The 19th Christmas - James Patterson Page 0,75

To Rome.”

Joe loved the sound of her voice, Standard American with a hint of Italian. He said, “Two days? When can I see you? What’s your schedule?”

“I’m free until my flight on Friday.”

The last time he’d seen Franny, she’d been wearing footie pajamas and sleeping under a mobile of the cow jumping over the moon in the small bedroom with baby-farm-animal wallpaper in the Washington, DC, apartment. The time before that, she was also asleep. And before that, also sleeping, ad infinitum.

He tried to picture her as an adult. “Would you like to have lunch?”

“Today?”

“Yes. I can pick you up at your hotel at say—noon?”

“Perfect,” said his daughter—his elder daughter.

They ended the call and Joe spun his chair around and stared out the window at the blue sky. He remembered saying good-bye to her as she slept and then leaving their apartment, not knowing that Isabel was packed and ready to grab Franny and fly away.

What was her last memory of him?

Fighting with her mother, Isabel?

He shook his head, remembering his fractious marriage to his college girlfriend that had shown cracks and fissures right away and had only gotten worse after Franny’s birth. His work, the lengthy assignments away from home—it wasn’t what Isabel had wanted or expected in marriage.

One day in June he’d come home to find a note stating that she had taken their baby girl to Rome, where her parents lived. Next to that was her lawyer’s business card. After that, she’d cut off all contact.

Neither one of them had pushed for divorce, she for religious reasons, he because he thought she would change her mind. Fifteen years later, when Isabel finally filed, he had signed the papers and had to accept that his ex-wife’s parents were kind and that Isabel would take good care of Franny.

But had she?

What kind of woman had Franny become?

He swiveled back to face his desk and touched the phone, thinking now of other things he should have asked his all-grown-up daughter. One of them was “How will I know you?”

He just would.

Joe picked up the phone again and called Lindsay.

“Linds? I have something to tell you.”

Chapter 95

Joe dressed in a blue shirt, blue pants, and a blue-striped tie.

He brushed his teeth again, combed his hair again, ran a soft rag across his shoes. He wanted to look good for Francesca. He had never even said a proper good-bye to her. What if she hated him for some abandonment story Isabel had told her?

He shook his head. Would Isabel have done that? Yes.

Joe looked at the stiff staring back at him in the full-length mirror. He untucked his shirt, stripped off his tie, and pulled on his blue jacket. In the kitchen, Joe poured kibble into Martha’s bowl, locked up the apartment, and pressed the elevator call button.

He thought about Lindsay. She had known about Isabel and Franny since their first date, but they rarely talked about his first marriage—or hers. He was imagining the first meeting between Lindsay and Francesca when Mrs. Rose came out of her apartment across the hall.

“Wow, Joe, you look nice.”

“Thanks, Gloria. My daughter Francesca. She just called me. I haven’t seen her in a long time, not since she was this big.” He held out his hand to show someone about three feet tall.

“Oh. I didn’t know…how exciting,” she said, looking completely dumbfounded. “Have fun. Take pictures.”

Joe patted his phone in his jacket pocket, waved, and, telling himself to calm the hell down, got into the elevator. Out on the street, he unlocked his car, got behind the wheel, and drove toward the tony section of town called Pacific Heights. Even with heavy traffic, he arrived at the Drisco at a quarter to twelve.

To steady his nerves, Joe drove around the block twice, slowly, and finally parked in front of the hotel. He sat for a few minutes, awash with feelings—guilt, concern, excitement, more guilt. Should he have fought harder? Gone after Isabel with legal remedies? But he remembered how he’d felt at the time, that they’d put each other through enough stress and that being part of that had to be bad for Franny.

Joe got out of his car, took the short flight of steps to the hotel entrance, went to the front desk, and waited for a woman with four bags and several special requests to get checked in. When the clerk was finally free, Joe said, “I’m here to see Ms. Molinari.”

The clerk picked up the desk phone and listened, then said to