When fellow D.C. law enforcement officers found out he was originally from New Jersey they teased him about being “connected” à la The Sopranos. That, or that his life growing up must have been a version of Jersey Shore. Neither could be further from the truth. His parents were scholarly professionals. His dad was a professor of political science at Rutgers University. His mother was a judge in family court. Today, his father’s sixtieth birthday, marked the first time he’d been home in more than a year.
Izzy, who had been a silent passenger all the way up, poked her big snout through the doggy door of her backseat kennel and rested her chin on Scott’s right shoulder. He reached up absently to scratch her head. That was all the invitation she needed. She was through the opening and onto the front seat in a long chocolate-fur movement.
Unlike most times, the sight of his partner didn’t improve Scott’s mood. “Down, girl.” He gently stiff-armed her head aside. His mother would notice if he came in smelling of dog.
Undeterred, Izzy made a few turns then stretched out to fill the bench seat and rested her large head on his thigh. A thin thread of doggy drool traced across his chinos as she bounced her chin in a comforting motion. So much for spotless.
In no hurry to get out of his truck, Scott pulled Izzy in close to his body and studied the house he had been reared in, as if the outside would give him clues to the mood inside.
The house could stand a coat of paint. His father would be certain to point that out to him, as if he should have thought of it beforehand and brought along cans of paint, brushes, scrapers, and a ladder in order to get started. His father never thought anything Scott did do was as important as what was not being done. Only Gabe had ever gotten a pass. Nearly three years after his older brother’s death, the pain still felt raw for the entire family.
Gabe was the stuff of legend. His father never spoke about his eldest son without a catch in his throat. Gabe had graduated from a military academy while Scott was still trying to make his way through public junior high school. Gabe went to college and then into the Marines. In no time he was Special Ops. By the time of his death, he’d made SEAL Team Six.
“Stay, Izzy. I’ll be back for you later.” No point in bringing her in until he decided if he was staying long, and/or if the number of people his mother promised were coming would be too much for Izzy to deal with on an informal basis.
Scott wiped a hand across his mouth as he headed toward the back door, nervous in the way chasing an armed suspect down a dark alley made him edgy. Gabe had been his lodestar for as long as he could remember. He used his older brother as the measure of how he was doing in the world. Success was according to how close he could come to Gabe’s scores on everything: college grades, physical endurance, drinking, even women. He’d always come up short. Except with Nikki—Cole. “Shit.” She would always be Nikki to him.
When he’d asked her opinion of his brother, after the one and only time they met, Nikki had said Gabe had obviously inherited the Lucca charm and good looks, but he wasn’t her type.
Her response had made Scott want to take out a full-page ad. Always before, when Gabe was around, Scott was an also-ran for women’s attention.
And then three years ago, six months into Scott’s marriage to Nikki, Gabe was gone. Killed in action in a covert operation somewhere in the Hindu Kush mountains of the Kunar province. The military returned a small locker with his personal effects. They said Gabe’s body wasn’t recoverable.
Scott sucked in a long breath as he reached for the back-door knob. His compass and direction, his benchmark, his nemesis, and his much loved brother, all of it was gone. He knew to whom his father had looked to fill those shoes, and how miserably he had failed, and was still failing.
“Scott!” His mother greeted him with a big hug as soon as he entered. “I thought I heard your truck.”
She held on to him for so long Scott began to color with embarrassment. Message clear; he’d visited so rarely these last two years, she couldn’t control her joy at actually laying her hands on her only surviving child.
Even when she released his body she held on to him at the elbows, smiling despite wet eyes. “You look good, Scott. Your hair’s longer. And you’re tan.” Her gaze fell to his arm. “But what’s this?”
“Zigged when I should have zagged. It’s nothing, Mom.”
She touched the bandage very gently, biting back the urge, he knew, to warn him to be careful. “As long as you’re okay.”
He grinned and leaned down to plant a kiss on her cheek. “You’re looking good. You stepping out on the old man?”
“Smart mouth.”
Scott looked up past his mother’s shoulder. “Happy birthday, Dad.”
John Lucca stood a few feet away. He looked much younger than the sixty years they were gathering to celebrate. Tall and still lean from a regimen of handball and swimming, he had a full head of gray hair that suited his professorial status. According to his mother’s e-mails, his father’s students still adored him, though four decades now separated him from most of them.
When his mother released Scott, his father came forward and held out his hand. “You’re almost late.”