“Two parents,” he offered. “Two brothers, one sister.”
“And you’re the oldest.”
“Good guess.”
She shrugged. “Not really. You have that whole overdeveloped sense of responsibility thing going on. Plus you don’t cut yourself any slack.”
She sounded like one of those talking heads yapping onThe View. And yeah, he had definitely seen too many hours of daytime TV during his months on leave.
“You don’t know me well enough to judge,” he said.
“I know you’re chief of police. That’s a responsible job. And you turned down a glass of wine because you were on duty.”
Point to her, he decided. “What about you?”
“What about me?” she asked, turning the question back on him.
That was a cop’s trick. Or a shrink’s. Jack had seen one of those, too, during his leave. “You have a younger brother. Does that make you the responsible one in your family?”
“Yes,” she said. No explanation, no excuses.
He could respect that. The silence stretched. He shifted his weight. She studied her glass.
Okay, this wasn’t an interrogation. Once upon a time, he used to be good at talking to women.Say something, dickhead.
She beat him to the punch, looking up from her wine. “So, Jack Rossi, where are you from?”
“Philly.”
She gave him that three-cornered smile. “Like Rocky.”
He suppressed a sigh. It was the accent. Or the fact that for the past twelve months he’d been taking out his aggressions on a heavy bag and it showed. His chest and arms were heavy with muscle. He was down a belt size, too. He wanted to tell her there was more to him than that, that he used to read books and listen to blue-eyed soul. But maybe that part of him was gone, along with his marriage and his collection of Hall and Oates CDs. Maybe she got off on muscle-bound guys in wife-beater T-shirts. So he told her what she expected to hear.
“I worked a township just south of the city. Three generations of Rossis all living in ten square blocks, most of them cops, all of them baptized, married, and buried at Our Lady of Your Grandmother’s Gravy.”
It was kind of like a police interview. You disclosed a little truth to get a bigger truth in return. The only difference was there wasn’t anything he wanted from her.
Was there?
“Gravy?” she asked.
“Old school red sauce with meatballs,” he explained. “Cooked low and slow and served every Sunday.”
“Very nice.”
“Yeah.”
It had been. After he hit bottom, his family had stuck by him. But it got so he couldn’t stand the talk around the station house, the looks around the dining room table, his father’s silence, his mother’s sighs. The way conversations broke off when he walked into the kitchen.
“So what made you decide to exchange family and red sauce for North Carolina barbecue, Chief Rossi?”
He rolled his shoulders, uncomfortable with the turn of the conversation. He preferred being the one asking the questions. “It was time for a change.”
“I can understand that.” Her voice was soft. “Everybody has somewhere they’re going. Or something they’re running away from.”
Their eyes met.
Right on the button. Maybe she did understand.
