The 19th Christmas (Women's Murder Club #19)(64)

I told him, “I love you, Joe. I love you so much.”

“I’m so lucky, Blondie. Do I say it enough? I love you, too.”

“You say it a lot.”

He kissed me again.

And then I cried. The feeling had been building, and it came out in full waterworks with heaving sobs. Joe held on to me until I was laughing again.

My best and dearest friends were all around us, hugging one another, kissing their partners, and I noticed that I wasn’t the only one with wet cheeks. I’d never seen Brady cry.

At Jacobi’s urging, we huddled, rugby-style, to wish one another the best of everything. We girlfriends pressed cheeks and ruffled one another’s hair before settling back into the arms of our men.

This was it. The best New Year’s Eve of my life.

I felt ready for whatever the New Year would bring.





Epilogue




* * *





JANUARY 2





CHAPTER 94





THE NEW YEAR’S holiday had ended, and for Joe, January 2 began as a workday like any other.

He had kissed Lindsay good-bye as she left for the station, walked Julie to the pre-K school bus, and settled her into her seat next to her favorite aide. Then he went back home, made a roast beef snack for Martha in exchange for a handshake, and sat down at his desk. At ten-something that morning, as he was paying bills in his home office, his desk phone rang.

The caller ID said Drisco, a landmark hotel in Pacific Heights.

He picked up the phone and said, “Joe Molinari.”

All he heard was soft breathing, so he said, “Hello?” and was about to hang up when a young woman’s voice said, “Papa? Papa, it’s Francesca.”

Joe felt the floor drop away beneath him. The receiver nearly slipped from his hand. He got a grip and said, “Franny? Is that you?”

There was nervous laughter and then she said, “It’s me. All grown up and right here in San Francisco.”

It felt crazy but he believed her.

The last time he’d seen Franny, she was Julie’s age. Just about four. Talking. Asking questions. Why, why, why? He hadn’t been able to answer the important ones.

He filled the lengthening silence by asking, “Okay to call you Franny?”

“Of course. Okay to call you Papa?”

“Of course.”

They both laughed and then Joe asked, “How long will you be here? Who or what brings you?”

The daughter he hadn’t spoken to in more than twenty years said, “You, Papa. I came to see you. I have to fly home in two days. To Rome.”

Joe loved the sound of her voice, Standard American with a hint of Italian. He said, “Two days? When can I see you? What’s your schedule?”

“I’m free until my flight on Friday.”

The last time he’d seen Franny, she’d been wearing footie pajamas and sleeping under a mobile of the cow jumping over the moon in the small bedroom with baby-farm-animal wallpaper in the Washington, DC, apartment. The time before that, she was also asleep. And before that, also sleeping, ad infinitum.

He tried to picture her as an adult. “Would you like to have lunch?”

“Today?”

“Yes. I can pick you up at your hotel at say—noon?”

“Perfect,” said his daughter—his elder daughter.

They ended the call and Joe spun his chair around and stared out the window at the blue sky. He remembered saying good-bye to her as she slept and then leaving their apartment, not knowing that Isabel was packed and ready to grab Franny and fly away.

What was her last memory of him?

Fighting with her mother, Isabel?

He shook his head, remembering his fractious marriage to his college girlfriend that had shown cracks and fissures right away and had only gotten worse after Franny’s birth. His work, the lengthy assignments away from home—it wasn’t what Isabel had wanted or expected in marriage.

One day in June he’d come home to find a note stating that she had taken their baby girl to Rome, where her parents lived. Next to that was her lawyer’s business card. After that, she’d cut off all contact.

Neither one of them had pushed for divorce, she for religious reasons, he because he thought she would change her mind. Fifteen years later, when Isabel finally filed, he had signed the papers and had to accept that his ex-wife’s parents were kind and that Isabel would take good care of Franny.

But had she?

What kind of woman had Franny become?

He swiveled back to face his desk and touched the phone, thinking now of other things he should have asked his all-grown-up daughter. One of them was “How will I know you?”

He just would.

Joe picked up the phone again and called Lindsay.

“Linds? I have something to tell you.”





CHAPTER 95





JOE DRESSED IN a blue shirt, blue pants, and a blue-striped tie.

He brushed his teeth again, combed his hair again, ran a soft rag across his shoes. He wanted to look good for Francesca. He had never even said a proper good-bye to her. What if she hated him for some abandonment story Isabel had told her?

He shook his head. Would Isabel have done that? Yes.