J is for Judgment (Kinsey Millhone 10)

I let myself in and wiped my wet shoes on the rag rug before I slipped them off and left them by the door. “I saw your light on and came over. I was down in Perdido and haven’t even been home yet. Isn’t this rain great? Where’d it come from?”

“The tag end of Hurricane Jackie, is what I heard. It’s supposed to rain off and on for the next two days. There’s a pot of tea brewed if you want to grab cups and saucers.”

I did as he suggested, pausing at the refrigerator to take out the milk as well. Henry rinsed and dried his knife blade and moved to the kitchen table, brownies still resting in the pan in which they’d baked. At sundown in Santa Teresa, the temperature routinely drops into the fifties, but tonight, because of the storm, the air felt nearly tropical. The interior of the kitchen functioned like an incubator. Henry had hauled out his old black-bladed floor fan, which seemed to scan the room, droning incessantly as it created its own sirocco.

We sat down at the table across from one another, the pan of brownies between us resting on an oven mitt. The top was light brown, as fragile-looking as dried tobacco leaves. His knife had left a ragged line, a portion of brownie jutting up through the broken crust. Just under the surface, the texture was as dark and moist as soil. There were walnuts as thick as gravel, with intermittent small clusters of chocolate chips. Henry lifted out the first square with a spatula and passed it to me. After that show of gentility, we ate directly from the pan.

I poured us each a cup of tea, adding milk to mine. I broke a brownie in half and then broke it again. This was my notion of cutting calories. My mouth was flooded with warm chocolate, and if I moaned aloud, Henry was too polite to call attention. “I made an odd discovery,” I said. “It’s possible I have family in the area.”

“What kind of family?”

I shrugged. “You know, people with the same name, claiming to be related, blood ties and like that.”

His blue eyes rested on my face with interest. “Really. Well, I’ll be damned. What’re they like?”

“Don’t know. I haven’t met ‘em.”

“Oh. I thought you had. How do you know they exist?”

“I was doing a door-to-door canvass in Perdido yesterday. A woman said I looked familiar and asked me about my first name. Then she asked if I was related to the Burton Kinseys up in Lompoc. I said no, but then I looked up my parents’ marriage license. My mother’s father was Burton Kinsey. It’s like, in the back of my mind somewhere I think I knew that, but I didn’t want to cop to it in the moment. Weird, huh.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Don’t know yet. Think about it. Feels like a can of worms.”

“Pandora’s box.”

“You got it. Big trouble.”

“On the other hand, it might not be.”

I made a face. “I don’t want to take the chance. I never had family. What would I do with one?”

Henry smiled to himself. “What do you think you’d do?”

“I don’t know. It seems creepy. It’d be a pain in the ass. Look at William. He drives you crazy.”

“But I love him. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

“It is?”

“Well, obviously, you’re going to do as you see fit, but there’s a lot to be said for kith and kin.”

I was silent for a while. I ate a section of the brownies about the shape of Utah. “I think I’ll let it sit. Once I get in touch, I’ll be stuck.”

“Do you know anything at all about them?”

“Nope.”

Henry laughed. “At least you’re enthusiastic about the possibilities.”

I smiled uncomfortably. “I just found out today. Besides, the only one I really know of for sure is my mother’s mother, Cornelia Kinsey. I guess my grandfather died.”

“Ah, your grandmother’s a widow. That’s interesting. How do you know she wouldn’t be perfect for me?”

“There’s a thought,” I said dryly.

“Oh, come on. What’s your worry?”

“Who says I’m worried? I’m not worried.”

“Then why don’t you get in touch?”

“Suppose she’s hateful and grasping?”

“Suppose she’s gracious and smart?”

“Right. If she was so fu—gracious, how come she hasn’t been in touch for twenty-nine years?” I said.

“Maybe she was busy.”

I noticed the conversation was proceeding in fits and starts. We knew each other well enough that we could leave transitions out. Nevertheless, I felt as if my IQ were plummeting. “Anyway, how would I go about it? What would I do?”