The Silent Girl

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.

Chapter Nine. The Story of Chen O .

The great city of Ch’ang-an had long been the capital of all China. At this time, Tai Tsing of the dynasty of Tang was on the throne. The whole land was at peace.

It was a disarmingly pleasant beginning to a tale about a virtuous and scholarly young man named Chen O. After marrying a great beauty, he was appointed governor of a distant region. Together with his pregnant bride and their servants, he journeyed through the lush and flowering countryside toward his new post. But when they reached a river crossing, the charming fable suddenly transformed to a blood-splattered story of massacre when armed bandits attacked. This was not a sweet fable after all, but a tale of shrieks and terror, of butchered bodies thrown into the raging river. Only one person was not slaughtered that night: the pregnant wife, abducted for her beauty, imprisoned by the killers while she awaited the birth of her doomed child.

The scream of the teakettle wrenched Jane from the story. She looked up to see Gabriel shut off the flame and pour hot water into the teapot. She had not even heard him come into the kitchen.

“Fascinating reading?” he said.

“Jesus, this is a creepy book,” she said with a shudder. “I sure wouldn’t read these stories to my kid. Take this one, ‘The Story of Chen O.’ It’s about a massacre at a ferry crossing, and the only survivor is a pregnant woman who’s captured by the killers.”

He brought the teapot to the table and sat down across from her. All night he had been subdued, and she noticed the telltale crease between his eyebrows. A hint of a frown that she noticed only now, in the bright light of their kitchen.

“I know I can’t change your mind about this case,” he said. “I just want to register my concern again.”

She sighed. “Noted.”

“Jane, I can’t get it out of my head. The way you looked when you came home the other night. Shell-shocked. The blood all over your clothes. I haven’t seen you look so shaken up since…”

He didn’t say the name, but they both knew he was thinking of the monster who had brought them together. The man who had carved the scars on her hands, whose bloody footprints still tracked through her nightmares.

“You do remember what I do for a living?” she said.

He nodded. “And I knew there’d be days like this. I just didn’t realize how hard it would be to live with.”

“Do you ever regret it?” she asked softly.

“Marrying a cop?”

“Marrying me.”

“Well, now.” Rubbing his chin, he gave an exaggerated hmmmm. “Let me think about that.”

“Gabriel.”

He turned as the phone rang. “Why do you have to ask that question?” he said, crossing the kitchen to answer the phone. “I’m not regretting a thing. I’m just telling you I don’t like what’s happening and what you’re up against.”

“I don’t much like it, either,” she said and looked at the book again. At the story of Chen O. Like the Red Phoenix, it was a tale of slaughter. And an abducted woman, she thought, remembering Charlotte Dion.

“Jane, it’s for you.” Gabriel stood with the phone in his hand and a look of concern in his eye. “He won’t give me his name.”

She took the phone. Felt her husband watching her as she answered, “Detective Rizzoli.”

“I know you’ve been asking about me, so I figured I’d cut to the chase. Let’s you and me talk, face-to-face.