JUNE 7, 2009 – Frank

Frank stood in his study, silently staring out the window, watching as Danny and his family and Erin and Nicki headed toward their cars. Sunday dinners had become glum affairs this past month. Too many empty chairs at the table. Mary's, Joe's, and, more often than not, Jack Boyle's. Too much sadness. Too much loss. This Sunday, the day after what would have been Joe's 33rd birthday, had seemed especially wrong. Not that June 6th would ever feel right again, not with Joe lying next to Mary in the cemetery. Danny and Erin were trying too hard to compensate for the emptiness by arguing with each other, and Jamie… Something extra had been off with Jamie. He'd been nervous, jittery. Probably stressed out with preparing for the Bar exam.

"Dad?" Jamie knocked on the doorframe of the study. "Got a minute?"

Frank invited his son in. Henry followed a minute later. "Drink?"

"Sure. But not too much. I've got to drive back to my place later."

"Go ahead and make it a big one. He's not going anywhere for a while. And refill yours also, Dad. You're gonna need it." Joe perched himself on the couch behind Jamie.

Frank handed Jamie the glass. The last time Jamie had come to him looking this nervous, he'd been asking for his grandmother's ring to give to Sydney. "Everything good with Sydney?"

Jamie smiled weakly. "Yeah. She's fine. Her parents were in town today. That's why she couldn't make it to dinner." He sipped his drink.

"Kiddo, delaying won't make this any better. Tell him. And remember, chin up, shoulders back."

Jamie spun his glass between his hands and adjusted his posture on the couch. He looked up at his father. "Dad, I'm leaving the law and applying to the Academy, for the September intake."

For a minute, no one moved, or even breathed. Finally, Frank silently walked over to his desk and poured more Scotch into his glass. He resisted the urge to fill it up to the brim, or just pick up the bottle and toss back as much as he could in one gulp. He tried to wrap his head around the news his son had just delivered. Jamie. His baby boy, grown up into a Harvard lawyer. Giving up his law career. Going to the Academy in September. So soon after they'd buried Joe.

"Dad?"

"You're sure about this?"

Jamie nodded. "Yes, sir. I've sent my application to the Academy, and if they accept me, I'm going."

"No reason they wouldn't," Frank commented. He looked down at the picture on his desk of Mary, Jamie and him, taken three years earlier at Harvard just moments after Jamie had received his undergraduate degree. "You know your mother wanted you to be an attorney. Made me promise you'd go into the law."

Jamie sighed. "I'm sorry for disappointing Mom. But it wouldn't be the right career for me."

"I think she knew that." Frank put one hand on his desk, over the drawer where a letter Mary had written to Jamie currently resided. Mary, I think it's the right time. He opened the drawer, pulled out the letter and handed it to Jamie. "Your mother asked me to give this to you after you passed the bar exam. I think she'll understand if I give it to you now."

Jamie looked down at the envelope. His name, in his mother's elegant handwriting, spread across the front.

"Open it," Frank prompted.

Jamie carefully opened the envelope and pulled out the one-page letter inside.

My dear Jameson, he read.

When you read this, you'll be a full-fledged attorney; graduated from law school and admitted to the Bar; ready to go out and do your part toward making the world better. I wish I could be there to tell you how proud I am of you. How proud I am that you've developed into a man of integrity and strength. How proud I am of you for following to its conclusion the path you father and I pushed you on.

But I have come to realize that maybe that path we wanted for you isn't the one you would have chosen for yourself. I saw this past summer how you admire the work your father and brothers are doing, and how dissatisfied you were with the work you were doing. I thank you for staying on the path through law school, but it may be time for you to choose a different one. More than anything, I want you to be happy and satisfied with your life. If being a lawyer will satisfy you, be the best one you can be. If you want to follow a different path, even one that leads to the NYPD, do so with your whole heart and with my blessing.

I know you will succeed in whatever you choose to do and will be a shining light bettering the world through whatever vocation you choose.

Love forever,

Mom

Jamie grabbed a handful of tissues from the box his father was holding out to him and pressed them to his eyes.

Frank gave Jamie a minute to pull himself together. "Your mother knew something wasn't right. She didn't want you to force yourself into a career that wasn't right for you, because you thought that's what she wanted."

"So, you can accept my decision to join the NYPD?"

"Accept your decision, respect your decision, be damn proud of you. Just don't ask me to be happy about it right now."

Jamie tried to smile. "Maybe later?"

"Later," Frank agreed.

"Come on Pop, of course you'll be happy for him. You don't want him to spend his whole life being miserable as a lawyer. And you'll have all your boys following family tradition."

Frank's thoughts turned to another envelope that was sitting in his desk. Joe's life insurance policy, and the beneficiary designation that put most of the proceeds in a trust for his niece and nephews, to fund their college educations, and part in a trust for Jamie, to be given to him if, three years later, he was serving as an NYPD officer. That provision suddenly made sense. "Jamie, did your brother… did Joe know?"

"Pop, don't tell him. Make that a surprise for him. I don't want the money to influence his decision."

Jamie nodded. "He found out what I was thinking last November. Said if I finished law school, he'd stand behind me when I told the rest of you."

"And I'm here, kiddo. Right behind you."