“You need to back off on this, Jane.”
“I’m already part of this.”
“You have Regina. You’re a mother.”
“But I’m not dead. Are you listening to me? I’m. Not. Dead.”
Her words seemed to hang in the air, her fury still reverberating like a clash of cymbals. Regina suddenly stopped suckling and opened her eyes to stare at her mother in astonishment. The refrigerator gave a rattle and went still.
“I never said you were,” Gabriel said quietly.
“But I might as well be, the way you talk. Oh, you have Regina. You have a more important job now. You need to stay home and make milk and let your brain rot. I’m a cop, and I need to go back to work. I miss it. I miss having my goddamn beeper go off.” She took a breath and sat down at the kitchen table, her breath escaping in a sob of frustration. “I’m a cop,” she whispered.
He sat down across from her. “I know you are.”
“I don’t think you do.” She wiped a hand across her face. “You don’t get who I am at all. You think you married someone else. Mrs. Perfect Mommy.”
“I know exactly who I married.”
“Reality’s a bitch, ain’t it? And so am I.”
“Well.” He nodded. “Sometimes.”
“It’s not like I didn’t warn you.” She rose to her feet. Regina was still strangely quiet, still staring at Jane as though Mommy had suddenly become interesting enough to watch. “You know who I am, and it’s always been take it or leave it.” She started out of the kitchen.
“Jane.”
“ Regina needs her diaper changed.”
“Damn it, you’re running away from a fight.”
She turned back to him. “I don’t run from fights.”
“Then sit down with me. Because I’m not running from you, and I don’t plan to.”
For a moment she just looked at him. And she thought: This is so hard. Being married is so hard and scary, and he’s right about my wanting to run. All I really want to do is retreat to a place where no one can hurt me.
She pulled out the chair and sat down.
“Things have changed, you know,” he said. “It’s not like before, when we didn’t have Regina.”
She said nothing, still angry that he’d agreed she was a bitch. Even if it was true.
“Now if something happens to you, you’re not the only one who gets hurt. You have a daughter. You have other people to think about.”
“I signed up for motherhood, not prison.”
“Are you saying you’re sorry we had her?”
She looked down at Regina. Her daughter was staring up, wide-eyed, as though she understood every word being said. “No, of course not. It’s just…” She shook her head. “I’m more than just her mother. I’m me, too. But I’m losing myself, Gabriel. Every day, I feel like I’m disappearing a little more. Like the Cheshire Cat in Wonderland. Every day it seems harder and harder to remember who I was. Then you come home and get ticked off at me for placing that ad. Which, you have to admit, is a brilliant idea. And I think: Okay, now I’m really lost. Even my own husband has forgotten who I am.”
He leaned forward, his gaze burning a hole in her. “Do you know what it was like for me, when you were trapped in that hospital? Do you have any idea? You think you’re so tough. You strap on a weapon and suddenly you’re Wonder Woman. But if you get hurt, you’re not the only one who bleeds, Jane. I do, too. Do you ever think of me?”
She said nothing.
He laughed, but it came out the sound of a wounded animal. “Yeah, I’m a pain in the ass, always trying to protect you from yourself. Someone has to do it, because you are your own worst enemy. You never stop trying to prove yourself. You’re still Frankie Rizzoli’s despised little sister. A girl. You’re still not good enough for the boys to play with, and you never will be.”
She just stared back at him, resenting how well he knew her. Resenting the accuracy of his arrows, which had so cruelly hit their mark.
“Jane.” He reached across the table. Before she could pull away, his hand was on hers, holding on with no intention of releasing her. “You don’t need to prove yourself to me, or Frankie, or anyone else. I know it’s hard for you right now, but you’ll be back at work before you know it. So give the adrenaline a rest. Give me a rest. Let me enjoy just having my wife and daughter safe at home for a while.”
He still held her hand captive on the table. She looked down at their hands and thought: This man never wavers. No matter how hard I push against him, he is always right there for me. Whether I deserve him or not. Slowly their fingers linked in a silent armistice.
The phone rang.
Regina gave a wail.
“Well.” Gabriel sighed. “That moment of peace didn’t last long.” Shaking his head, he rose to answer the call. Jane was just carrying Regina out of the kitchen when she heard him say: “You’re right. Let’s not talk about this on the phone.”
Instantly she was alert, turning to search his face for the reason his voice had suddenly dropped. But he was facing the wall, and she focused instead on the knotted muscles of his neck.
“We’ll be waiting for you,” he said, and hung up.
“Who was that?”
“Maura. She’s on her way over.”
THIRTY-ONE
Maura did not show up at their apartment alone. Standing beside her in the hallway was an attractive man with dark hair and a trim beard. “This is Peter Lukas,” she said.
Jane shot Maura an incredulous look. “You brought a reporter?”
“We need him, Jane.”
“Since when do we ever need reporters?”
Lukas gave a cheery wave. “Nice to meet you, too, Detective Rizzoli, Agent Dean. Can we come in?”
“No, let’s not talk in here,” said Gabriel, as he and Jane, carrying Regina, stepped out into the hallway.
“Where are we going?” asked Lukas.
“Follow me.”
Gabriel led the way up two flights of stairs, and they emerged on the apartment rooftop. Here, the building’s tenants had established an exuberant garden of potted plants, but the heat of a city summer and the baking surface of asphalt tiles was starting to wilt this oasis. Tomato plants drooped in their pots, and morning glory vines, their leaves scorched brown by the heat, clung like withering fingers to a trellis. Jane set Regina in her infant seat under the shade of the umbrella table, and the baby promptly dozed off, her cheeks a rosy pink. From this vantage point, they could see other rooftop gardens, other welcome patches of green in the concrete landscape.
Lukas placed a folder beside the sleeping baby. “Dr. Isles thought you’d be interested in seeing this.”
Gabriel opened the folder. It contained a news clipping, with a photo of a man’s smiling face and the headline: RestonMan Found Dead Aboard Yacht. Businessman Missing Since January 2nd.
“Who was Charles Desmond?” asked Gabriel.
“A man very few people really knew,” said Lukas. “Which, in and of itself, was what intrigued me about him. It’s the reason I focused on this story. Even though the medical examiner conveniently ruled it a suicide.”
“You question that ruling?”
“There’s no way to prove it wasn’t suicide. Desmond was found in the bathroom on his motor yacht, which he kept moored at a marina on the Potomac River. He died in the tub, with both his wrists slashed, and left a suicide note in the stateroom. By the time they found him, he’d been dead for about ten days. The medical examiner’s office never released any photos, but, as you can imagine, it must have been quite a pleasant postmortem.”
Jane grimaced. “I’d rather not imagine it.”
“The note he left wasn’t particularly revelatory. I’m depressed, life sucks, can’t stand to live another day. Desmond was known to be a heavy drinker, and he’d been divorced for five years. So it made sense that he’d be depressed. All sounds like a pretty convincing case for suicide, right?”