Three years ago she had been on a train to Brussels. She was traveling on a red passport, the contents of which she couldn't read, though Frank had assured her it was authentic. He and Joe had similar passports, but Joe hadn't opted for Frank and Nancy's wire-rimmed glasses and business attire.
Joe was restless. "How much longer until we get there?" He glanced irritably at his watch.
"Long enough," Frank told him.
"I'm surprised we didn't rate a faster train," Nancy said.
"The conference doesn't start until tomorrow and the threats were only for after Mbatu's arrival, so there was no need. Although I don't think they factored in the cost of replacing the carpet," Frank said, glancing down at his brother's pacing feet.
"Very funny," Joe said. "There has to be something to eat around here."
The instep of Frank's gleaming brown shoe was barely touching Nancy's sensible pump, under the table. He gave his brother a bland glance, a slight shrug.
After Joe had disappeared through the sliding doors connecting the cars Frank stood and set off in the other direction, toward the sleeping berths. Nancy followed, her heart in her throat.
And then they were alone behind some anonymous door. His hand at her hair, his mouth on hers. He pulled her up into his arms, his fingertips hesitant on the silk stocking stretched taut over her knee. His glasses bumped hers.
She pulled back, then, and he lowered her, her mouth wet and red, both of them panting. She drew the back of her hand over her mouth.
"Ned," she whispered, almost mournful. "Callie," he replied, the same note of regret in his voice.
Even then, she stared up at him, stared at his mouth and the line of his jaw in the dark, and her hand rose to cup it gently. He put his hand over hers and waited. Again she felt the impetus to tilt her head back and wait for the kiss she knew he wanted to repeat, continue, never stop; again she felt the weight of the name, the breath she couldn't take back. Her gaze flicked to his and they trembled on the edge of it.
She closed her eyes and let her head drop and it was broken. She slipped her hand from beneath his, ran it over her smooth hair, tugged her skirt an imagined inch down.
"Sorry," he said.
One glance at his face told her that he had as little regret as she.
--
In the middle of a Swiss lake she looked at him. They were drifting slowly with the wind, side by side on their stomachs in the bottom of a shallow boat, dressed in black and quiet as death, just in case they had been followed. Joe was already at the extraction point; the recovery had gone much more smoothly than planned, and they were a full twelve hours ahead of schedule.
"You keep looking at me," he breathed, the light stubble on his chin scraping against the slats.
Nancy folded her arm and cradled her chin. "Ned didn't take it well."
"You told him?"
His voice held nothing but mild surprise. She looked at him again.
"You haven't told Callie."
"No," he admitted quietly. "It was..."
Their gazes caught and locked. "It was nothing?" she finished for him, softly, but didn't break away.
His lips quirked up in a smile. "No," he said. "It was something."
They dragged the boat onto the shore together, covered it in loose branches and headed into a shack at the edge of the water. Frank gave the landscape a quick once-over, then followed her inside.
"I'll take the first watch."
Nancy tugged her sweater off, revealing a black tank top. She folded the sweater to serve as a pillow and curled up on her side, facing him.
"You gonna be okay?"
He smiled. "We won't be here that long."
She felt heavy, disoriented, slow and dull when he woke her. His fingers on her arm. Sometime in the night a light rain had begun. The air was thick with it, the scent of old leaves in moonlight. She turned her face into the sweater and moaned something, her eyelashes fluttering.
"Wake up," he murmured. His fingers trailed up her arm.
She gazed up at him. She could hear wind howling against the creaking walls, the rain, and then only her heart, her fingers running through his hair as he leaned down to kiss her.
When they joined Joe three hours later, their eyes didn't meet. "Everything go okay?" Joe asked, as he turned the key and the engine rumbled to life.
Nancy smiled vaguely, her downcast eyes blank. "I claim shotgun," she said.
--
Nancy had not heard from Frank for a month, Ned for two. After her checkup, she and George were going to make the drive up to Emerson.
For the first time in her life, Nancy felt like she could say it. That she could tell Ned she was willing to take the next step, with him. If he could forgive her. Over the past month her desire to see him, to hear his voice, had grown nearly unbearable. He would understand, he would...
"Nancy," the doctor said, returning, clipboard in hand as Nancy sat with her legs dangling over the edge of the exam table, in a paper gown, a faint blushed glow coloring her cheeks, shading her pleased smile.
Half an hour later, when she pulled up at George's house, Nancy's face was ashen. George pulled open the passenger door of Nancy's Mustang and ducked inside, her dark hair falling over her smiling face. She let her backpack fall into the seat, then gazed at Nancy.
"You okay? Did something happen on the way here?"
Nancy dragged a hand through her hair. "Um," she said faintly. "I don't know."
Bess arrived half an hour later, swinging the door of George's room open dramatically. "All right, I'm here."
Nancy was sitting in George's desk chair, one leg folded under her. George was on the bed, her right leg jumping impatiently on the carpet. The walls of George's bedroom were lined with trophies and plaques, framed snapshots of her and the two of them in tennis whites and ski outfits. Her bedspread was a utilitarian navy blue. Nancy had turned on the radio upon entrance, but otherwise the two had sat in silence, waiting for their third to arrive.
Bess looked between the two of them and reached into the bag she was carrying, pulled out a pint of ice cream and a spoon, which she handed wordlessly to Nancy. Nancy mechanically worked the lid off and took a bite, held it on her tongue as Bess joined her cousin on the bed.
"A month ago," Nancy began. Her voice started shaking and she took another bite of ice cream, waiting for her nerves to steady.
"Take your time," Bess said.
Nancy nodded. "A month ago when we were over in Switzerland on that case, and we were on our way out of the country, Frank and I were..."
The cousins waited. George made impatient motioning gestures, but comprehension dawned with slow terrible brilliance in Bess's eyes. "Did something happen like on the train?"
Nancy looked down at the melting carton of ice cream, stuck the spoon in and put it on George's desk. She put her palms together and pressed them between her knees, looking down. "We were together. And now I'm pregnant."
After a beat she sipped in a breath and glanced up, looked back and forth between the two pairs of staring, shocked eyes. George was the first to recover. "But we were going up to see Ned today?"
"Have you told him? Or him? Either of them?" Bess asked. "And how was it?"
Nancy smiled faintly to herself and made a soft noise in her throat. "It wasn't at all like I thought it would be," she said. "I don't know. It wasn't very romantic. We'd been on the run for five hours. I was..." She shrugged. "Frank and I haven't talked since, and I haven't told him. I didn't know until the doctor-- told me--"
At that the first tear traced down her pale cheek, and Bess rushed over to put her arms around Nancy's softly trembling shoulders. "It's okay, it's okay."
Nancy shook her head. "It's not okay," she cried. "He loves Callie. He's always loved Callie. He didn't tell Callie about the train. He's with her. He loves her. The entire time, when we-- he didn't say he loved me."
"Nan," Bess murmured.
"I don't know what I'm going to do."
--
By the time Nancy left George's house two hours later, she had her choices, puzzled over and elaborated by their shocked discussion. Go to Ned, tell him everything, see how he would respond. Go to Ned, tell him some things, wait to break the major news to him later. Go to Frank, do the same.
Go to neither of them. Wait.
In all the years they had known each other, all the moments they had shared, Frank and Nancy had never said the words that had been as comfortable between Nancy and Ned as breath. Infatuation and longing, that was the language they spoke.
Nancy sat in her idling car, staring at the phone on the passenger seat. If she waited a night to decide, she didn't know she would be when she woke up in her bed the next morning, the ways knowing would change her. Already it spread like a flush through her tired veins, the uncertainty and the fear.
She picked up the phone and placed her call.
"Hey."
"Hey," she said. "We need to talk."
"Go ahead," Frank replied.
--
During the three months they had been planning their wedding, the three months and one day since she had given Frank the news, every week or so Nancy lay in her twin bed in her father's house and looked at the telephone, and the picture of Ned which stood on the other side of it. In the framed snapshot, he was smiling. Relaxed and easy. Looking at the picture made her remember his voice. Remembering his voice made her want to hear it.
When she put her hand on the phone, she had to fight the urge to sneak out of the house and smoke a cigarette.
She'd started smoking after her first conversation with Frank, after giving him the news. Just the one cigarette, just to calm her nerves, with no harm done. She'd continued once she figured out that even though he didn't love her, he was resigned to doing the right thing. Breaking up with Callie and announcing his engagement to Nancy, those were the right things. He had informed Carson of his intentions, he spent long weekends in River Heights pouring over wedding magazines with her. He took her on a weekend trip up to New York, to show her the house he wanted to rent. For them.
Some nights she was so lonely that the impulse to call Ned, just hear his voice, for just a moment, was almost impossible to resist.
Frank had said the words when he'd shown her the diamond solitaire, when he'd slid it onto her passive finger. He took her into his arms and murmured, with a somber tone that broke her heart, "I love you."
Despite herself she had remembered Ned's marriage proposal, half a lifetime ago, on a bridge over the river, after an expensive dinner and a dozen roses. She remembered his hands on hers and the warmth of his gaze. She remembered the thousands of times he'd told her he loved her. Snowball fights and camping trips, a hundred movies watched in her father's living room, dinners at his parents' house, parties at his frat. A million kisses and matching promises that she would never leave his side for long.
She let her palm rest on her belly. She had made her decision. She couldn't deny the physical attraction she did feel to Frank, she couldn't deny that they were friends, that everything about him was... that obviously... that they were having a baby together.
As the result of one hasty, spontaneous and, she almost couldn't even whisper it in the privacy of her own head, slightly disappointing night.
The night before her wedding to another man, she almost called Ned. Almost. She picked up the phone, the dial tone humming, her thumb resting over the first key.
But she couldn't. She couldn't do it. She was afraid of what she would say, afraid of what she would hear coming out of her own mouth. Afraid of not knowing what the future would bring when she heard his voice, after five months of silence.
So she hung up the phone and snuck out of the house for one last cigarette before she went through with it. Swearing to herself that she'd do the right thing too, that she owed Frank that much. That she would not call Ned in the next twelve hours. She could last, she could make it.
If she didn't hear Ned's voice before that ring was on her finger, everything would be fine, she could do it.
Twenty-four hours later she was in a honeymoon suite looking down at the rings which marked her as Frank Hardy's wife.
