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Tonight I’m being celebrated asa hero. That’s what everyone around the table is calling me anyway, and you bet I’m gonna bask in it because it’s not often that plain old Mom gets a round of toasts and a dinner out. A really nice dinner too, not one I had to cook myself, but a meal at one of the most expensive restaurants I’ve ever eaten in. Alice Frost was the one who chose it, so I guess I have to give her credit for that at least, even if we had to drive halfway to Framingham to get here. Alice knows all the best places to dine, and when you’re a lawyer at a high-flying firm like she is, you get tipped off to the hottest new chefs.
I guess I could learn to like her. One of these days.
She’s ordered the wine for the table tonight, and that’s another thing she’s darn good at. I’ve already had two glasses, and now the waiter swoops in to refill my glass. He pauses, bottle poised to pour, and tilts his head in a question.
“Go ahead, Ma,” says Jane. “I’m driving you home, so drink up.”
I flash the waiter a giddy smile and he fills my glass. As I sip and look around the table, I wish Vince were here tonight. He loves a good party. When he gets home from California, I’m going to bring him to this restaurant to celebrate.
All of us have something to celebrate tonight. Jane and Barry have closed their case, Alice has been promoted to partner, and my little Regina has just graduated from her first year in preschool. I look around the table at Alice and Barry, at Gabriel and Jane and Regina, and I think: I am such a lucky woman.
When Vince comes home, life will be perfect.
“Here’s to Angela Rizzoli, superhero!” says Gabriel, lifting his glass of tonic water. “Who single-handedly disarmed a man with a gun.”
“Well, not single-handedly,” I admit. “I had Agnes Kaminsky as backup. So even though she’s not here, we really should toast her too.”
“To Agnes!” they all say, which makes me feel a little bad that I didn’t invite her, but I know that if I had, she’d be complaining that the food’s too salty and the music’s too loud and what fool pays thirty bucks for an entrée?
Now I raise my glass of wine to make a toast. “And congratulations to Jane and Barry. All these weeks, after all that hard work, you got your man!”
“Technically, Ma, we didn’t,” Jane says.
“But you solved the case and now he’ll never hurt anyone else. So here’s to the best detectives in Boston!”
Jane looks a little reluctant to acknowledge the toast, even if everyone else takes a hearty gulp. I know my daughter too well and I can see something is bothering her. Which bothers me. That’s the burden of motherhood: No matter how old your kids get, their problems are always your problems.
I lean toward my daughter and ask quietly: “What is it, Janie?”
“It’s just been a long, frustrating investigation.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No, it’s nothing. Just annoying details.”
I put down my wineglass. “I raised the smartest cop in the world…” I pause, suddenly aware that her partner Barry is also listening, but he takes no offense and merely gives a good-natured salute.
“No argument there, Mrs. Rizzoli.”
“Okay, I raised one of thetwosmartest cops in the world,” I correct myself. “You inherited those detective chops from someone, and I don’t think it was your father.”
Jane snorts. “I don’t think so either.”
“So maybe you got it from me. Maybe I can shed a little light on your case. Give a fresh perspective on things, what do you think?”
“I’m not so sure, Ma.”
“I may not be a cop, and I know it’s easy to underestimate me because I’m an older woman and all, but—”
“That,” Alice interjects, waving her wineglass in the air, “is society’s fault. We women lose all our value when we age beyond our reproductive prime.”
“Yeah, okay. I don’t know about that reproductive prime stuff. I just like being listened to.” I look at Jane. “If something’s bothering you, I might be able to help.”
Jane sighs. “I don’t knowwhat’sbothering me.”
“But you know something’s not right, is that it? Yeah, I get that. The same way I knew something wasn’t right when your brother Frankie told me he was spending the night at Mike Popovich’s house and he was really down by the quarry smoking pot. I knew it because I have instincts.”
“I just have to think about it,” she says.
