A special dinner
by Belladonna

„Hello, Mrs. Starsky? This is Ken Hutchinson, David's partner...“

So this was it. The call. The one I'd been dreading to get ever since my Davey became a police officer. I knew it would come sooner or later, but I'd always hoped that it would be never. Only it doesn't work that way, I'd learned that the hard way with his father.

I felt my knees buckle slightly and I had to sit down. My heart felt like somebody grabbed it with icy cold hands and I couldn't breathe. This couldn't be, it couldn't be happening. Not my little boy, not when he still was so young, had so much dreams left.

I wasn't sure my voice was still there when I answered him. I didn't need to hear what he would tell me, I knew the words already, the meaningless talk that essentially would only mean pain, no matter that it had been meant to ease it. At least it wouldn't come from somebody I'd never met. It didn't make it easier, but to hear them from a familiar face felt almost like a relief to me.
Still, I didn't want to hear it, not when after my husband I would also now have lost my son. I would have lost them both to their jobs. Even my painful past experience couldn't have prepared me for what I'd be feeling now.

Nothing could have prepared me for what Ken would tell me next.

„It's like this, well I wanted to do something nice for Starsky. He's had a rough time recently and I thought maybe I'd cook him dinner or something. You wouldn't have by any chance the recipe for his favourite dish? I think he called it once the 'Paul Muni Special'. Mrs. Starsky? Are you all right?“