Tess Gerritsen - The Silent Girl

“Those two girls? Or other girls?”

“I don’t know.”

He shook his head. “All these years later, and here we are still thinking about them. Weird to realize they’re probably nothing but skeletons now.” He paused. “But that’s not what I want to be thinking about tonight. Let’s pour some wine.”

“I thought you were a beer man.”

“Your ma’s converted me. Wine’s better for the old ticker anyway, you know.” He heaved himself out of the armchair. “Time to talk about happy things, okay?”

Not about dead people, thought Jane. Not about mass shootings and kidnapped girls. But when Gabriel came into the house holding Regina by her tiny hand, Jane couldn’t help thinking about Charlotte Dion and Laura Fang. She helped her mother carry platters to the table, a steady succession of ever-more-impressive dishes. Crisp roast potatoes. Green beans drizzled with olive oil. And finally two sumptuous roast chickens, fragrant with rosemary. But even as they sat down to eat, as she tied the bib around Regina and cut her meat into child-sized morsels, Jane was thinking about missing girls and devastated parents. How could a mother go on? She wondered if Iris Fang had ever considered ending her own misery. A leap off a rooftop, a handful of sleeping pills. How much easier than living with grief, day in and day out, pining for loved ones whom you’ll never see again.

“Something wrong with your meal, Janie?” said Angela.

Jane looked up at her mother, who had the uncanny knack of knowing exactly what had gone into the mouths of every guest seated at her dining table. “It’s great, Ma. You outdid yourself tonight.”

“Then why aren’t you eating?”

“I am.”

“You took one bite of chicken, then you started moving things around on your plate. I hope you’re not on a diet, because you don’t need to lose any weight, sweetie.”

“I’m not on a diet.”

“All these girls, they’re always on diets. Starving on salads, and for what?”

“Sure ain’t doing it for men,” mumbled Korsak around a mouthful of potatoes. “Guys like a little meat on a girl.” He winked at Angela. “Take your ma. Built like a woman’s supposed to be built.”

Jane couldn’t see what was happening under the table, but her mother suddenly bolted straight in her chair, laughing. “Vincent! Behave.”

Please behave. Because I can’t watch any more of this .

“You know,” said Korsak, slicing into his chicken. “This is a good time to bring up you know what.”

Never had three words sounded so ominous. Jane’s chin snapped up, and she looked at her mother. “What’s you know what ?”

“It’s something we’ve been talking about for a while,” said Angela. “Vince and me.”

Jane glanced at her husband, but as usual Gabriel wore his FBI face, giving away nothing, even though he’d probably guessed where this conversation was going.

“Well, you know that Vince and I have been seeing each other for quite a while,” said Angela.

“Quite a while? It’s been only, what? A year and a half?”

“That’s plenty of time to get to know someone, Janie. To see that he has a good heart.” Angela beamed at Korsak, and they leaned in for a noisy, lip-smacking kiss.

“You dated Dad for three whole years,” Jane pointed out. “Look where that ended up.”

“I was fifteen when I met your father. He was only my second boyfriend.”

“You were fifteen and you’d already had a boyfriend?”

“The point is, I was just a kid, and I didn’t know what the world had to offer. I married too young, had kids too young. Only now do I know what I want.”

Jane looked at Korsak and thought: You cannot seriously be talking about him .

“That’s why we wanted you to come to dinner tonight, sweetie. You and Gabriel are going to be the first to know. I haven’t told Frankie or Mike yet because, well, you know how they are. Still attached to their dad and all, despite the fact he’s sleeping with the Bimbo.” Angela paused to take a calming breath. Just mentioning the Bimbo made her voice rise half an octave. “Your brothers, they just won’t understand. But you’re my daughter, so you know what we women have to put up with in this world. You know how unfair things are.”

“Ma, there’s no need to rush into anything.”

“Oh, we’re not going to rush. We’re going to have a nice long engagement and do it the old-fashioned way. Order real invitations from a printer. Rent a big reception hall and a caterer. And we can go shopping for dresses together, Janie! That’d be something, just you and me! I’m thinking peach or lavender, since I’m not-well, you know.”

Jane glanced at Korsak to see how he was reacting to this feminine checklist, but he just grinned like a happy sailor.

“This time, I’m going to go slow and enjoy every minute of my wedding,” said Angela. “And it’ll give your brothers a chance to adjust to it all.”

“What about Dad?”

“What about him?”

“How’s he going to adjust?”

“That’s his problem.” Angela’s gaze darkened. “He just better not try to rush up the aisle first. Ooh, I can see him doing that, you know. Marrying the Bimbo quick just to annoy me.” She looked at Korsak. “Maybe, on second thought, we should move up our date.”

“No! Ma, look, forget I even mentioned Dad.”

“I wish I could forget him, but he’s always gonna be there, like a splinter in my foot. Can’t get it out and can’t pretend it’s not there. Just constantly poking at me. I hope you never have to know what that’s like, Janie.” She paused and glanced at Gabriel. “Of course you won’t. You have such a good man here.”

A good man who’s still annoyed I’m a cop .

Gabriel wisely stayed out of the conversation and focused instead on coaxing tiny cubes of potato into Regina’s mouth.

“So now you’ve heard our big news,” said Korsak, and he lifted a glass of wine. “Here’s to family!”

“Come on, Jane! Gabriel!” urged Angela. “Let’s all toast!”

Stoically, Jane raised her glass and mumbled, “To family.”

“Just think,” said Korsak, laughing as he gave her a happy punch in the arm. “Now you can call me Dad.”

“IT’S NOT AS IF you didn’t see this coming,” said Gabriel as he and Jane drove home with Regina asleep in the backseat. “They were two lonely people, and look how happy they are now. They’re perfectly matched.”

“Yeah. She cooks. He eats.”

“They could do a lot worse.”

“They’re both on the rebound. It’s too soon for them to get married.”

“Life is short, Jane. You should know that better than anyone. It can be gone in an instant. All it takes is an icy road, a drunk driver.”

Or a bullet in a dark alley . Yes, she did know, because she saw life cut short far too often. Saw how every death cast ripples among the living. She remembered the ravaged face of Joey Gilmore’s mother and the grief that clouded the eyes of Patrick Dion when he spoke of his daughter, Charlotte. Even nineteen years later, those ripples were still battering the survivors.

“I dread having to break this news to my brothers,” she said.

“You don’t think they’ll take it well?”

“Frankie’s going to throw a fit. He hates the idea of Mom and another man, you know…”

“Sleeping together?”

Jane winced. “I admit, that’s what gives me the heebie-jeebies. I like Korsak. He’s a decent man and he’ll treat her right. But geez, she’s my mother.”

Gabriel laughed. “And your mother still has sex. Accept it. Just call Frankie and get it over with.”

But when they got home, she put off the assignment and avoided the phone entirely. Instead she set a kettle on the stove and sat down at the kitchen table to look at her library books again. The illustration of the Monkey King glared back at her, paws brandishing his staff, an image so threatening that only reluctantly did she touch the book to flip to the next page.