From the previous chapter:
"It wasn't supposed to be anything serious when we started out commissioner. We were just two people who clicked and decided to enjoy the time we had, but the longer we spent together the more we realised we really cared about each other." Elizabeth looked earnestly into Frank's face as she prepared to drop bombshell number two.
"Sir, by the time Joe left … we were head over heels for each other." She saw the look on Frank Reagan's face change from stoic interest to shock tinged with hurt and a small dose of suspicion. She didn't fault him for the faint trace of disbelief. She could barely believe she was in the position of explaining to this giant of a man that the son he'd buried more than four years ago had been in a relationship with a woman he'd never met in the months before he died. A relationship his son hadn't even mentioned. God Joe, right now I feel like dragging you out of the grave! This is your bloody mess too you know!
"So what happened when Joe left London?" Frank asked in a tone which betrayed none of the emotions Elizabeth had just seen flying across his face.
"He didn't say anything then because we didn't know if what we had would last the long distance thing, and Joe didn't want to deal with a ton of questions about a girl you may never meet." She looked appropriately abashed as she explained his son's silence. "But we talked almost every day once he went home. We used to joke about having to take second jobs just to pay off our phone bills. We'd talked about me coming over to New York for a couple of weeks for us to explain all of this and for me to meet Joe's family. And, I hadn't told Joe this but, I'd started looking at the feasibility of taking a six month sabbatical and coming to work with the NYPD. I was in love with your son sir. And I was ready to move to New York to give our relationship a real shot."
She stopped there and just sat looking at the man across the desk from her. He was examining her just as she was him but it was so different. He had no idea who she was beyond the fact that she was a stranger who walked into his office, unloaded a chunk of her life story onto him and then topped it with the fact that she was in love with his dead son. Oh if only I was finished, she thought dryly.
He didn't know her from a Jane Doe but she knew plenty about the man in front of her, and not just from the googling she'd done in her hotel that morning. Joe had idolised his father, he adored his entire family but the two she'd heard the most about were his baby brother Jamie and his rock of a father. That wasn't to say Joe couldn't find fault with his dad. He was a grown man and could tell his father was human just like the rest of them, he'd told Ellie about the temper that ran through the entire Reagan family that made for such spectacular Sunday dinners. But he'd also told her about the protective instinct which made this man a father bear that you did not ever want to cross, a fact which hadn't helped her nerves walking into this little meeting.
Hearing Joe talk about his family was something she'd never tired of in the months they'd known each other. An only child of a single father she had nothing to compare to Joe's tales of torturing and being tortured by his siblings only to be cuffed back into line by the gentle guidance of his parents. Or of the rarer occasions of truce between his siblings which gave him some of his sweetest memories. Like the time Joe and his older brother Danny had encouraged the guys at school that their sister Erin was not really available or the night when all three of them taught Jamie how to play poker before Danny left for Iraq with the Marines. Joe's mother had passed away a few years before Joe came to London and talking about her had still caused his smile to take on a bittersweet edge, an expression Ellie had recognised all too well. She'd seen it on her own face the times she caught herself reminiscing over her dad who'd passed away just after she finished her time as a probationary constable.
The PC was still watching her closely. He saw the way she was obviously thinking about his son. She kept looking at the photos that surrounded his office and Frank couldn't help wondering if she was attempting to put names and memories she'd learnt from Joe to the grins in the frames. But he had questions and she was going to answer them, especially if she was going to be returning to London soon.
"How did you find out what happened to Joe? And why didn't you tell us all of this sooner?" He couldn't help the hurt that leaked into his voice, his son had been keeping another massive secret when he died and then this woman had kept it to herself. A part of his son's life he had never known about was sitting in front of him and he couldn't help glancing at the photo of Joe he kept on the desk, not an NYPD portrait but a snap taken when they were fishing with Jamie at the pier one early morning only weeks before Joe had been killed. His son had been in love then and if this woman hadn't walked into his office this morning he never would have known it. He couldn't help feeling a little betrayed by the laughing young man with the fishing rod and mischievous eyes.
Mischief or love? A voice sounded inside his head which sounded strangely like Mary. You knew in your gut something was different those few months Frank, you just wrote it off as to do with the Templar when you learnt what happened to our boy but maybe it was this instead?
"I tried to phone Joe that night. I'd booked my leave to come over in three weeks to finally meet everyone and haul ourselves out of the closet Joe had been insisting we hide in! We were supposed to be talking flights so I'd get into JFK at a time when he could come and pick me up. A few weeks before I'd started to ask him why he couldn't just tell you about us. I mean I was planning on coming over soon so he'd only have to stand the questions for a few weeks but he said he'd had the greatest idea to just make it a surprise. I was trusting his judgement that it would be a pleasant surprise and not something either of us would come to regret. He was going to get Lydia Gonsalves to cover for him, apparently you'd been saying he should invite his new partner from warrant squad around for dinner for weeks so he could just tell you she'd be coming so there would be enough food and an extra place. Then Joe said we'd arrive together and he'd just introduce me as his girl. He had such a laughing fit when he thought about the looks on your faces I thought he was going to choke!" She looked a little sheepish not knowing how their plan for the grand reveal would have gone over four years ago let alone now when its mastermind was dead.
Okay so the look might have been mischief and love if he'd been planning that little stunt when Jamie took that photo, Mary's voice remarked inside Frank's head. Well our boy certainly had a sense of humour, in agreement with his wife's voice.
"You don't need to look so worried sergeant," Frank took pity on her and reassured her, his silence after her explanation seemed to have unnerved her slightly. "After the initial explosion the dust would have settled and we would have seen the funny side." How different that dinner would have been then. Three weeks after he died we were all still numb. "So Joe didn't answer the phone but that can't have been the only time he hadn't answered. None of us would have known to tell you so how did you find out he'd died?"
"The detective that Joe had been working with while he was in London found out from another one of the cops who'd come over. He knew we'd been dating and so he came and told me when I came in to finish up my paperwork at the end of my shift that day." Yeah the worst day of my life, let's find something else to think about Copter before the waterworks start. You've still got more to tell the poor man, remember! "I thought about using the leave and coming over to at least see Joe's grave even if I couldn't bring myself to meet you all. But then I realised to do one I'd have to do the other, I had no idea where Joe would have been buried, I knew that your house was in Bay Ridge but even then I had no clue which cemetery, and I couldn't bring myself to try to explain this to a family who'd just lost a man as wonderful as Joe."
"But why haven't you told us some time in the past four years? That's a long time to keep something like this secret and why now?"
Oh the million dollar question right there! Ready for bombshell number three Commissioner? Note to self Copter you really should have told someone where you were going this morning just in case the damage from this one is Hiroshima catastrophic… Damn Reagan temper, please don't come out to play!
