"Hi," Gail said. "How are you?"
"Funny you should ask." Frank thought a minute, deciding she couldn't articulate an answer. Didn't want to. "What are you up to?"
"I just got out of a meeting and I'm walking back to the office. It's a beautiful day. I was thinking about you in the cold and the ice and snow. How are you?"
Damnably on the verge of tears again Frank sat up straight. She squinted into the snow. "Oh," she said, fighting to keep the quaver from her voice. "I'm a lot of things. Mostly right now I'm awful damn glad to hear your voice."
"Are you crying?"
Frank swallowed hard. "Not yet. But I seem to be doing a lot of that lately. Weirdest thing. Just about anything can set me off. Hold on."
Grabbing a napkin from under the seat, Frank blew her nose. She gave her cheek a not so gentle slap.
"There we go," she said into the phone. "All better. Christ. My cheeks are gettin' raw from all the salt on 'em lately. But I guess it's good. S'all good to the gracious."
"Is this LA Franco I'm talking to? The Lucifera Angelina Franco?"
"Hey, come on." Frank kidded. "This isn't a secure line. You swore to secrecy about my name. So no, it's not LA Franco you're talking to."
"Well, tell me who I am talking to."
"Christ, I wish I could. She's a damn crybaby, for one thing. Guess that's just the way it's got to be for a while. There's a lot that's got to come out. I'm reading The Da Vinci Code—probably the last person in America to read it—and there's a great line. Something to the effect that men will go to greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they want. And that's me. I've spent my whole life avoiding pain rather than facing it and getting what I want."
"What do you want?"
You, Frank almost answered, but she knew it was a cheap answer. She took a big breath, finding the truth there. "I want a quiet heart. A quiet head. I don't want to be scared all the time, wondering what I'm going to lose next. Wondering which corner the next bombshell's coming around. I just... .I want to live and not be afraid. Just take each moment as it comes and not spend so much time trying to protecting myself. Trying to anticipate where the next blow's coming from and heading it off. Shit happens. Much as I hate it, all the running in the world hasn't kept me from it. If anything, I think it's been running right alongside me, getting even stronger and faster. So what I want is to quit running. To quit looking over my shoulder trying to see what's coming after me. I just want to be still. I want to be quiet inside."
The phone sounded dead.
Frank asked, "You there?"
Gail sniffed. "Now you've made me cry."
"Why?" Frank gave her time to answer.
"Because I always knew you were brave. Not the knock-down, drag-out kind of brave, but brave in your heart. Do you know when I first fell in love with you?"
"Nope."
"Remember that night you came by to get Placa's tox report? We had dinner at the Grill and I asked if you were ready for a real date. You said you weren't, remember? That you were cleaning up your past and weren't ready for anything new yet. And that's when I fell in love with you because I could see that you were honest and brave. That your heart was strong and that I'd wait you out. And I did. Even through Noah's death and even after you left I couldn't believe that was really you. It was like you were possessed by an evil twin. She looked like you and sounded like you but she couldn't act like you because she forgot the best of you. She forgot your heart."
"Hey, cut it out. I'm gonna start crying again, too. Know when I fell in love with you?"
"Uh-uh."
"The night you told me about your mastectomy. I wanted to tell you then how beautiful I thought you were. I wanted to kiss you but I'd barely had the thought before I talked myself out of it. See how brave I am?"
"You were brave enough to keep dating me."
"Ah, that wasn't brave. That was easy. Like falling off of high heels."
"It's funny. I know how much you cared for Placa so I don't mean to sound callous, but if it hadn't been for her murder I wonder if we'd have gotten together. You spent a lot of time on that case and a lot of time at the morgue."
"Yeah. We spent a lot of time together."
"Before that I rarely saw you. You were usually content to let someone else do the posts."
Frank nodded. "I wanted everything firsthand with Placa."
"I know. And thank God. It's a selfish thing to say but thank God for her. Is that awful?"
"No. I was just thinking, you know, all these things in my life— these things I've always hated—they're not all bad. To stretch the cloud with the silver lining analogy, my dad dying and my mom being nuts made me capable and self-reliant. That pain made me strong and hard—granted, to an extreme— and his death made me want to be a cop. By then, after taking care of my mom so long, taking care of strangers was second nature. I can look back and see how the path was laid. If he hadn't been killed and if I hadn't been forced to rely on myself I might never have been a cop. I wouldn't have met Maggie or partnered with Noah or known Placa and probably not you. It's like you said, I can look back at each one of those events and almost be grateful for them, awful as they were. And that night with the gun, bad as it was, it got me here, sober and talking to you. I'd go through it all over again just to get another shot at you. No pun intended." When there was no reply, she asked, "I do have one, don't I?"
"Oh, Frank. I want to say yes and tell you to come home and we'll be together and happy and it'll all work out, but there's a part of me that needs time. I know alcoholics have the best intentions. I know you can mean to stay sober and not do it. I grew up with those sincere promises and they were broken every time. I want to believe you're different, Frank. I hope and pray that you are. But I'm not willing to fall head over heels for a sincere promise."
Frank ate her disappointment. "I understand. You deserve more than a promise."
"Yes, I do. And that's not to say I don't love you. I do. But I don't love you enough to live with your drinking. I won't go through that again. I can't."
"I know. And I can't make you believe this, but I won't go through that again either. And that's a promise for me. Not for you or anybody else. I have to vow that to myself because I'm pretty sure if I drink again I'm gonna die. Sooner or later, one way or another. And I don't want to do that just now. That night with the Beretta convinced me. I'm just not ready to go yet."
"I'm glad to hear that."
"Yeah. Me too. Look. I'll let you go. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I was just hoping ..."
"Hoping what?"
"Nothing. I'm pushing. I want more than I can have right now. Probably more than I need. Just tell me we're still friends. Can you do that?"
"Yes. That I can do. And I'm not ruling you out, Frank. If what you say is true then maybe we have a chance, but that's going to take time."
"I know. I'm just suddenly hungry for it all. For you, for everything. I feel like I've been trapped in ice for forty years and I'm thawing out. I'm like a kid in a candy shop. I want it all right now. But I know I can't have it all now, and that's okay. What I have is good."
She wanted to say she had to go, to end the moment's painful vulnerability, but she rode it out. Gail asked how it was going at the cemetery, if there were any nibbles.
"No, not yet. I'm gonna give it through Sunday and if I haven't seen our friend by then I'm gonna hire a PI. to watch the place for me."
They finished lightly, promising to talk soon. Hanging up, Frank reached for her coffee through a shaft of sunlight. She had the oddest sensation that her mother was sitting next to her, calm and not crazy.