46

WEDNESDAY, 11:15 AM

JESSICA WAS IN HER FATHER’S KITCHEN, washing dishes, when the “talk” came. Like all Italian American families, anything of any importance was discussed, dissected, resected, and solved in only one room of the house. The kitchen.

This day would be no different.

Instinctively, Peter picked up a dish towel and stationed himself next to his daughter. “You having a good time?” he asked, the real conversation he wanted to have hiding just beneath his policeman’s tongue.

“Always,” Jessica said. “Aunt Carmella’s cacciatore brings me back.” She said this, lost, for the moment, in a pastel nostalgia of her childhood in this house, in memories of those carefree years at family functions with her brother; of Christmas shopping at the May Company, of Eagles games at a frigid Veterans Stadium, of seeing Michael in his uniform for the first time: so proud, so fearful.

God, she missed him.

“. . . the sopressata?”

Her father’s question yanked her back to the present. “I’m sorry. What did you say, Dad?”

“Did you try the sopressata?”

“No.”

“Out of this world. From Chickie’s. I’ll make you a plate.”

Jessica had never once left a party at her father’s house without a plate. Nor had anyone else for that matter.

“You want to tell me what’s wrong, Jess?”

“Nothing.”

The word fluttered around the room for a while, then took a nosedive, as it always did when she tried it with her father. He always knew.

“Right, sweetie,” Peter said. “Tell me.”

“It’s nothing,” Jessica said. “Just, you know, the usual. Work.”

Peter took a plate, dried it. “You nervous about the case?”

“Nah.”

“Good.”

“Way beyond nervous,” Jessica said, handing her father another dinner plate. “Scared to death is more like it.”

Peter laughed. “You’ll catch him.”

“You seem to be overlooking the fact that I’ve never worked a homicide in my life.”

“You’ll do fine.”

Jessica didn’t believe it, but, somehow, when her father said it, it sounded like the truth. “I know.” Jessica hesitated, then asked, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“And I want you to be completely honest with me.”

“Of course, honey. I’m a policeman. I always tell the truth.”

Jessica glared at him over the top of her glasses.

“Okay. Point taken,” Peter said. “What’s up?”

“Did you have anything to do with me getting into Homicide?”

“Not a thing, Jess.”

“Because, if you did . . .”

“What?”

“Well, you might think you’re helping me, but you’re not. There’s a very good chance I’m gonna fall flat on my face here.”

Peter smiled, reached over with a squeaky-clean hand, and grabbed Jessica’s cheek, the way he had since she was a baby. “Not this face,” he said. “This is an angel’s face.”

Jessica blushed and smiled. “Pa. Yo. I’m pushing thirty here. A little too old for the visa bella routine.”

“Never,” Peter said.

They fell silent for a little while. Then, as dreaded, Peter asked: “You getting everything you need from the labs?”

“Well, so far, I guess,” Jessica said.

“Want me to make a call?”

“No!” Jessica replied, a little more forcefully than she wanted. “I mean, not yet. I mean, I’d like to, you know . . .”

“You’d like to do it on your own.”

“Yeah.”

“What, we just met over here?”

Jessica blushed again. She could never fool her father. “I’ll be okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll leave it up to you then. Somebody drags their feet, you call me.”

“I will.”

Peter smiled, gave Jessica a sloppy kiss on the top of her head, just as Sophie came tearing into the room with her second cousin Nanette, both little girls wild-eyed with all the sugar. Peter beamed. “All my girls under one roof,” he said. “Who’s got it better than me?”