The 19th Christmas (Women's Murder Club #19)(66)

The main room was soothing, softly lit, the walls lined with mohair the color of café au lait, hung with black-andwhite drawings of Paris street scenes. It had seemed to Joe to be the right place to bring her—low-key, near her hotel, great food—but Franny looked uncomfortable.

He asked, “Everything okay?”

She said, “I’ve never been to a place like this.” She waved her hand around, indicating the whole of the upscale space.

He understood. She was all grown up, but she was still a kid. He said, “I should have thought more of what you’d want, Franny. I have client lunches here. It’s close to home.”

“The room is beautiful,” she said. “I love it.”

They ordered drinks, wine for Joe, a glass of tea for Franny, and as they waited for their entrées, Franny told Joe more about what had brought her to San Francisco.

“When Mama found out that she had cancer, it was too late to do anything about it. Ovarian cancer. It’s fast and deadly.”

“Franny, that must have been terrible.”

“We went over everything during her … last weeks. The loads of photos she’d taken since she graduated from Fordham. Letters from my grandparents. Baby pictures. Some pictures of you.”

Joe said, “I have so few things like that to show you, Franny. Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?”

“How could I know what you were going to say?”

“I would have said, ‘I’ll pick you up at the airport.’”

“I know that now, Papa, but a week ago, I wasn’t sure if I would come here or even if I would call you. Mama gave me a key to a safe-deposit box in a bank in DC and said she’d left some things there for me. I went to the bank and then, while I was at the airport, I decided to postpone my flight to Rome and come to San Francisco. Spur of the moment.”

“I’m so glad you did it. Over-the-moon glad.”

“I’m jumping all around. I’m sorry, Papa. Listen, I’m my mother’s messenger. She was very sorry, too. About keeping you away. She told me that several times over the last years. She said, ‘I screwed up. I was so young. I didn’t understand about marriage.’ She said if she could do it over again, she would have behaved differently, but it took her about ten years to figure it out. By then, it was too late. This is what she told me. I was a teenager. I had friends. I was growing up Italian. I hope this doesn’t hurt, Papa, but she got married again.”

“I didn’t know. But it’s okay. Was he good to you?”

“Giovanni. Yes. He is temperamental, I think you’d say. But a good man. He’s a tailor. He made my coat,” she said, smiling.

“Giovanni. That’s Joe,” he said.

She nodded.

He said, “I want you to know that I missed you like crazy. I thought about you every single day. I asked myself a million times what I had done to you by giving in to your mother. Wondering if I’d done the right thing. Your mother was … I don’t know the word.”

He knew lots of words for her—spoiled, selfish, uncompromising, willful—but none of them were appropriate at the moment.

The waiter brought their salads, unfurled their napkins, and placed them on their laps. He asked if they wanted anything else. They said, in unison, “No, thanks.”

Franny said, “She told me everything. That she’d left you a note, taken me away, and made sure you couldn’t find us.”

“I was with the CIA. Of course I found you.”

Franny laughed. “Well, there’s that.”

Joe said, “I wrote. I called. I couldn’t even get her to talk to me. In the end, all I could do was trust her. I couldn’t offer you much without Isabel.”

Franny poked at her salad.

“Since you’re an intelligence man, I think I’d better tell you the truth, Papa.”

“Yes, you should. We intelligence men have our methods of extracting it.”

She laughed. And then she said, “Here’s what was in the safe-deposit box.”

She reached into her purse, pulled out a little black satin bag, and removed two items from it. One of them was a small velvet box. Franny opened the box, and Joe recognized the small but good diamond engagement ring he’d given to Isabel.

Franny showed Joe the other item, a leather-bound book with a lock and key. She said, “This is her diary.

“She tells her diary all about falling in love with you.”

“I’m … I’m glad you showed me. I don’t know what to say, except that I’m proud of you.”

“She said it. She loved you.”

Joe felt his throat closing. He nodded. “I loved her, too. Love isn’t always enough.”

Franny’s face was flushed.

“Thank you for showing me your mother’s things,” Joe said.

“I had an ulterior motive, Papa, for my spur-of-themoment decision to show up unannounced.”

“You have my full attention.”

“I grew up as an only child. I was afraid to ask you this in case you said no.”

Joe put down his fork.

“I want to meet my sister,” Franny said. “I want to meet Julie.”





CHAPTER 97