Breach of Duty by J. A. Jance Page A

together," he said. "And in the process, you've transformed Anne Corley into something she never was—perfection itself. That's it in a nutshell, Beau. Anne's presumed perfection has you stuck. It's keeping you from being able to get on with your life."
    "Come off it, Ralph. Lighten up. I haven't exactly been dying on the vine here. What about Alexis?"
    "What about her? She's gone, isn't she? You managed to find something wrong with her and with every other woman who's crossed your path since then for one reason and one reason only—she wasn't Anne. Alexis hung around long enough to develop feet of clay. She probably told you to pick up your socks a few times and wanted you to put the toilet seat down. If Anne had hung around long enough to do the same thing—to turn into a flesh-and-blood woman—maybe you'd be over her by now. At least, you'd be over her enough that you could actually look at someone else."
    "Thanks for the advice to the lovelorn," I told him brusquely. "If you don't mind, next time I want some, I'll cut out the middleman and go straight to Ann Landers."
    My comment put an end to that particular conversation, but I had thought about it for days afterward. When I wasn't able to resolve it on my own, I had discussed it with Lars Jenssen, my AA sponsor. I was hoping, of course, that he would tell me Ralph was way off the beam. He didn't.
    "I've noticed that myself," he said. "It's like you meet a woman and before very long, you start building a case—picking out all the things that are wrong with her. Telling yourself why it would never work."
    "Maybe I just don't want to be tied down again."
    "That's a good one," Lars had said with a laugh. "What do you mean by that?"
    "It's a nice, shiny excuse, picked right off the shelf. Sounds all right first time you hear it. But believe me, if an answer's that easy to come by, it's not the real answer. If I was you, I'd dig deeper."
    I hadn't really done much digging, but I could see that I was doing it again. Sitting there in Macrina, I had come up with a whole litany of things that were wrong with Cassandra Wolcott before I even met her.
    My second cup of coffee was still half full when I pushed it away. "Check please," I said. "I just remembered. I'm due at a meeting in half an hour."
    I left Macrina and headed north on 1st. Rather than turning east on Broad to return to Belltown Terrace, I walked two blocks farther and stopped in front of Lars Jenssen's four-story affordable-housing walk-up, the Stillwater Arms. Lars, twice retired—first from the navy and later from Seattle's fishing fleet— is the mainstay of my home AA group—the Regrade Regulars—which meets at a once-thriving restaurant and bar a few blocks back up 2nd. I rang Lars' apartment from the security phone next to the outside door. As usual, it took several rings for him to answer.
    "Ja," he said. "Who is it?"
    "Beau. You going to the meeting tonight?" I asked.
    "Ja, sure," he told me. "Yust getting ready to leave right now. You downstairs?"
    "I am, but if you want me to, I can go get the car and come back to pick you up."
    "What's wrong with walking?" Lars demanded. "I'm eighty-one. I'm not dead yet, and I'm sure as hell not so stove up that I can't walk that far. I'll be right down."
    Lars Jenssen's sole concession to age is a knobby walking stick he's taken to using in the past few months. We strolled the six blocks back uptown, reveling in the balmy spring weather. The meeting's drunkalogue that night was from a guy named Tommy. He had been coming to meetings for some time, principally to have his court-ordered attendance sheet signed. Tommy's lack of enthusiasm had been pretty apparent to all concerned. When it came time for sharing, he'd never said much.
    Everybody who goes to AA walks in the door figuring his or her story is unique. Over time, though, all the stories begin to sound strangely alike. The details of each downward spiral may vary slightly, as do the reasons people finally go