The Voice Inside

36

It didn’t take long for Frost to regret going to the family dinner.

“A toast!” his father said, raising a bottle of beer in the direction of Duane and Tabby. His voice was loud, but everyone in Boulevard was loud on Friday night. “To my oldest son and the girl who finally managed to get him to spend ten minutes outside that food truck of his. Honestly, Tabby, I didn’t think it could be done. Duane, you make sure this one sticks around.”

Tabby, who sat between Duane and Frost, poked Frost’s brother in the side. “But no pressure or anything, right?”

Duane chuckled. His voice was as loud as Ned’s. “Just for the record, it’s every bit as hard getting Tabby out of the kitchen in this place as it is getting me out of mine.”

“Or getting me into a kitchen at all,” Frost added to no one in particular.

They all drank. Frost, Ned, and Tabby had beer, and Duane had his usual carrot juice. His mother had a glass of chardonnay.

Tabby had arranged for a table where they could see the frenzied work of the chefs in the restaurant’s open kitchen. That was where Tabby could be found on most evenings. The interior of Boulevard was like stepping into a ’20s French bistro, with hanging art-deco lights, bronze sculptures of half-naked women, iron grillwork, and a brick ceiling over their heads. Even the signage made the place look like a station on the Paris Metro line.

Frost’s mother eyed him from the opposite side of the table. He was waiting for the quiet verbal stiletto, and he didn’t have to wait long.

“And now that Duane finally has a girl in his life,” Janice murmured from behind her wineglass, “perhaps the day may actually come when we can say the same thing about Frost.”

Tabby covered her mouth, and Frost knew she was laughing hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. She slung an arm around his shoulder and whispered in his ear, “Aren’t families great?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he replied. “I’ve only had mine.”

Duane leaned forward. His brother’s long black hair was loose tonight, and he wore a tie for what was probably the first time in a decade. The tie was for his parents, but below the tablecloth, he wore cargo shorts.

“Actually, bro, is there a secret you want to share with us?” Duane asked with a wicked little grin.

Frost was puzzled. “Um, no.”

“Then I guess it’s up to me to spill the beans. Tabby and I stopped at Frost’s place on the way over here so we could drop off a care package for the weekend. Frost was already gone, so I let the two of us inside. And my, my, my, what did we find? There was a girl in residence at Chateau Shack.”

“And a very pretty girl, too,” Tabby added.

“With a travel bag in hand,” Duane went on.

His mother looked cynical. “Frost, is this true?”

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” he told them, bursting their bubble. “It’s professional, not personal. Eden’s a writer working on a book. She’s helping me, and I’m helping her. I had reason to think she might not be safe at her place, so I suggested she stay with me for a couple days. That’s all.”

“So are you denying that Eden Shay is pretty?” Tabby cross-examined him.

Frost looked at her in mock exasperation. “How is this helping?”

“It’s not,” she said with a wink.

“Yes, Eden is pretty. And no, we are not dating.”

His mother sighed under her breath, but in a way that Frost couldn’t miss it. She had an appetizer of sea scallops in front of her, and she speared one and ate it while staring everywhere in the restaurant except at her son.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait long for the attention to shift away from himself. After his parents decided that there was nothing new in his life, they turned back to Duane and Tabby. Duane talked about the food truck and the award he’d received in the Best of the Bay rankings in San Francisco magazine. The executive chef and owner of Boulevard stopped by to sing Tabby’s praises and to spar with Duane about James Beard awards. Ned and Janice talked about Tucson and the hummingbird aviary at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. For the most part, Frost sat silently and listened to the conversation bounce back and forth across the table. The food made it worthwhile, but two hours still passed with agonizing slowness.

Dessert was never optional at Easton family dinners, so he chose the dark-chocolate cream puff, which was Tabby’s recommendation. She shared it with him. As they finished, Frost thought the evening was finally over, but then Duane and his mother ordered espressos, and his father ordered a double shot of Dry Sack. They were still going strong.

Frost excused himself from the table. He navigated the long, narrow restaurant and found the restrooms in a corridor beyond the bar. He simply wanted a couple of minutes of quiet to himself, and the men’s room was empty. He splashed water on his face at the sink and stared into his reflection. His eyes stared back, hard and blue. His brown-and-gold hair was swept back over his head. He rubbed a hand along his trimmed beard, and his forehead was a furrow of discontent. It was good to see his parents again; it was good to see Duane showing every indication of being in love. And yet a deep, empty cavern surrounded him, like a moat with no bridge.

He left the restroom. Someone stood in the dimly lit hallway, waiting for him.

“Hello there,” Tabby said.

Even in the shadows, her red hair was luminous, and she wore a simple white dress that still managed to look like Oscar fashion.

“Hey.”

“You were gone a while. I was worried about you.”

“There’s nothing to worry about.”

“I thought maybe you were upset — I mean, because of Jess—”

“It’s not that.” He came and shared the wall beside her. Their shoulders brushed together. “I can only handle so much family togetherness. Ned and Duane are crazy extroverts. They’re more out there than me. And Janice — well, she and I are cut from the same cloth, and that’s not always a good thing.”

“Is that all it is with you, Frost?”

He wondered what she really wanted to know.

Is there something else on your mind?

Is it me?

“That’s all,” he said.

No, that was not all. He stared awkwardly at the floor. His dress shoes needed polishing; they didn’t shine. Tabby’s heels were black pumps that positively glistened. Everything about her glistened.

“So, you and Eden Shay,” Tabby said.

“There’s no me and Eden Shay.”

“I heard what you said, but I know what I saw in her face. She’d like there to be something more between you.”

Frost didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to talk about Eden. Not with Tabby.

“She doesn’t have to be your Jane Doe, you know,” Tabby added with a teasing smile.

“Duane talks too much.”

“Oh, he means well. He wants you to have someone. We all do.”

He heard her use the word we, as if she were pushing him into Eden’s arms and away from her. He wondered if she was thinking about the moment they’d shared at the harbor, or whether she’d already forgotten it.

“I’m fine,” Frost said.

“Sure, but does fine mean being alone? Not every girl has to be the one. Maybe Eden is just Miss November. What’s your hesitation? Is she a deep track, like Jess?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what Eden is,” Frost said.

“But she’s not ‘Shut Up and Dance,’ like me?” Tabby asked, smiling again.

“You are way more than that,” he told her before he could stop himself.

“Thank you.” Her face had a little blush in the shadows, but then she changed the subject. “I met Eden a few years ago, you know.”

“I know. She mentioned it.”

“I confess, I didn’t like her much.”

“She mentioned that, too.”

“I don’t think it was her. It was me. She caught me at a dark time. She was asking about Nina, and I didn’t appreciate anyone prying into our lives.”

“Sure.”

Tabby picked up on his reluctance to talk. “I’m sorry, Frost. Sometimes I get too personal with people too fast. I didn’t mean to go where I don’t belong.”

“You didn’t,” Frost said.

“Well, I’m making you uncomfortable. That’s the last thing I wanted.”

She looked unhappy with herself, and she put distance between them and smoothed her dress. They stared at each other in strained silence. Neither one of them knew what to say. When that had gone on for too long, Frost returned to the busy restaurant, and Tabby followed behind him. She took her seat again without looking at him, but he didn’t bother sitting down. He was ready to leave. He said his good-byes to his family and tried to pay for his meal, but his father wouldn’t let him, as Frost expected. He kissed his mother, and Janice gave him one of those maternal looks that didn’t change no matter how old a child got.

“We will see you tomorrow afternoon, right?” she asked. “At the Lubins’ for the support group?”

“I’ll be there,” he said.

He suspected that Janice would only believe it when he actually walked in the door.

Frost picked his way between the restaurant tables and exited onto the sidewalk at the Embarcadero. The Bay Bridge was lit up as it crossed to Yerba Buena Island. Bushy heads of palm trees were silhouetted in the median of the wide avenue. He still felt unsettled and unhappy, but he was liberated by being outside in the cool city air. He turned toward Mission Street to walk to the garage where he’d parked his Suburban.

As he did, he stepped into a faint cross wind of cigarette smoke. It was distinctive and acrid. He’d smelled that smoke before. Inside his own house.

Frost spun around quickly.

Across the Embarcadero, in the streetlights near the bay, he saw an old Cadillac sedan, its lights off but its engine rumbling loudly, like a death rattle. The driver’s window was open, but he couldn’t see inside, other than to spot the pinpoint ember of a cigarette. He started across the street, but as soon as he did, the window rolled shut, and the Cadillac peeled away into an illegal U-turn across the trolley tracks and disappeared at high speed.

He couldn’t read the license plate, but he knew who it was. He’d seen that Cadillac in front of a seedy house in the Crocker-Amazon neighborhood.

Phil Cutter was watching him.

The first thing Frost did when he got home was check the locks on the doors and windows. Eden watched him curiously, without asking questions. He went from room to room, but there were no signs of tampering or break-ins. Everything was secure.

When he was done, he returned to the living room. Eden sat in a lotus position on the floor, with a laptop balanced on her calves. Cheater glasses pinched the end of her nose. She had a half-full glass of white wine on the carpet beside her. He didn’t recognize the music playing on his Echo, but it had a new-age serenity. The overhead chandelier was dimmed. Eden had lit a fire in the wood fireplace, and the logs crackled and smoked.

He sat down beside her. The fire made it hot.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Phil Cutter was following me. I wanted to make sure that Rudy wasn’t trying to find you while I was away.”

“He doesn’t want me. He wants Maria Lopes. Whoever that is.”

“I thought the same thing before Jess was killed,” Frost said. “I don’t want to be wrong again.”

“Well, I like being worried about.”

She drank her wine, but her gaze didn’t leave him. The firelight danced around her face. A few of her corkscrew curls swished her forehead. She lifted the glasses from her nose and put them aside, and she closed the cover of her laptop. There was no misreading her eyes. She’d already admitted that she wanted him. He wanted her, too, but with a hollow, physical need that he hated giving in to. And yet he knew he would. Tonight, with his brain fogged by alcohol and Tabby, he didn’t care.

“I didn’t even know that fireplace worked,” Frost said, stalling.

“You’ve never lit a fire here?”

“Never.”

“There was wood in the garage,” she said.

“It must have been there for years.”

Eden leaned back on her hands. “I brought some personal things with me. Not for long, just a day or two. I put them in the master bedroom. You said you didn’t use it.”

“I don’t,” Frost said.

“Shame. It’s a soft bed. Really nice.”

“Good.”

The dance went on. They both knew where this dance went.

“Shack’s hiding in the closet up there,” Eden said. “Doesn’t he like me?”

“That’s one of his spots. He goes there when the world gets too overwhelming.”

“Your cat has issues?” Eden asked.

“He’s very complex. And protective. When the old woman who owned this place was killed, Shack wouldn’t leave her. Practically mauled anyone who got close. But I persuaded him everything was going to be okay.”

“That’s sweet,” Eden said.

They didn’t say anything else. They didn’t need to. Frost took a long look at her body, from the smoothness of her face to the gray silk blouse with two buttons undone to the shorts that left most of her honey-colored legs bare. She waited for him to start. He slid a hand behind her neck and pulled her to him, and she bent into the kiss. Their lips met, soft, warm, and wet. Her fingers worked gracefully on each button of his shirt.

He laid her back on the carpet, and his body slid on top of hers. He was propped on his forearms. They kissed again; they struggled piece by piece out of their clothes. As her blouse opened, as he parted the silk, he was conscious of the scar just above the hollow of her neck.

She saw his eyes go to it, and she said, “Touch it. Please.”

His thumb caressed the smooth gash.

“Kiss it.”

He leaned down. His mouth and his tongue found it.

“Oh my God,” she murmured.

Then they weren’t tender anymore. They were rough with each other, as if they both had something to prove. They didn’t go upstairs; they didn’t bother with the soft bed. They stayed in front of the hot fire until every inch of their skin was damp with sweat.