A/N: Okay, so I know Em would have to be like twenty at the best by now.. but hey Wells aged her I can un-age her.. right? Anyway, she's seventeen. All you time line freaktoids can deal.
Love ya,
Lori
I blink at him for a few minutes, watching him struggle with the desire to yell at me. He's been doing it from the moment he realized it was me and except for a few unavoidable outbursts, he's been successful. Probably stems from being a parent. To my children, I remind myself gently before going back to blinking at him.
"How?"
"What do you mean how? There wasn't anyone else." He looks at me with a look anyone else would think was disgust. I realize it for what it is, pain.
"What about Fred?" I ask like a stupid person.
"Fred's dead." Bosco says like I'm a stupid person. The word drops off his tongue like he's said the sky is blue. I feel a wave of stunned grief hit me.
"Oh my God." I whisper.
"So, what you care now?" The heavy breathing is back.
"He was my husband." I stress the word was. Bosco notices.
"He's been dead for four years and you didn't even know." He shakes his head at me. "You don't get to act like you care."
It sounds so simple when Bosco says it. So reasonable. I don't get to care.
"How?"
"Heart Attack." Again, like he's saying the grass is green.
"How long after?"
"After you left?" The word left sounds like he's saying 'murdered my entire family'. I nod. "Five months and three days."
"What Bosco? No hours?" He swallows hard looking at his folded hands.
"I don't know the exact moment Fred died." From his soft tone I realize he does, however, know the exact time of my departure. "Just when your daughter called me in hysterics. So lets say 6 hours and twelve minutes."
"I'm glad you were there for her." I whisper.
"I don't care if you're glad." He whispers.
"Then why am I here Bosco? Why did you handcuff me to the car?" I sound far more pleading than I thought I would. I know what I want him to say, and I know he'll never say what I need him to. He's silent, and I know he's weighing his pride against his emotions. He swallows, holding his throat tight and I know he's made up his mind.
"You're right." He drops my keys on my lap and walks back in the house. "Have a nice life Emily."
I don't know why I'm still sitting there when he swings the door back open and starts out of the house. He oviously doesn't know either when he almost trips over me.
"Damn." He mutters dropping his head towards the ground before walking back inside. He returns with a jacket, dropping it onto my shoulders. I snuggle into it, suddenly realizing how cold I am. I expect some comment about my still being here, instead he drops down beside me. "I've got to go in." He tells me. "Explain why I walked off the job today."
"Are you going to get in trouble?"
"Probably not. My Lieu's pretty sympathetic to the single father thing."
"He's not the 'bust your ass' type?"
"No she's not." He smiles at me and I want to cry again. "She reminds me of someone I thought I knew."
"I'd say I was sorry if I thought you'd believe me." I whisper, feeling the tears well up in my eyes. He nods, gulping back his own emotion.
"I wish I could believe you." He stood up and started towards the road as a cab pulled up. "If you're staying you should go inside. It's getting cold."
I watch him go, hoping he'd look back and crying out loud when he doesn't. I slip back inside, moving slowly from the living room to the hall. There is a sign on the door of the first bedroom that says The Princess Is with a scepter in the middle pointed at Out.My eyes are still blurry as I push the door open and look around the room of my seventeen year old daughter. She has everything I could never give her five years ago and it turns my sniffs into sobs. The white spindle furniture looks both adult and childlike the bright pink laptop sits abandoned on her desk next to one of those fancy ipod things. I spend a second thinking about the songs my daughter may have chosen. I wonder if Bosco has parental blocks on her Internet account or if he puts a limit on the time she's allowed on-line. I want to argue to myself that he doesn't, but something about how he called my daughter Sweetie on the phone, and how he wanted to protect them from me won't let me. He probably does. He's probably far more cautious with her than Fred and I ever were. I run my eyes over the frames stunned by the photos of her and my partner.
He's hugging her, arms wrapped securly around her uniformed body, it looks like soccer, maybe basketball. His hand is tight against her ponytailed head, holding her close and she grins.
He's beside her, teary eyed, grinning at her simple blue prom dress.
He's handing her roses, in a pink tutu like frock.
I wonder when she went back to ballet, remembering clearly the day she came home and announced she was never going back. It was before Eric and drugs and sex. I wonder what kind of girl she is with Bosco as her father. I notice one picture from before my departure. I'm standing behind her and Charlie, the wind blowing my hair. Propped against the photo is a prayer card, I flip it over and find Fred's name. Tracing over it with my finger before setting it back and starting out the door.
Charlie's room, his own room, separate of his sister for the first time in his life, is simple. Big cut outs of athletes cover his walls and a street sign proclaiming the corner of King and Arther, beneath it is a replica of the crest of the 55. I move my fingers to it and run my tips over the carving.
I am a fixture in my son's room, as is his father. Pictures cover the bullitin board, scattered with pictures of Bosco coaching softball and Bosco standing beside my son at a father son event. Charlie looks strong. Confident. He looks like Bosco.
It's the last room that brings me to my knees. It's the last room where I want to go back and make everything different. It's Bosco's room that proves my very undoing. A small wooden desk is pushed back into an alcove, the three surrounding walls are covered with news articles on my disappearance, the search, the cop that seemingly vanished on the cover of every paper in the city. I see Swertsky at a podium, Bosco behind him. If I thought he looked broken now, I was wrong. This picture is a broken man, devastated by the unthinkable.
I read the articles for the first time.
"Please. She's hurt." Yokas' partner whispers when asked for comment. "She's got two kids she'd do anything for. I know her and I know she wouldn't leave them without a fight." The tough guy image drops away from Officer Boscorelli as he covers his face from view as he starts to cry. "Please someone. If you saw anything-. Please."
"Missing cop's husband dies."
"Missing NYPD Officer Declared Dead."
"If she was out there she'd have found away back to us by now." Her partner Maurice Boscorelli, sits on his sofa holding the hand of his partner's 14 year old daughter who he is now raising. His eyes are rimmed in red as he struggles to continue. In the room behind them, his mother sits doing homework with Yokas' nine year old son. He glances back before whispering. "We never wanted it to come to this. We still want to bring her home. We're still asking for help."
And people have helped. Back-stoppers, an organization for families of police officers who have lost their lives, have helped Boscorelli and his new family relocate to a suburban area.
"These kids needed a new start." Hal Munson of New York area Backstoppers explains. "Officer Boscorelli is a treasured memeber of the NYPD as was his partner and he needs all of our support. We knew that this house was the way to go."
I walk away when my eyes fall on a picture of he and I on the hood of 55-David. I suddenly want to vomit. I left him and he searched for me. I left my children and he went back for them. I thought so little of Faith Yokas that I killed her, but he never stopped believing in her
I drop to his bed, mopping my eyes with a towel tossed across the pillows. When I'm finished sobbing I notice what was under the towel. It's a blue covered hardback that I could reconstruct by memory. Because I wrote it. On my partners bed is a copy of 10-13 by Emily Charles.