Choose Me

by Tess Gerritsen

  Something that will probably come to pass.

  Frankie pulls up a chair and sits down. For a long time, neither woman speaks, and the only sound is the wheeze of the ventilator cycling its twenty breaths per minute. What words of comfort can she offer to a woman whose life has so completely collapsed into ruins? Maggie’s father, Charlie, will almost certainly die of cancer in prison. Her husband might never awaken, and she will be left to raise their child on her own. In all this tragedy, that was the one point of light: there is a baby on the way.

  “How is my father?” The question is asked so softly Frankie almost misses it.

  “Charlie is cooperating. Fully. He understands what will happen to him next, and he’s prepared for it.” Frankie pauses. “I promise I’ll do everything I can to make sure he’s kept comfortable till the end.”

  Maggie sighs, as if sorrow is squeezing the breath out of her. “I can’t believe he actually did it. That’s not the father I grew up with.”

  “He told us he never planned to kill the girl. He just wanted her to leave you and Jack alone. He went to her apartment hoping to buy her silence, but she became angry. She struck him, he defended himself, and there was a struggle. He let his rage get the best of him, and he lost control. After it was over, he tried to salvage the situation by making it look like suicide. That, at least, is what he told us. I don’t know if all of that is true, but I am certain he was trying to protect you, Maggie. Trying to save your marriage.”

  “I know.” Her hand tightens around her husband’s inert hand. “And now I might lose both of them.”

  Frankie does not tell Maggie what else she’s learned about Charlie Lucas, after a phone call to Cambridge PD Internal Affairs. She does not tell her about the prisoner whose skull he fractured or the cocaine he was suspected of planting during a drug raid. She does not tell Maggie that Charlie retired under a cloud of suspicion after he had taken his brand of justice too far. No, Maggie does not need to know any of this; she has more than enough heartbreak to deal with now.

  “Please, Jack,” Maggie whispers. “Come back to me.”

  Frankie stares at Maggie’s fingers, twined around the hand of the man who was unfaithful to her, the man whose brief and reckless fling led to so much pain and bloodshed. “And if he does wake up?” Frankie asks. “What happens then?”

  “Would you forgive him? If he were your husband?”

  “It’s not my decision. It’s yours.”

  Maggie stares at Jack and gently strokes back his hair. “After twelve years of marriage, sometimes it’s hard to remember what made you fall in love in the first place. Why you ended up with this particular person. And for a while, maybe I did forget. And so did he. But last night, when he was lying on the floor, when I saw all that blood and I thought I was losing him . . .” Maggie looks up at her. “I remembered why I fell in love. I don’t know if that’s enough to make me forgive him. But I do remember.”

  A nurse enters the cubicle. “Excuse me, Detective? If you could step out for a moment, I need to check the patient’s vital signs.”

  “I was about to leave anyway,” says Frankie, and she rises to her feet. “Take care of yourself, Dr. Dorian,” she says to Maggie. “Go home and get some rest.”

  “I will.”

  But when Frankie walks out of the cubicle and glances back through the window, she sees that Maggie hasn’t moved. She is still at her husband’s side, stroking his hair, waiting for him to wake up.

  Frankie drives home through deserted streets, her vision blurred by a haze of fatigue. Even though it’s now April, this night has turned clear and frosty, a step backward toward winter. She is tired of the cold, tired of wearing wool scarves and down jackets. Tired of shivering at death scenes.

  She has vacation time coming up, two weeks during which she could drink piña coladas while lying on a beach somewhere, but she knows herself too well. This will not happen. Instead she will almost certainly spend her vacation at home with the girls.

  While she still can.

  When she walks into her apartment, she’s glad to see that both her daughters’ coats are hanging in the closet, relieved that her family is safely home for the night. Just to be certain, she peeks into their room, and yes, there they are, sound asleep in their beds after yet another night out. Though the beds are on opposite sides of the room, they lie facing each other, Gabby on her left, Sibyl on her right, as though reaching out to embrace each other, the way they did while sharing her womb. It makes Frankie happy, knowing her daughters have this bond. If marriages fall apart or husbands disappoint, at least the girls will have each other to lean on.

  She closes their door and goes into the kitchen. She’s exhausted, running on empty, but she knows she won’t be able to sleep. Not yet. After tonight’s events, she needs to sit quietly and take a few deep breaths. From the cupboard she grabs the scotch and, out of habit, checks the bottle to be sure the level hasn’t dipped beneath the tiny black dot she last drew on it with permanent marker. The level is right where it should be, so she knows the girls haven’t been sipping. Oh yes, Mama knows how to keep an eye on her babies. She pours out a generous glug, takes a deep swallow, and thinks about Taryn Moore and Charlie Lucas, about Jack and Maggie Dorian.

  Most of all she thinks about Maggie, the woman who had everything until suddenly she didn’t. But that is the nature of tragedy. You go through life never appreciating the joy of a normal day until the instant it’s gone. All it takes is a knock on the door. A police officer standing outside to inform you that your husband is dead, found collapsed in a stranger’s stairwell. You think you’ll never know a normal day again.

  You bury the body, pick up the pieces of your life. You stumble forward, into the new normal. That’s what Maggie Dorian will have to do, with or without her husband.

  Frankie carries her empty whiskey glass to the sink, and as she stands there, stretching out the kinks in her neck, she hears her cell phone ring. Oh no, she thinks. Even as she pulls the phone out of her purse, she is steeling herself for the news. She looks at the caller’s number.

  It is the hospital.

  CHAPTER 48

  FRANKIE

  Fourteen months later

  Two granite gravestones lie side by side, each decorated with its own pot of geraniums. The flaming-red blossoms are too much of a temptation for any baby to resist, and Nicholas Charles Dorian, seven months old, crawls across the grass like the speediest of turtles, moving straight for the nearest plant. Just as he closes one chubby fist around a blossom, Maggie scoops up her son, and he lets out a wail of frustration.

  “Oh, sweetie, let’s find something else for you to play with. What’s in our big bag here, hmmm? Look, a pretty pony!” She hands Nicky a stuffed animal, but he’s not interested, and he flings the pony onto the grass.

  “He really wants that geranium,” observes Frankie.

  “Isn’t that just how it goes?” Maggie laughs. “They always want what they can’t have.”

  “Here, let me take him. I’ll walk him over to the pond.”

  Frankie takes the baby and carries him down to the cemetery’s duck pond. She has never been to Mount Auburn Cemetery before, and she marvels at the beauty of the place on this warm June day. Across the water is the neoclassical rotunda that is the final resting place of Mary Baker Eddy. The trees have fully leafed out, sparrows chirp overhead, and the sky is a bright-blue dome with a pale crescent moon hovering just above the tree line. She inhales Nicky’s scent of baby shampoo, and a flood of memories washes over her: Her twins splashing in their plastic bathtub. Their fat legs kicking as she changed their diapers. Those exhausting but exhilarating nights of their infancy. She misses those days, especially now, since both her daughters have left for college. How good it feels to be holding a baby in her arms again, to rub her cheek against a downy head.

  The walk to the pond did the trick; Nicky has forgotten all about those tempting geraniums, and his attention is now focused on what is swimming in
the water.

  “Those are ducks,” says Frankie, pointing to the mallards paddling by. “They go quack, quack. Can you say quack, quack?”

  Nicky only squeals.

  She tries to remember how old her twins were when they said their first words. A year? Older? It all seems so long ago. She is now old enough to be a grandmother, and during Maggie’s pregnancy, that’s the role Frankie was happy to step into, because she does not know how long it will be before she’ll hold a grandchild of her own. In the seven months since Nicky was born, Frankie has brought baby clothes and blankets and a never-ending stream of advice. Maggie Dorian is like a daughter to her now, and Frankie has come to admire the woman’s strength and optimism. Like Frankie, Maggie is a survivor.

  As Frankie carries the baby back from the pond, Maggie spreads a blanket on the grass and unpacks their picnic. It’s a simple affair: tuna sandwiches and potato chips, fruit salad and chocolate chip cookies. The cookies are Frankie’s contribution, something she hasn’t baked since her girls were children and her hips were a few sizes slimmer. All this food Maggie lays out only a few yards from the gravestones, which seems a sad place for a picnic, but Maggie says this is a Lucas family tradition. Every June, her father, Charlie, used to bring her here to picnic at her late mother’s grave. It is a way to feel close to those who’ve passed, and now she is carrying on the tradition.

  Maggie pours Lagavulin whiskey into a shot glass and kneels beside her father’s gravestone. Six months ago, while in prison hospice, Charlie’s cancer finally took him, but at least he lived long enough to lay eyes on his new grandson.

  “Love you, Dad,” Maggie says and pours the shot of whiskey onto his grave, letting the precious liquor soak into the grass. “Drink up.”

  Frankie hears a car engine and turns to see a blue Audi pull to a stop nearby. Out climbs Jack, moving slowly as he plants first one foot and then the other on the ground. Despite a year of physical therapy, his legs are still weak from the injury to his spine, and he grips a cane as he hobbles toward them.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he says, shaking his head. “I left my apartment right on time, but I didn’t allow for weekend traffic. How’s my big boy?”

  “He’s probably ready for a bottle now, if you want to feed him,” says Maggie. She slides a folding chair toward Jack so he can sit. Frankie gives him the baby and hands him a bottle of formula.

  “Lunch, Nicky boy!” Jack smiles as his son hungrily gulps down the milk. “Wow, you feel like you’ve gained a pound in just a week!”

  As Jack feeds his son, Frankie notes the new streaks of gray in his hair and how deeply the lines now etch his face. He has aged in the last year, but he seems calmer and resigned to his losses. Since he was fired from Commonwealth, the only class he teaches is a weekly literature course to inmates at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Concord. His days as a university professor are gone forever, and surely he must grieve the loss of his status and his paycheck, but at this moment it does not show. Certainly not now, as he lovingly cradles his son.

  Maggie comes to stand beside Jack, and she rests her hand on his shoulder as they both smile down at the baby. Although they no longer share a home, these two will always share their son. And perhaps someday in the future, they will once again share their lives. But healing must come first, and on this fine summer day, they seem to be moving in the right direction.

  In Frankie’s line of work, there are no happy endings; there is only grief and loss and tragedy. For the rest of his life, Jack Dorian will surely be haunted by all three. He has destroyed his job and his marriage. He will always bear the physical scars from the bullet. Worst of all, he will never escape his role in the death of a vibrant young woman. No, thinks Frankie, this cannot be called a happy ending.

  But in this moment, it comes close enough.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  We would like to thank Mark Jannoni of Northeastern University for his guidance on university compliance with Title IX policies.

  We also thank Linda Marrow for her editorial expertise and encouragement during the early stages of the manuscript.

  For her insight and good humor, our deepest thanks to the ever-savvy Meg Ruley, who is any writer’s dream agent. And a special thanks to our editor, Grace Doyle, whose wise guidance and positive spirit made this a better book. It was a pleasure working with her and the dedicated marketing-and-publicity team at Thomas & Mercer: Sarah Shaw, Lindsey Bragg, and Brittany Russell.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Photo © 2016 by David Empson; Photo © 2019 by Nathan Goshgarian

  International bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career: it wasn’t until she was on maternity leave from her job as a physician that she began to write. Since then, she’s written twenty-eight suspense novels, with more than thirty million copies sold. Her books have been translated into forty languages, and her series featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles inspired the hit TNT television series Rizzoli & Isles, starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander. Gerritsen now writes full time and lives in Maine.

  Gary Braver—pen name of college professor Gary Goshgarian—is the bestselling author of eight critically acclaimed mysteries and thrillers, including Gray Matter and Flashback, the first thriller to win the Massachusetts Book Award. His work has been translated into several languages; two have been optioned for film, including Elixir. As Gary Goshgarian, he teaches science fiction, horror fiction, bestsellers, and fiction writing at Northeastern University. He lives with his family outside Boston. Learn more at www.garybraver.com.