple tree.

A sick feeling began in the back of my throat and traveled to my mouth as I retched up my last cup of coffee. "No! Birdy, we're here, we're here. Don't give up!" I yelled as the blizzard winds stole my words, rendering me voiceless.

Tuck reached out and took my arm gently. "Smitty, Darlene, we've found her. But she's not alive. Okay? Look at me. It's Okay. We did what we could, and we'll take her back home. Give me the blankets. You stay here."

"No. I don't want Birdy to be alone. I'm coming with you. I'm all right. I want to be there with her, Tuck."

Shaking his head, Tucker knew not to argue with me. We approached the lump under the snow with caution and gently brushed the accumulation off from our dear Birdy, who had died with a brilliant smile on her face and her eyes open and shining happily in the glow of my flashlight. So untroubled and young-looking was she that I immediately could tell she was the pretty girl in the locket.

We placed the blanket over her, rolling her over so her body was completely shrouded and protected from the frigid cold and wind. I called in to dispatch and told them to send the search and rescue home, as Tucker and I had found the missing person deceased in the snow. I gave them the last known location before we left the road, and dispatch would send the coroner's vehicle to that location.

As always, Tucker was more aware of his hunches than I was. Before we hefted Birdy's little body between us for the hike down the hill to the road, he walked closer to the apple tree where Birdy had spent her last moments on Earth. Brushing away the windswept, caked snow from the trunk of the gnarled little tree, Tucker waved me over.

'Jimmy

My mind was wandering and I was thinking about the upcoming evening with Rick, when one of my students barfed all over her dress and the floor, causing the child next to her to gag and vomit also. Janitor time. I had to call the office and herd the class out of the room until it was cleaned up.

With the two ill kids at the nurse's office and on their way home, and the floor clean, we took our seats again to the tune of, “Man! Did you see Jenny’s puke fly out of her nose?”, “Gross! I can still smell it. Ugh.”, “Do we have to stay here the rest of the day?”

I did open a few windows, despite the below-freezing temperatures, just to let them think the smell was going to get better. It did not.

We were all relieved when the bell for the buses rang. I broke speed limits driving home to get into a hot shower. Scrubbed from head to toe, I warmed up a quick heat-and-eat meal for Brenda and nibbled on celery and carrot sticks before heading back to the hotel for my last rendezvous with Rick before I reluctantly sicced Marcia on him. Be still, my heart! My palms were sweating, and my foot kept slipping off the gas pedal as I shivered all over, thinking of how much letting Rick go was going to cost me. It was making me sick to my stomach thinking of Rick and Marcia together, which reminded me of the vomit in my classroom. Ugh, now my stomach was flipping violently, and I almost had to pull over to the side of the road and open a window.

Fortunately, the nausea passed, and I pulled into the hotel parking lot in time to see a heavy-set woman with frizzy, bleached blonde hair step out of an enormous SUV and stomp toward the hotel entrance. Whoa, someone was in trouble!

I drove around to the back entrance to avoid running into this pissed-off person. Unfortunately, she and I both got into the same elevator, and she pushed the same floor that I had pushed. I tried to not make eye contact by checking my phone the entire trip to the third floor.

When the elevator doors opened up, she flew out, like buckshot from the barrel of a rifle, and pounded down the hallway, in the same direction I happened to be going in. Al, the night desk guy, had warned me about Rick and his angry women. Not wanting to take any chances, I walked to the ice and soda nook around the corner from the elevators, then peeked out just as Miss Angry Pants got to Rick’s door and began banging furiously on it. Holy shit. Too bad I didn’t bring popcorn. This was going to be good.

“You sleazy son of a bitch- open this door or I’ll kick it in,” she shrieked, alerting all the bored travelers on this floor, who opened their doors a crack to get some free drama.

“Jesus, Marybeth. Calm down. What is wrong? Come inside before you get me kicked out of here,” a flustered Rick called out as he pulled her inside the room, with a hurried glance in either direction.

The acoustics from the vending nook weren’t very good, so I crept closer to the room. All right. All right. So I crept right up to the door and put my ear against it. I almost wish I hadn’t.

“You liar! You said I was the only one. Now I have to explain to my husband how I got Chlamydia. How many other women are you sleeping with?” The woman raged.

What I heard next froze my blood. In a mocking, icy tone, Rick replied, “So, you’re a married slut. How do you know you caught something from me? How many other women am I sleeping with? Do you want me to tell you, or do you want to keep living in your little fantasy world?”

Even though I couldn’t see into the room I could feel the woman’s face collapse and the tears running down her cheeks, “I, I’m not a slut. I love you. I’m not sleeping around, damn it. I’m in love with you, Rick!”

“Listen, wherever you picked up your STD, take it back to him and leave me the fuck alone,” he spewed at her viciously. “I’m tired of your whining and crying all the time. We’re adults, Maryanne. We had sex. Period. Do you think I would ever fall in love with someone who looks like you? Come on. Get real. You’re fat, you’re ugly and your pussy is so big I’m afraid I’ll fall in and get lost. Go home to your prickless husband.”

The blood left my face, and I feared I’d faint right there if I didn’t get away before the door opened. I imagined that speech being hurled at me if I annoyed him. You know what? Marcia could have him. Oh, my God. This man had ice in his veins. I ran to the elevator before the woman left his room.

I drove over to Denny’s restaurant to sit and catch my breath before going home. I ordered dinner and thought about the conversation I had just heard through the door. That poor woman. All of us poor women whom Rick had used and fooled. What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he just get laid without playing games? Millions of men do it every day. It’s not that difficult. The great lengths he went to in pretending to be the good guy and pulling women into his game made no sense.

It was difficult enjoying my hot roast beef sandwich, imagining Rick accusing me of being fat and ugly, and God only knew what he’d say about my vagina when he got tired of me. I shuddered as I choked down my dinner, thinking of the chilling voice he used to make fun of that woman. We meant nothing to him. It was all a game to him to see how many women he could trick into falling in love. It was to feed his ego. Nothing more.

As I paid my bill at the register, I noticed a commotion at the intersection up the street from the hotel. Flashing red lights, police cars, a fire rescue truck, and finally, an ambulance. Wow. Someone was having a worse night than I was.

Hating to drive past accidents and gawking, I was uncomfortable but had to drive that way to get home. As I slowed for the officer directing traffic around the accident, I almost plowed into a police car when I saw who was being loaded into the ambulance. Although her bleached blonde hair was now matted to her skull with clotting blood, I could still tell it was Marybeth, or MaryAnne. Whatever her name was. Certainly, Rick didn’t know and didn’t care.

It's a freezing day in December, almost Christmas. My breath puffs out like clouds of cigarette smoke in the clear night air of the motel parking lot. At the moment, I wish it was cigarette smoke because I can't remember being this nervous in a very long time. Maybe the Christmas Eve service twenty years ago, when a pushy grandmother shoved her mini-skirted teen granddaughter up to the piano in our little Baptist Church and plopped an unfamiliar piece of music before me, stating, "Missy is going to sing. Play this."

This wasn't our Baptist Church, and I wasn't about to play a difficult piece in front of two hundred people. It was a sleazy motel parking lot, and I was here to meet someone I'd fantasized about every day for the past year. Someone who was not my husband and someone twenty years my junior. I hugged myself to keep from shivering as I glanced around, almost hoping he wouldn't show.

How did the 70-year-old church pianist and Sunday school teacher end up in this motel parking lot, waiting to keep all the promises she had unwisely made to this young man? What if my knee popped out in the middle of giving him, you know what? What if I broke a hip as he crashed into me during, the well, the thing? What if I had a freaking heart attack from the excitement even before we got into the room?

My wiser angels never weighed in on these tricky moments, so I stayed, shaking and chastising myself, "Fine Christmas gift for the hubs, girl. Meeting a lover for the first time ever. Forty years of faithfulness, and now this?"

This circumstance wasn't entirely my fault. When my husband retired last January, he suggested getting into swinging. I was shocked when he stated that was how he wanted to spend his retirement. His idea of swinging was to invite another woman to our bed. In trying to battle his penchant for watching me with another woman, I suggested we look for a man first. He reluctantly agreed and signed me up for a dating site,

orchestrating everything from what picture to post, what desires I had, and exactly what I was looking for, leaving out the cuckold aspect.

Being married for almost forty years had rendered me invisible. I was the kids' mom, and now I was a grandmother. I was my husband's wife, the retired piano player, and Sunday school teacher. Not exactly a sparkling Play Boy bunny resume. Plus, I was almost seventy. If a man had ever noticed me during those years, I would have suggested he try to locate his seeing-eye dog. Men's attention was something I simply did not worry about. There was none.

Within half an hour of my dating profile going live, I had over sixty requests for more information, messages, hearts, flowers, you name it. 'Hmm. Weren't there any women on this site,' I thought. It was a bit overwhelming as I tried replying politely to everyone while my husband tried to explain that I picked who I wanted and moved on. Ouch, that was a bit harsh.

We had settled on a sixty-plus age group, as he didn't want some young punk with his wife. You know how those fifty-year-old punks can be. One young man kept popping up in my feed, asking me why I didn't consider him. I explained that someone in their forties was much too young. I was sure he was joking when he told me he liked older women. Try as I might, he would not give up. I finally told the hubs he was the man I was interested in.

After an hour or so of explaining why that was a bad idea, hubby finally wrote the man a very explicit message explaining what he would encounter when we were together. He told him we would be having a three-some and that it would be a night the man would never forget, as I was one talented and sensual woman.

The man eagerly accepted the challenge, and then my husband withdrew the offer, pulling the rug out from under the young guy. I was mortified. This led to months of texts between him and me, with me almost deciding to leave my marriage behind at one point. Then, in the Summer, my husband had a near-fatal heart attack, and I had to get my priorities in order, leaving my infatuation in the dust.

Or, so I thought. Try as I might, weeks could go by without checking on my 'almost lover'. I would declare victory to my therapist, who never really understood my strange infatuation with this man anyway. Then, as soon as I heard a song that reminded me of him, I would begin pining for him again. My poor therapist was so distraught at my obsession that I was worried she might have a nervous breakdown over it. I finally stopped telling her about him. What she didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

Not that Jake was sweet to me. He was an angry, sullen individual who rarely said anything kind to me. He insulted me, called me a slut wife, and told me that I liked holding my marriage over his head. He constantly told me I did not try hard enough to meet him when he always backed away. It was like a game of cat and mouse, and I didn't know if I was the cat or the mouse. Yet, still, I persisted.

I can't recall a man I argued with more viciously than Jake, my texting lover. I never called my husband names or tore him up one side and down the other. The safety of hiding behind my phone screen or knowing I would never meet Jake in person made me bold. Once, I commented that if we ever met in person, a fistfight would break out after the first five minutes. He replied that, more likely, full-on animalistic screwing would break out.

Here I was, feet frozen to the frosty blacktop of this old motel parking lot, wondering if we were going to have a fistfight or a night of sexual pleasure so intense that I would never want to go back home. It was too late to rescind my Christmas gift offer of an evening of lovemaking to Jake. How many hours had I thought about him? How many times had I woken up, ashamed, from dreams of making love to him? How many imaginary conversations had I contrived, telling him how much I needed and loved him from our first real conversation?

A lone set of headlights turned into the parking lot, zeroing in on me as they slowly approached. A deer in the headlights. A guilty woman in heels, stockings, and a short skirt with seductive, lacy underthings hiding beneath. I feared my age would now matter because we would be close together for the night. Afraid I wouldn't be good enough for him. Scared of being a disappointment, I slipped back into the driver's seat of my car, pushed the button, and slowly backed out of the lot just as he exited from his car, shrugging his shoulders at me, just like his favorite emoji when I spoke of my feelings for him. Good. I hope you feel confused, just like you made me feel for the last year.

On the way home, I stopped at an open store and picked up my husband's favorite fruitcake, with chocolate milk for him, and a big bottle of wine for myself. Then I drove home, sighing in relief, after blocking Jake's number.

Not tonight, Satan. Not tonight.

Tomorrow? Maybe. Shh. Don't tell my therapist.

The 911 missing person call from the Sunnyside Nursing Home came in at 8:45 PM on Christmas Eve. My partner and I had signed on for the extra holiday shift because we didn't have a family waiting at home for us. We were just a couple of twice-divorced, bitter single folks counting down the hours to retirement, living on donuts, coffee, and adrenalin.

As we headed toward the outskirts of town where the nursing home was located, the heavy falling snow made the roads slippery, and visibility was low. There were better nights than this for a search and rescue operation, that was certain. The thermometer wasn't helping us either, as it was hovering at -2 degrees. My biggest fear was that the missing resident had decided to go for a walk in the nearby woods, probably dressed only in a nightgown and slippers.

"So, what do you think, Tucker? Senior Citizen flavored ice-pop?" I asked my partner.

Looking at me over his black-framed glasses, he just shook his head and replied, "Jesus, Smitty. You are the most vile woman I've ever met. Let's hope not."

"Hey, I call 'em like I see 'em. It's two degrees below zero, it's a blizzard, and the missing woman is probably half-naked."

Silently scanning the woods alongside the road, Tucker just kept his thoughts to himself as we approached the driveway to the home. The cruiser plowed through six inches of wet, heavy snow, and we pulled up to the front entrance as an employee waved us in.

After stomping the snow off our boots, the nurse ushered us down the quiet hallway that smelled of ammonia and lemon pledge. "Birdy seemed just fine at dinner. We had a special Christmas Eve meal with a lovely cake for dessert. She was singing along to the carols the high school chorus was performing. I don't understand it. She has been fairly lucid these past couple of weeks."

The nurse unlocked a door, and we entered "Birdy's" sanctuary. "We will look around, but I don't know if we'll find any clues. Have you contacted her family?" I asked, pawing through well-organized drawers and flipping through neatly hung garments in the closet. A sudden flash of familiarity went through my mind as I caught the distinctive scent of Muguet de Bois perfume. My Aunt Dolly had worn that daily, and it was one of her favorite Christmas gifts from me. A sudden feeling of connectivity overwhelmed me. I pushed that sucker back down where it belonged. I told myself that this was business, not a family reunion with ghosts.

"Oh, her family has all moved away, the ones she had left. Her husband passed away last year around this time, and we thought we were going to lose her too," the nurse explained.

Tucker piped up, "We will take a quick look around the property, but I think I will call the search and rescue team in case she has wandered into the woods. There's a creek running through just a few dozen yards from the property, and we don't want to take a chance."

"Oh, dear. That's not good. Well, whatever I can do for you, please let me know. Please don't hesitate to look in all the common areas. We've checked the resident rooms already," The nurse informed us.

Tucker, always more astute to the human condition than I was, commented, "You don't think she wandered away on purpose because she was thinking about her late husband, do you?"

"Naw. She was probably glad to not deal with his snoring and bad habits anymore. I'll bet she's shacking up with some hot, young orderly," I snapped.

"Never mind," he snapped back, rolling his eyes at me.

We made the rounds of the dining room, kitchen, and physical therapy rooms with no luck. Tucker pulled his watch cap on over his thinning, gray hair. "Time to go for a walk in the snow. You coming?"

"Do I have a freakin' choice?" I whined.

"Nope," he declared with a smirk.

"I didn't think so," I glumly concluded as I pulled my cap and gloves on, following him out into the frigid night air, my nostrils sticking together with every breath and my cheeks prickling in the cold wind. "Sheesh, I hope she was dressed warmly, this is brutal out here, even with our winter gear," I opined.

"Chances are she was in a nightgown and bedroom slippers, Smitty. I'm gonna call in the search and rescue team and grab some blankets and a first aid kit from the cruiser."

He handed me the emergency blankets and kit while he radioed in the call. Once we knew the team was en route, we began a careful search of the property, looking for footprints, which were hard to find with all the fresh snow that had fallen. Having no luck in the parking lot or yard of the home, we began walking down the road twenty feet in either direction, looking for any hint of our "Birdy".

Nothing to the South, so we turned around and headed North, carefully brushing snow away as we trudged through tire ruts so our footprints wouldn't cover up the missing person's prints. About twenty-five feet down the road, we found a pair of twisted and bent wire-framed glasses that had been crushed into a tire rut.

"What do you think, Tuck? Abduction? Rescuer?"

"Hard to say. I don't see any signs of a struggle near the glasses. Maybe it was a good Samaritan, and they took her to the hospital? I'll radio it in to check hospitals," he told me as he touched the radio on his shoulder that buzzed into life.

I walked forward about ten paces and could barely make out the outline of a small, bare footprint highlighted by my flashlight in the crystalline snow. Oh boy. It was worse than I thought. She wasn't even wearing bedroom slippers. How on earth did an eighty-year-old woman walk this far in this weather barefoot?

"Tuck, Tuck! I found footprints. You aren't going to believe this, but our Birdy is barefoot in this howling storm."

This missing person had become "our Birdy" in less than half an hour. This is why cops can't leave their work at work. Our work is all about human beings. Whether we arrest or save them, they infiltrate our souls with their troubles and seep their pain into our hearts, whether we want them to or not.

Birdy had grabbed a hold of my heart as soon as I smelled that familiar old-fashioned French perfume my Aunt used to wear. For Tuck, it probably happened as soon as he heard the call. He's like that, always trying to hide his tender heart under a gruff exterior. But he can't fool me. We'd been riding together for seven years, and not much gets past me. Tucker had held me together and kept me employed while recovering from my second divorce. It was messy and sad and took me forever to get over. He listened quietly, never offering to fix me. That was all I needed: an ear.

Tuck knelt down in the snow beside me to examine the footprint. Running his gloved hands down his face in frustration, he turned to me and said, "This just keeps getting worse. It's a long way to walk barefoot in this weather. She must be one determined lady. Let's stay close to the ground and see if more prints show up."

He found the next set of prints: one bare foot and one with a slipper still on. At least she still had one slipper. We were hunched over, practically crawling on the hard-packed snow, while the storm kept barreling down, relentlessly blasting our faces with bitter, stinging, icy pellets.

Tuck looked up at me with concern. "Smitty, you holding up? You need a break?" he said, pulling a handkerchief out of his uniform pants pocket for me.

"Thanks, yeah. I'm just worried about our Birdy. She's not going to be okay, is she, Tuck?" I asked, wiping the tears and snow from my face.

"I can't even think that far ahead. We're thirty years younger, dressed for the weather, and struggling. I just want to find her, is all."

Flashing red lights lit up the snowbanks and danced off from the whirling snow, causing us to move to the side of the road as the search and rescue teams approached. I flagged them down and told the lead team they needed to search the wooded area behind the nursing home to rule out the danger of Birdy falling into the frigid waters of the creek. Once they were on their way, Tucker and I resumed our painstaking search for tiny footprints.

An unusual glint caught my eye as we crept along, searching for clues. I shone my light on it and was rewarded with a broken gold necklace with a locket hanging from the twisted chain. I held it up in the air, and Tucker pushed himself up from a crouch with a groan and shuffled over to take a look. I wiped the slush off the locket and pried it open with freezing fingers. On one side was an oval frame with a tiny photograph of a dapper young man with dark hair combed into a duck's tail. On the other side was a similar photo of a pretty girl with short, blonde curls neatly tucked into a pink chiffon head scarf. A perfect fifties couple who probably did the twist and listened to Chubby Checker together. Maybe they went to the malt shop and high school hops.

Birdy was now more than a memorable scent or an elderly missing person to us. She was real. A person who had lived a life and deserved to be found so she could keep living. We stayed on the trail until the little footprints disappeared into a snowbank at the side of the road.

Tuck reached out and steadied me as I climbed the bank, wondering at the agility of our little Birdy. I had all I could do to not wipe out in the two feet of snow, even with help from Tucker. Once settled at the base of the hill's incline, I helped Tuck keep his balance on the slippery slope as we climbed. A fresh wind blew the powdery snow aside, revealing more tiny prints that had previously made it up this mound.

"Where was she going?" I asked Tuck, troubled that this woman would have ventured out in the storm on some mysterious mission that only she understood.

"Beats me. But I don't think she was out here wandering. I think she knew exactly where she was going. Just a hunch." He replied.

We slipped and slid to a small tree stand in the middle of an old farm field, bordered on two sides with haphazard rock walls that stood two feet high and were covered almost completely by the storm. An unnatural lump was evident in the snow near an old apple tree. A sick feeling began in the back of my throat and traveled to my mouth as I retched up my last cup of coffee.

"No! Birdy, we're here, we're here. Don't give up!" I yelled as the blizzard winds stole my words, rendering me voiceless.

Tuck reached out and took my arm gently. "Smitty, Darlene, we've found her. But she's not alive. Okay? Look at me. It's Okay. We did what we could, and we'll take her back home. Give me the blankets. You stay here."

"No. I don't want Birdy to be alone. I'm coming with you. I'm all right. I want to be there with her, Tuck."

Shaking his head, Tucker knew not to argue with me. We approached the lump under the snow with caution and gently brushed the accumulation off from our dear Birdy, who had died with a brilliant smile on her face and her eyes open and shining happily in the glow of my flashlight. So untroubled and young-looking was she that I immediately could tell she was the pretty girl in the locket.

We placed the blanket over her, rolling her over so her body was completely shrouded and protected from the frigid cold and wind. I called in to dispatch and told them to send the search and rescue home, as Tucker and I had found the missing person deceased in the snow. I gave them the last known location before we left the road, and dispatch would send the coroner's vehicle to that location.

As always, Tucker was more aware of his hunches than I was. Before we hefted Birdy's little body between us for the hike down the hill to the road, he walked closer to the apple tree where Birdy had spent her last moments on Earth. Brushing away the windswept, caked snow from the trunk of the gnarled little tree, Tucker waved me over.

'Jimmy