School Days by Robert B. Parker

nails were square and clean, and devoid of polish. Her hands looked as if she washed them often.
    â€œAnd Wendell’s father?” I said.
    She shook her head.
    â€œNo father?” I said.
    â€œExcept in a biological sense,” she said. “I’m a single mother. His father is an anonymous sperm donor.”
    â€œAnd you’ve never been married?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAre you a lesbian?” I said.
    â€œNot being married doesn’t mean you are homosexual,” she said.
    â€œI know,” I said.
    â€œAre you married?”
    â€œNo.”
    She smiled slightly and nodded.
    â€œI have had men in my life,” she said. “But I never wished to marry them.”
    â€œBut you wanted a family.”
    â€œI wanted,” she said, “someone to share my life. I wanted to teach him and show him and talk with him and be with him. . . .” She stared down the long, still, tree-canopied, almost-empty street. “I wanted someone that belonged to me.”
    â€œHard alone,” I said.
    â€œYou have no idea,” she said.
    â€œMaybe I do.”
    â€œHe was nothing like that. It almost seems as if from the time he was born, he was angry and defiant and just exactly what I didn’t want him to be.”
    â€œTell me about him,” I said.
    She started to cry. I waited. After a while, she stopped.
    â€œWhat was he like?” I said.
    â€œHe was a bully,” she said. “My son, a bully. And he played football in school.”
    â€œNot a good thing?” I said.
    â€œGod, no. I think it’s a brutal and dehumanizing game. All these loutish young men trying to hurt each other on the field, while the girls jump around and cheer and show their legs. It is frightful.”
    â€œWhat position did he play?” I said, just to be saying something.
    â€œI don’t know. I don’t know anything about football.”
    â€œDid you ever see him play?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHow was he academically.”
    She shook her head.
    â€œHe had no interest in the life of the mind,” she said.
    â€œWho taught him to shoot?” I said.
    â€œShoot?”
    I nodded.
    â€œI don’t know,” she said. “Certainly there have never been guns in my house.”
    â€œA woman living alone?” I said. “Not even for protection?”
    â€œI would rather be killed,” she said, “than take a life.”
    â€œNo boyfriends, or uncles, or anyone that might have taught him?”
    â€œNo.”
    I nodded. We were quiet. A fat yellow cat came around the corner of the store and jumped up onto the table. Wilma picked him up and put him in her lap, where he curled into a fat yellow ball and went to sleep.
    â€œWhere might he have gotten the guns?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Wilma said. “I know nothing of guns.”
    â€œMaybe the other kid got them,” I said.
    â€œJared Clark?”
    I nodded.
    â€œI don’t know. I barely know him.”
    â€œHe was pals with your son, wasn’t he?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œHow did you come to get Alex Taglio for a lawyer?” I said.
    â€œMy father.”
    â€œYour father recommended him?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd your father’s name is Grant?”
    â€œYes,” she said. “Hollis Grant.”
    â€œHe lives in town?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHow’s he know Taglio?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Wilma said. “I suppose he asked one of his attorneys.”
    â€œHe has attorneys?” I said.
    â€œMy father is a very successful man,” she said. “Grant Development Corporation.”
    â€œIn town?” I said.
    â€œHe lives here. His business is next town over.”
    â€œIs he close to his grandson?”
    â€œMr. Spenser, please don’t put me through this anymore. No one is close to Wendell. He carries my name. But he is so unlike me I tremble to