Liam shrugs. “Brenda wouldn’t necessarily know. Taryn didn’t tell her everything.”

Frankie thinks about the secrets her own daughters have kept from her: The birth control pills that she found in Gabby’s underwear drawer. The boy who’d been sneaking into Sibyl’s bedroom, until the night Frankie pulled her service weapon on him. Yes, girls were very good at keeping secrets from their mothers.

“Was there another boyfriend?” Mac asks.

“I don’t know of one,” says Liam.

“Ever see her with anyone else?”

“Just that classmate of hers. Guy who hung around her all the time. I don’t know his name.”

“You think she was involved with him?”

“You mean, like her boyfriend?” He laughs. “No way.”

“Why not?”

“If you saw him, you’d understand. The kid’s as big as a blimp. She probably let him hang around with her out of pity. I can’t think of any other reason.”

“Friendship, maybe? A dazzling personality?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Liam snorts, because he can’t imagine being supplanted by a fat kid. He has the blind self-confidence of someone who knows damn well he’s good looking, who has never doubted his self-worth. Frankie decides she does not like this boy after all.

“Why do you think she killed herself, Liam?”

He shakes his head. “Like I said, we lost touch. I wouldn’t know.”

“She was your girlfriend. You’ve been together since high school. You must have some idea why she did it.”

He thinks about it for a moment, but only for a moment. As if the question isn’t important enough to rack his brain over. “Really, I don’t.” He glances down at his Apple Watch. “I’m meeting someone in twenty minutes. Are we done here?”

“What an asshole,” says Frankie as she and Mac eat lunch in the Boston PD canteen.

“Comes with being a golden boy,” says Mac. “I knew a few kids like him when I was growing up. Arrogant jerks. Thought they were something special, when all they did was hit the genetic lottery. Wish I’d gotten a few of those genes.”

“What’s wrong with your genes?”

“You mean, aside from the fact I’ve got diabetes, male-pattern baldness, and rosacea?”

“I don’t think rosacea’s genetic, Mac.”

“No? Well, somehow, I caught it from my mom.” He hoists the ham-and-cheese sandwich to his mouth and takes a giant bite. Given his weight and his hypertension, ham and cheese are not what he should be eating, but that sandwich looks damn tempting to Frankie, compared to her Caesar salad. Frankie doesn’t even like salads, but this morning she glimpsed her reflection in the ladies’ restroom, and it confirmed what her ever-tightening waistband already tells her. Salads it will have to be until her trousers stop pinching. Until she doesn’t grimace every time she glances in a mirror.

“So you got any plans for tonight?” he asks.

“I think it’ll be TV and bed.” She resignedly spears a romaine leaf with her fork and chews it without enthusiasm. “Why do you ask?”

“If you’ve got no plans tonight, Patty’s got this cousin.”

“Of course she does.”

“He’s sixty-two, has a good job, owns his own house. And he’s got no criminal record.”

“Ah, a real winner.”

“Patty thinks you’d really like him.”

“I’m not in the market, Mac.”

“But don’t you ever think about getting married again?”

“No.”

“Seriously? Someone to come home to every night? Someone to grow old with?”

“Okay. Yeah.” Frankie puts down her fork. “I do think about it. But there aren’t any Romeos beating down my door at the moment.”

“This cousin’s real nice, and Patty’s anxious for you two to meet. We can keep it casual, just a double date with beer and burgers. If you get antsy, you just have to give me the signal, and you can make your escape.”

Frankie picks up her fork and listlessly moves lettuce around on her plate. “Does her cousin know I’m a cop?”

“Yeah. She told him.”

“And he’s still interested in meeting me? Because that usually stops ’em cold.”

“Patty says he likes strong women.”

“Who are also armed?”

“Just don’t wave it around. Be your usual charming self. It’ll be great.”

“I don’t know, Mac. After that last blind date . . .”

“You know why that went wrong? It’s ’cause you let your daughters set it up. Who the hell sets up their mom with a bartender?”

“Well, he was pretty hot. And he made a mean martini.”

“You should always start with the background check.” He gives a bow. “And yes, you can thank me for that. At least with Patty’s cousin, you know right off the bat he’s okay.”

Okay. When had okay become the best she could hope for in a man? When did she stop seeking the thrill of raging hormones and a pounding heart and settle for the merely acceptable?

“What’s this cousin’s name?”

“Tom.”

“Tom what?”

“Blankenship. He’s a widower with two grown kids. And like I said, I ran a background on him. Not even a parking ticket.”

“Sounds like stellar dating material.”

Tonight is billed as nothing more than beer and burgers at a pub on Brighton Avenue, so why is she still standing in front of her closet, debating what to wear? She has not been on a date in months, not since the hot-but-larcenous bartender. She doubts this evening will turn out any better, but there is always that chance, that cruel glimmer of hope, that this man could be the one, and she doesn’t want to blow it. So she stands perusing her closet for just the right outfit.

Not the blue dress, which she outgrew about two sizes ago. She yanks it off the hanger and tosses it onto a growing pile that’s bound for the Goodwill donation bin. Her green dress has stains in the armpits, so into the donation pile that goes as well. Defeated by her pitiful wardrobe, she finally rakes out her tried-and-true black pantsuit. It’s who she is anyway, a pantsuit kind of gal.

Finally dressed and ready to go, she walks into the living room to collect her coat from the closet.

Her daughter Gabby looks up from her magazine and makes a face. “Oh, Mom. Are you really going to wear that, tonight?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“This is supposed to be a date, not a court appearance. Why not put on a dress? Something sexy?”

“It’s thirty-three degrees outside.”

“Sexy requires sacrifice.”

“Says who?”

“Says this article.” Gabby flips the magazine around to show her mother a photo of a dewy-faced model in a red leather minidress.

Frankie scowls at the six-inch heels. “Yeah. No.”

“C’mon, Mom, just make an effort. Sibyl and I think you’d look pretty tasty in spike heels. You can borrow mine.”

“First of all, daughters should not use the word tasty and Mom in the same sentence, unless it refers to food. And second, I really don’t care if I look tasty.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Okay, maybe I do.” Frankie thrusts her arms into the sleeves of her coat. “But not for some guy I’ve never even met.”

“Wait. Did Mac set up this blind date?”

“Yes.”

Gabby groans and looks back at her magazine. “Then you might as well just go as you are.”

“Wish me luck. I might be home late.”

Gabby flips a page. “I doubt it.”

“. . . and then when our kids were still in high school, she went to culinary school and got her degree at age forty-four. Started a whole new career when she opened her own catering business. Man, did we eat well, the kids and me! She picked up a ton of clients up on Beacon Hill, doing their Christmas parties, New Year’s, bar mitzvahs . . .”

Frankie glances at her watch, takes another gulp of beer, and wonders how to gracefully slip out of the pub and go home. How much more can the man say about his saintly wife, Theresa, who’s been dead now for seventeen months? Not a year and a half but a precise seventeen months, his status as a widower tallied the same way parents tally a toddler’s age. That’s how fresh his loss still feels to him.

When Frankie first glimpsed her date across the pub, sitting with Mac and Patty, she had high hopes for the evening. Tom is trim and clean shaven, and he still possesses most of his hair. When they shook hands, his grip was firm, and he looked her in the eye as he smiled. They ordered drinks and chicken wings for the table. She told him she had twin daughters. He told her he had daughters too. Then he started talking about his late wife.

That was two pitchers of beer ago.

Patty announces brightly: “I’m off to the ladies’ room.” As she stands up, she gives her husband a poke in the arm.

“Hm? Oh yeah, I’ll get us another round of beer,” says Mac and obediently rises from his chair as well.

Frankie knows exactly why they are leaving her alone with Tom-who-has-no-criminal-record. Patty views every unmarried acquaintance as a personal challenge, and Frankie has been her most vexing project.

Left alone at the table, both Frankie and Tom sit in painful silence for a moment, both of them staring at the platter of now-ravaged chicken wings.