His mother looked cynical. “Frost, is this true?”
“Don’t get the wrong idea,” he told them, bursting their bubble. “It’s professional, not personal. Eden’s a writer working on a book. She’s helping me, and I’m helping her. I had reason to think she might not be safe at her place, so I suggested she stay with me for a couple days. That’s all.”
“So are you denying that Eden Shay is pretty?” Tabby cross-examined him.
Frost looked at her in mock exasperation. “How is this helping?”
“It’s not,” she said with a wink.
“Yes, Eden is pretty. And no, we are not dating.”
His mother sighed under her breath, but in a way that Frost couldn’t miss it. She had an appetizer of sea scallops in front of her, and she speared one and ate it while staring everywhere in the restaurant except at her son.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait long for the attention to shift away from himself. After his parents decided that there was nothing new in his life, they turned back to Duane and Tabby. Duane talked about the food truck and the award he’d received in the Best of the Bay rankings in San Francisco magazine. The executive chef and owner of Boulevard stopped by to sing Tabby’s praises and to spar with Duane about James Beard awards. Ned and Janice talked about Tucson and the hummingbird aviary at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. For the most part, Frost sat silently and listened to the conversation bounce back and forth across the table. The food made it worthwhile, but two hours still passed with agonizing slowness.
Dessert was never optional at Easton family dinners, so he chose the dark-chocolate cream puff, which was Tabby’s recommendation. She shared it with him. As they finished, Frost thought the evening was finally over, but then Duane and his mother ordered espressos, and his father ordered a double shot of Dry Sack. They were still going strong.
Frost excused himself from the table. He navigated the long, narrow restaurant and found the restrooms in a corridor beyond the bar. He simply wanted a couple of minutes of quiet to himself, and the men’s room was empty. He splashed water on his face at the sink and stared into his reflection. His eyes stared back, hard and blue. His brown-and-gold hair was swept back over his head. He rubbed a hand along his trimmed beard, and his forehead was a furrow of discontent. It was good to see his parents again; it was good to see Duane showing every indication of being in love. And yet a deep, empty cavern surrounded him, like a moat with no bridge.
He left the restroom. Someone stood in the dimly lit hallway, waiting for him.
“Hello there,” Tabby said.
Even in the shadows, her red hair was luminous, and she wore a simple white dress that still managed to look like Oscar fashion.
“Hey.”
“You were gone a while. I was worried about you.”
“There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I thought maybe you were upset — I mean, because of Jess—”
“It’s not that.” He came and shared the wall beside her. Their shoulders brushed together. “I can only handle so much family togetherness. Ned and Duane are crazy extroverts. They’re more out there than me. And Janice — well, she and I are cut from the same cloth, and that’s not always a good thing.”
“Is that all it is with you, Frost?”
He wondered what she really wanted to know.
Is there something else on your mind?
Is it me?
“That’s all,” he said.
No, that was not all. He stared awkwardly at the floor. His dress shoes needed polishing; they didn’t shine. Tabby’s heels were black pumps that positively glistened. Everything about her glistened.
“So, you and Eden Shay,” Tabby said.
“There’s no me and Eden Shay.”
“I heard what you said, but I know what I saw in her face. She’d like there to be something more between you.”
Frost didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to talk about Eden. Not with Tabby.
“She doesn’t have to be your Jane Doe, you know,” Tabby added with a teasing smile.
“Duane talks too much.”
“Oh, he means well. He wants you to have someone. We all do.”
He heard her use the word we, as if she were pushing him into Eden’s arms and away from her. He wondered if she was thinking about the moment they’d shared at the harbor, or whether she’d already forgotten it.
“I’m fine,” Frost said.
“Sure, but does fine mean being alone? Not every girl has to be the one. Maybe Eden is just Miss November. What’s your hesitation? Is she a deep track, like Jess?”
“Honestly, I don’t know what Eden is,” Frost said.
“But she’s not ‘Shut Up and Dance,’ like me?” Tabby asked, smiling again.
“You are way more than that,” he told her before he could stop himself.
“Thank you.” Her face had a little blush in the shadows, but then she changed the subject. “I met Eden a few years ago, you know.”
“I know. She mentioned it.”
“I confess, I didn’t like her much.”
“She mentioned that, too.”
“I don’t think it was her. It was me. She caught me at a dark time. She was asking about Nina, and I didn’t appreciate anyone prying into our lives.”
“Sure.”
Tabby picked up on his reluctance to talk. “I’m sorry, Frost. Sometimes I get too personal with people too fast. I didn’t mean to go where I don’t belong.”
“You didn’t,” Frost said.
“Well, I’m making you uncomfortable. That’s the last thing I wanted.”
She looked unhappy with herself, and she put distance between them and smoothed her dress. They stared at each other in strained silence. Neither one of them knew what to say. When that had gone on for too long, Frost returned to the busy restaurant, and Tabby followed behind him. She took her seat again without looking at him, but he didn’t bother sitting down. He was ready to leave. He said his good-byes to his family and tried to pay for his meal, but his father wouldn’t let him, as Frost expected. He kissed his mother, and Janice gave him one of those maternal looks that didn’t change no matter how old a child got.
“We will see you tomorrow afternoon, right?” she asked. “At the Lubins’ for the support group?”
“I’ll be there,” he said.
He suspected that Janice would only believe it when he actually walked in the door.
Frost picked his way between the restaurant tables and exited onto the sidewalk at the Embarcadero. The Bay Bridge was lit up as it crossed to Yerba Buena Island. Bushy heads of palm trees were silhouetted in the median of the wide avenue. He still felt unsettled and unhappy, but he was liberated by being outside in the cool city air. He turned toward Mission Street to walk to the garage where he’d parked his Suburban.
As he did, he stepped into a faint cross wind of cigarette smoke. It was distinctive and acrid. He’d smelled that smoke before. Inside his own house.
Frost spun around quickly.
Across the Embarcadero, in the streetlights near the bay, he saw an old Cadillac sedan, its lights off but its engine rumbling loudly, like a death rattle. The driver’s window was open, but he couldn’t see inside, other than to spot the pinpoint ember of a cigarette. He started across the street, but as soon as he did, the window rolled shut, and the Cadillac peeled away into an illegal U-turn across the trolley tracks and disappeared at high speed.
He couldn’t read the license plate, but he knew who it was. He’d seen that Cadillac in front of a seedy house in the Crocker-Amazon neighborhood.
Phil Cutter was watching him.
The first thing Frost did when he got home was check the locks on the doors and windows. Eden watched him curiously, without asking questions. He went from room to room, but there were no signs of tampering or break-ins. Everything was secure.