Step on a Crack (Michael Bennett 1)

THE KIDS WERE a blur of activity once we got back home that evening. From every room of our apartment, instead of television and electronic gunfire, came the satisfying sound of busy Bennetts.

Water splashed as Julia prepped Shawna and Chrissy’s bath. Brian sat at the dining room table with a deck of cards, patiently teaching Trent and Eddie how to play twenty-one.

“Bam,” I could hear Ricky, like an Emeril Mini-Me, say from the kitchen as he squeezed jelly onto each slice of Wonder bread. “Bam … bam.”

Jane had the flash cards out on the floor of her room and was

preparing Fiona and Bridget for the 2014 SAT.

I didn’t hear a complaint, a whine, or even a silly question out of anyone.

Add brilliant to the list of my wife’s attributes. She must have known how much the kids were hurting, how disoriented and useless they felt, so she had given them something to do to fill that void, to feel useful.

I only wished I could come up with something to make myself feel the same way.

As most parents will tell you, bedtime is the roughest time of day. Everyone, not excluding parents, is tired and cranky, and restlessness can degrade quickly to frustration, yelling, threats, and punishments. I didn’t know how Maeve did it every night—some magical, innate sense of measure and calm, I had assumed. It was one of the things that I was most worried about having to take on.

But by eight o’clock that night, from the sound coming out of the apartment, you would have thought we had all left on a Christmas vacation.

I almost expected to see the window open and bedsheets tied together when I went into the little girls’ room—but all I saw were Chrissy, Shawna, Fiona, and Bridget with their sheets tucked to their chins, and Julia closing an Olivia book.

“Good night, Chrissy,” I said, kissing her on her forehead. “Much love from your dad.”

I was heartened by my clutch Dad performance as I went on my rounds.

The boys were all in bed as well. “Good night, Trent,” I said, giving him a kiss on his brow. “You did one great job today. How about coming to work with me tomorrow?”

Trent’s tiny forehead crinkled as he thought about it.

“Is it anybody’s birthday at work?” he said after a little while. “Any of the other detectives?”

“No,” I said.

“I’ll just go to school then,” Trent said, closing his eyes. “It’s Lucy Shapiro’s birthday tomorrow, and birthdays mean chocolate cupcakes.”

“Good night, guys,” I said as I stepped toward the door. “I couldn’t do this without you.”

“We know, Dad,” Brian called from the top bunk. “Don’t worry about it. We got your back.”

Chapter 6

I PULLED the final door closed and stood for a moment in the hall outside the boys’ room. On a normal night, in about a half hour, when I’d come home from my precinct, the living room would be flashing blue light from Maeve watching television, or a warm, steady yellow light from her sitting on our sectional reading a book, waiting for me to arrive.

As I stared from that corridor at the blackened doorway of my living room, I realized I was experiencing for the first time what darkness truly was.

I went into the living room and flicked on the lamp beside the couch. Then I sat in the silence, passing my eyes slowly across all the memories.

The wallpaper we’d painstakingly put up. All the family photographs Maeve had shot and framed. Christmas trips to the Bronx Botanical Garden. And pumpkin picking upstate. She’d made shadow boxes of vacations we’d taken, with seashells and sand from our two-years-ago trip down to Myrtle Beach, pinecones and leaves from the week we spent in the Poconos the August before.

How could she have had the energy for that? I wondered. How could she have had the time?

Because my wife was something special was the answer to that one.

And I wasn’t the only one who thought so. In fact, I didn’t know anyone who didn’t adore Maeve.

After we’d adopted Julia, Maeve quit the hospital in order to spend more time with her, and she took a job taking care of an elderly man on West End Avenue. Mr. Kessler was ninety-five, from an old-money railroad family, and he was bitter and angry at the modern world and everything in it. But week after week, Maeve wore him down with small kindnesses and compassion. She would regularly wheel him out to sit in the sun at Riverside Park, make him remember he was alive, even if he didn’t want to.

By the end, he had become a different person, let go of his bitterness, even made amends with his estranged daughter.