I saw someone today
Who remembered me and you
They asked all the same old questions
I gave the same excuse
They said, what a shame to lose a love so fine
But I never lost you, no I never really lost you
I never really lost you, because you were never really mine
How could I lose you, you were never mine
Janiva Magness, You Were Never Mine.
It had been almost five years, but that wasn't long enough for me to have forgotten her. Definitely not long enough to stop dreaming about her and not long enough to get past her.
Since she was in line ahead of me, it was her hair I recognized first. It was longer than before, halfway down her back, but still the rich, wild, curling brown it had always been. But I have been fooled by hair before, even once stopped a woman I thought was her, based on the hair. An embarrassing moment.
Then she turned to her left slightly and I saw her face in profile. Blue eyes, pale skin, smiling full lips. It was Stephanie Plum, alright. No false sighting this time. Cupcake was back in the Burg.
The order line at Pino's was long and it was crowded on a Friday and I lost sight of her. Five years ago, when I realized that she'd vanished, I'd called her mother, more than a little worried. Helen Plum told me, her voice unhappy, that Stephanie had made a decision and left Trenton, and her family, probably for good. I'd protested that she wouldn't just leave, that we should look into her disappearance, but Helen had been firm. Her daughter was fine, but she was leaving Trenton, and Helen wouldn't say why.
I didn't believe our split would be permanent. What we had was true and she was mine – the woman I wanted. She wouldn't have left me, no matter what. I swung by her apartment then and it was empty, up for rent. We'd gone on another break about four months prior, but I hadn't meant that to be long-term. I had an undercover job to finish and we just needed some cooling off time and we'd be back together, I knew it. A little time apart would be a good thing and then we'd have our heads in the right place and straighten out our problems. But it had never happened.
I've always been proud of my case solve rate as a detective, but I guess it was one of those things where being personally involved in something means you can't really see what's going on, because it wasn't until six months later, when I was called into a meeting with a TPD task force that was liaising with the DEA and their contractor, Rangeman, when the truth hit me. Since Steph had been gone, I hadn't had any reason to interact with Manoso, but I was expecting him to turn up at the meeting. The Rangeman rep who walked into the room wasn't Manoso, it was one of his men I'd only seen once or twice.
He was introduced as Paul Ramsay, aka Ram, the new head of Rangeman Trenton. I'd asked Ram, point-blank, where Manoso was and he'd said, "He hasn't been based in Trenton for awhile."
I'd asked how to get in touch with him and Ram's answer had been that I should call the head office in Miami and they'd pass a message along to wherever he was.
There was my answer, Stephanie was gone and so was Manoso. Not a coincidence. Somehow, I lost her. To him.
After Ram left the meeting, the DEA agent assigned had been a little more forthcoming – they'd been told that, effective immediately, Manoso was no longer available for any field work, only mission planning and consultations. The DEA would regret the loss of one of their most effective contract field agents, but they'd take him as a planner in a heartbeat.
So Manoso had, apparently, retired from the field. And taken Stephanie Plum with him. My job, and the hours I worked, the undercover work I did, had sometimes caused problems with her. From what I knew about Manoso, he worked longer hours than I did and did much riskier field work, sometimes even out of the country. What had happened to change that?
There had been an attraction between them from the beginning, but at first I hadn't taken it seriously. He was just too different from what she'd grown up to expect – he was an over-muscled, dangerous thug, not what she would want in the future, not husband-and-family material. She couldn't possibly take him seriously. But she had. And after half a dozen destroyed cars and several last-minute rescues, it was clear to me that his interest in her was more than just as a potential fuck. I could see how he looked at her. No man goes to that much trouble for kisses in an alley, which, before Hawaii, was all that I thought their relationship was. More fool I.
The Pino's line moved a little and I saw Stephanie again, moving away from the counter and toward a back booth. In her left hand she was carrying a tray with drinks and a small salad and a plastic order number tag, but it was her right arm …
Her right arm was hooked under a small child, balancing the child on her hip. Stephanie Plum, the woman who'd told me she wasn't sure she ever wanted children, was holding a child with the grace and the ease of long practice. From the back I could only see very dark curly hair on the child, who was dressed in a long-sleeved t-shirt, jeans and sneakers. No gender help there.
I let my gaze wander around the room and spotted the black-clad goons immediately – two younger men, both with that military bearing, standing by the front entrance. One kept an eye on Stephanie and the other constantly scanned the room. The taller of the two, the one who watched Stephanie, was carrying concealed in a shoulder holster. As I watched, his eyes met Stephanie's and she smiled at him and he nodded back. Her muscle, then. I didn't recognize them as local Rangeman employees, but I was sure they were Rangeman.
The line had moved enough that I was at the counter, so I ordered a meatball sub and a beer. I took my beer and my plastic number and walked directly toward Stephanie Plum's table. She was seated at a booth against the wall in the back, eating the salad and feeding bits of it to the small child, who stood on the wooden bench of the booth, next to her.
A boy, definitely. Based on my nephews, I'd say he was 3-, maybe 4-years-old, give or take. He had very dark brown, almost black, curling hair and definitely her eyes, both the bright blue color and the slight up-tilt. Darker skin than hers, but not by that much; a warm light brown, like a coffee with a lot of cream. But he had her wide mouth and chin, and at the moment his chin was stubbornly thrust out at his mother and his lips were curled in dislike as he avoided eating a bit of tomato she held out on a fork.
"No 'mato," the boy said firmly.
His mother rolled her eyes at him. "Eat just a little more salad before the rest of dinner comes."
He considered the fork with the tomato and the salad on the plate in front of her. "Carrot," he said, reaching down to pull a carrot coin out of the salad and crunch it in his small, white teeth.
"Fine," she said. "Carrot it is."
"He's a pretty good negotiator."
Her head snapped up to look at me. "Joe," she said, her blue eyes widening in surprise. Then her eyes went past him to the entrance and she held up a hand, holding off the large, black-clad man heading toward them.
"I thought that was your muscle." I said, standing behind the chair, "May I sit?"
"Umm, sure, please sit down, Joe." Her son ate another carrot out of the salad, pushing aside a tomato slice to get it. "I don't understand his dislike of tomatoes, he loves tomato sauce on food, but he won't eat raw tomatoes."
I shrugged. "Picky eater? My sister's youngest girl is. I think she eats shrimp, peanut butter, cheese and cookies and nothing else."
She laughed at that and the clear, clean sound of her laugh went right through me. "Shrimp and peanut butter? That sounds worse than peanut butter and olives."
I'd actually forgotten that eating quirk of hers. "I don't think she eats them in a sandwich."
"He's not a picky eater, he's usually very good. He just doesn't like tomatoes unless they are cooked down into sauce." He'd moved closer to his mother and was staring at me with clear distrust. "This is Carlos," she said, with a soft smile at the boy. He put his head on her shoulder and then they both looked at me; two sets of identical bright blue eyes, two curly heads, across the table from me.
This was exactly what I'd wanted - a wife, this wife, a child, a home in the Burg with the casual family dinner out together. But they weren't mine, they belonged to another man. Over the years, I thought I'd adjusted to losing her, but I felt the stab of jealousy and loss.
"Carlos Manoso, I take it." The words came out sharper than I'd meant. I'd already seen the rings on her left hand – Manoso had always been willing to throw big money around for her. The boy was clearly his son; the shape of his face was definitely his father's, as well as the high cheekbones and straight nose. Both of his parents' features were clear in his face.
She lifted the same stubborn chin she shared with her son at my tone of voice. "Yes, he is."
I held up both hands. "Took me longer to figure that out than it probably should have. You and Manoso left Trenton at the same time. It should have been obvious that you left together, even to me."
"Things to do and places to be," she said, her tone cool.
The hole I'd dug was deep enough – time to stop digging. "It's good to see you, Steph – really good. I mean that." That got a small smile out of her. "So what brings you back to Trenton?" I asked, trying to bring the conversation back to neutral ground.
"Val's daughter Angie is graduating from high school this year and we came out for her graduation ceremony – she made valedictorian and she'll be giving a speech."
"And you'll have a chance to connect with family and friends?"
She looked squarely at me. "Some of them. The ones who would be happy to see me."
I wasn't quite forgiven yet. I gave her a rueful smile. "Does that include your mother?"
The expression on her face closed and she sat straight up in the booth and wrapped an arm around her son. "My mother and I have an understanding. She's desperate to be around her grandson, and we've set some ground rules about hurtful comments and projecting expectations and opinions on him." I'd once said she was like a junk yard dog with a bone and now I saw where that side of her went – Mama Bear protecting her young.
"Is that working out?" Helen Plum loved her daughter; I'd always known that. But she was from the same Burg school and church that my mother was from, and the two women had grown up with the same ideas about family and the proper roles for children and neither of them were subtle nor shy about sharing those opinions, no matter how much their offspring did not want to hear them. The older I got, the more pointed my mother's comments were.
She shrugged. "Mostly. She's not happy we left Trenton, she'd prefer it if we lived a life similar to hers." She rolled her eyes. "Which is never going to happen."
"You have a home somewhere else?"
"We moved around a bit first, going to all the offices and doing audits and training. We've been based near Chicago for the last couple years while his daughter Julie went to Northwestern. Now that Julie has taken a job in Silicon Valley and Angie is going to go to Stanford, we'll be moving to the west coast and the girls will live with us."
"Must be hard, moving so frequently."
Steph smiled and rubbed her belly. "It's time for a permanent home – in a little less than 6 months, he's going to have a little sister." Her face turned wistful. "And he's growing so fast - he'll be starting school soon."
"Want to go to school now," her son said. "With Juju."
"I should never have let Julie take you to class with her, you had way too much fun. They are so not going to be prepared for you in kindergarten, buddy, not after you've been to college." He grinned at her, a mischievous smile. A well-loved child, secure in his family.
I had to shake my head. "You, married, with a kid and another one on the way. Hard to imagine."
She snorted. "It was for me, too. But it was just like..." she waved a hand around, "one day I looked around at who I was, what I was doing, and I realized that I was just stumbling through life, going from one disaster to the next. Just reacting, I guess, and that didn't really count as living. I was stuck between what I thought I was supposed to want and what I thought I might want." She shrugged. "So I took a deep breath and climbed up on that roof and jumped off again."
"The first time you did that, you broke your arm."
She rolled her eyes at me. "This time I flew on my own for a minute and then he caught me before I hit the ground and broke something again. And I realized that it was always that way between us. No matter what I wanted to do, he'd be there to watch me make that leap and he'd never let me fall. I could be anything. Do anything." She smiled and ruffled her son's hair. "I will admit that our son was a surprise bonus. Sort of the universe telling me that I made the right choice with my life and here is this beautiful gift, just for me."
I'd always thought children would be a gift, too, but she'd been the reluctant one, not sure that she ever wanted a child. Apparently it was marriage and children with me that she didn't want. But I'd never have pegged Manoso as the husband-and-father type. Too much of a wild card, too into the adrenaline-rich life. Of course, I reflected, I'd been a little bit that way 10 years ago, too.
The waitress came with her order of a foot-long meatball sub, along with an extra side of marinara, a couple of plates and a huge stack of napkins and Steph busied herself cutting the sandwich in half and then cutting that half into small bites and putting them on a plate in front of her son.
I watched her with her son and had to admit that she was probably more beautiful than ever. A little older, sure, but there was a happy confidence, a self-assurance that I had never really seen before. I always thought that one of the things that attracted her to Manoso, other than the man-of-mystery attitude, was his money, which he was always willing to spend on her. The guys at the station tracked the value of his cars that she trashed, and it had been several hundred thousand dollars in luxury cars. We'd tracked the license plates and VINs and all of them had been legitimately registered and purchased from various dealers – I'd always sort of hoped to find one that was not to bust him with.
But, as I thought back over the years, I could see what she meant. No matter what outrageous and often foolish thing she did, he was always there, often getting to her before I did. I'd tried to explain to her how dangerous some of her stunts were and we'd had a lot of screaming matches about it. I'd never seen him yell at her, only stand beside her with one hand on her back, no matter which car was burning or what she was covered in. I'd thought he was playing a game with me, making a pissing match out of it. I never saw it from her point of view, I hadn't seen that for what it was – complete support.
She handed her son a fork, which he put down on the table and started eating the small bites with his fingers. "Mmm," he said, his blue eyes going comically wide.
She laughed. "I told you we were going somewhere special and you'd like the food." He approached food with the same zest Steph had always shown.
"Listen, Cupcake-" I started.
"Cupcake!" The little boy repeated. "Cupcakes!"
Steph gave me a look. "Now see what you've started." She turned to her son. "No, it's just an old nick-name. There are no cupcakes. Just dinner."
His face scrunched up. "No cupcakes?"
"No, but I'm sure there is something waiting for you back at the hotel. After dinner, when we get back."
"Cupcakes," the boy whispered mournfully.
Definitely his mother's son. "Sorry," I said. "I won't say that again. You here alone?"
She shook her head. "Ranger has a meeting with the Trenton guys, he should be here soon."
"What made Manoso change his job and stop doing field work?"
"He did." She tipped her head at her son, whose face and hands were rapidly being covered in marinara sauce as he dipped the pieces in the cup of extra marinara before he ate them. She took a napkin off the stack and wiped his face and hands. "In one of his last jobs, he got a little too close to that edge and realized that he didn't want to leave a widow and a child not yet born behind. So he changed. For us."
"So, what, he works in an office now? You stay home with Junior, here?"
She shook her head at him with an eye roll. "He runs a multinational corporation. He's just as busy as he ever was and he still travels, just not as much, and not to dangerous places anymore. And me? Stop working? No, I am VP for Client Relations at Rangeman. I talk on the phone all day, do client visits when I have to, straighten out client issues when there is a problem or dispute." She laughed again. "You'd be amused. Sometimes we have to do what everyone calls the Mighty Manoso Show. When we have a problem client, we fly in together to do a client visit and we play good cop, bad cop."
I smiled at her. "You're the good cop?"
She grinned back. "Depends on the client. Sometimes I get to be the bad cop." Her eyes sparkled. "I can be a great bad cop."
The boy had eaten all of the bites she'd put on his plate and was now trying to eat her half of the meatball sub, which was far too big for his hands or mouth. It looked a little like a small marinara bomb had exploded near his head. I couldn't hold back the grin. This was certainly Steph's son.
"So, enough about my life, Joe. What about you?"
I shrugged. "Not much to tell. I've been busy with work. The family is fine, or as fine as my family gets. My mom's fine, my brother Anthony is still an idiot, my sister has another new kid, Grandma Bella somehow keeps going and going and Mooch is, well, Mooch."
"That's it? No epic tales about girlfriends?" she said with incredulity. "The Italian Stallion is over 40 and unmarried?"
I winced at the reminder of my age. My mother had recently started harping on it. "I came close. Twice. But both times, I just couldn't go through with it." I met her eyes. "Neither of them were the person I really wanted."
She shifted uncomfortably. "I'm sorry, Joe. I tried. Really, I did." She shook her head. "We weren't good for each other. Not for the long haul."
I started to argue, even though I knew it was futile, when I saw her head snap up to look toward the door.
"Papa!" The boy shouted, jumping down from the bench seat and running toward the door. Stephanie made a grab for him and missed. I pushed back my chair and stood, ready for trouble, but she was already smiling.
The funny thing was that, for a moment, I didn't recognize him. I saw Stephanie's son run toward a man just walking in the door who laughed, lifted him up and tossed him in the air and caught him. The boy laughed and grabbed his shoulder, leaving a messy hand print. The man had short dark hair and wore dark blue dress slacks and a fitted white button-up shirt which now had the mark of a child's hand, done in marinara sauce, right at the shoulder. I looked past the business casual clothes and substituted all-black clothing, removed the easy smile and the natural way he held the child and realized my mistake. Height, weight, build, skin color, hair color, facial features – definitely Manoso.
I'd seen his features in the boy when I'd first looked, but watching him walk toward us, holding his son on his hip similar to the way Steph had earlier, the resemblance was remarkable. They made our table and he seemed completely unsurprised to see me. I suspected the black-clad Rangeman goons by the door had tipped him off.
He leaned in to kiss the top of her head and then put his son down on the bench, gave me a nod, and slid in to the bench, boxing the boy in between the adults. "He seems to be covered in red sauce, Babe. Was he eating it or playing in it?"
She grinned at him. "Mostly eating – he ate his dinner and half of mine."
"Speaking of playing," he said, pulling a small black metal car from his pocket. "I got to the meeting and found this in my coat pocket."
"Car!" The little boy grabbed for the toy. Manoso made a soft noise and the little boy ducked his head. "Car, please?" His father handed him the toy and he started running it up along the bench seat, making little car and crash noises at the same time.
"We turned the suite upside down this morning trying to find Car," Steph said. "I'm glad it's not lost or bedtime might have been hell." She gestured at the shirt with the red hand print. "You should go put some water on that or the stain won't come out."
"It'll wash out," Manoso said.
"Marinara sauce? Not likely. Anyway, how do you know it'll wash out, you're not the one who does the laundry," Steph said with a snort.
"Neither are you," he replied with a small smile.
She laughed out loud. "Well, that is certainly true. How was the meeting?"
He ruffled the curls on his son's head. "They were disappointed that he wasn't there."
"Like anything productive would have come out of a meeting if he had been there."
"Might have been more lively."
The banter between them was easy; light, familiar, affectionate. A comfortable married couple. Everything I had ever wanted with her. I had to turn my head away. Manoso caught the movement.
I expected a hard look from him. Instead I got maybe a little bit of understanding. I didn't want his understanding. Once this situation had been flipped. I thought she'd been mine and he'd been the outsider. But if that had ever been true, it was long ago and her world had completely shifted.
The little boy had gone back to eating Steph's sub, still holding the little black car in one hand as he tried to hold the sub. The result was a boy and a toy covered in sauce.
"Uggh. I'll get him," Steph said, standing. "Besides, you know, pregnant women, I need to pee every half hour whether I want to or not." As she stood, Manoso smoothed a hand over her belly and she smiled at him, briefly covering his hand with hers. The casual intimacy had me dropping my eyes away from them. "C'mon, Speed Racer," she said, lifting her son up, careful to keep the marinara-coated parts of him away from her. "Let's get you and Car cleaned up."
We watched them walk toward the restrooms as the little boy chattered to her.
I eyed the marinara mess on the table. "He's an enthusiastic eater. Just like she is."
He lifted an eyebrow at me and said nothing as he used the remaining napkins to clean off the table and pile the mess on the tray. I didn't think he was going to answer me, but then he just tipped his head in acknowledgment. "He sleeps like she does, too. Goes full-throttle all day and then just runs out of energy and drops wherever he is."
The Manoso I'd known before had radiated controlled menace beneath a blank face so good any cop would trade his sidearm for it. I'd never been able to see what Stephanie saw in such a hard and grim man. This Manoso had toned down the menace – his expression might not be easy to read, but the impression I got now was calm and patience, although still quite a bit of "don't fuck with me" underneath.
"So," I said, yanking his chain just a little bit. "Domestic Ranger and Mom Steph. Not something I thought I'd ever see."
He shrugged. "Life is change and some changes are more than worth the cost."
I tilted my head toward the entrance. "The security here for her?"
His face hardened a bit. "For both of them. Always."
"Surprised she puts up with it."
"The security was a compromise. Once he was born, she didn't want to carry a gun on her, so they are her weapons."
"Compromise, huh?
The corner of his lip turned up. "She's capable of it, when properly motivated." Then he shrugged. "And she takes his safety as seriously as I take both of theirs."
"More than just the two guards?"
"Two bodyguards directly with her and two shadows. More in some circumstances." He looked at me intently. "They mean more to me than anything else in life and they'll always be protected."
I nodded. "She looks good. Happy."
"That's the plan," he said, his head turned in the direction Steph had walked away.
She came out of the restroom, her son's face and hands scrubbed clean, the hair around his face wet from the scrubbing. He walked next to her, holding her hand, the now-clean toy car held tightly in his other hand. He scrambled back up onto the wooden booth as she sat down and started to wrap the remaining piece of sub in the aluminum foil provided.
"Getting pretty close to someone's..." she stopped talking out loud and mouthed the words "bed time" toward Manoso. Her son started shaking his head side-to-side in a clear "no."
I'd seen my siblings all do the bed time dance with their children and it made me grin, imagining Steph's stubborn chin pitted against her son's stubborn chin. My mother, when she was annoyed with me, always used to say that she hoped that I had a child just like myself one day and it looked like Steph might have done that to herself.
There was noise from the parking lot – some kind of altercation, with the standard Jersey shouting and horn honking and Manoso was immediately on his feet and in front of the booth his wife and child sat in. His quick glance at Steph had her pulling her son to her. I stood as well, squared off to the door with Manoso.
The two black-clad goons I'd marked earlier – and now that Manoso was here, there were an additional two, just outside the entrance – looked to Manoso, got a nod and faced the door, hands on the butts of their concealed weapons. Over the years, I've tried to nail various Rangeman employees for concealed carry and, every time, their permits were spotless. These would be as well, I was sure.
One of the black-clad men came over to Manoso. "Fight in the far section of the parking lot, next to the bar. No firearms yet, but it's starting to get ugly - given that this is Jersey, it's just a matter of time. Orders, sir?"
Ranger looked at me. "I think the TPD can handle this. Watch and wait. But bring the SUV around to the back entrance."
Outside I heard more loud voices from the parking lot and, in the distance, a siren. I sighed, got my badge out of my pocket and clipped it to my belt. The waitress arrived with my order, and I told her to pack it to go.
"Time to go to work." I turned back to Steph. "Good to see you again, Stephanie Manoso. Glad that you are doing well and you're happy."
She stepped forward and, to my surprise, gave me a quick hug. "It's good to see you again, Joe. You need to work on that happy for yourself." I hugged her back for a moment and then stepped away.
I nodded at Ranger. "Manoso."
The corner of his lip tipped up in an almost smile. "Captain Morelli," he replied. Of course he knew about my promotion.
Carlos got the last word as I started to walk away and go see what the ruckus in the parking lot was about. "Bye bye," he said, waving to me and throwing a kiss in my direction. I smiled at him. She wasn't mine, he wasn't my boy, they definitely weren't the Burg version of a family, but I knew a solid family when I saw one.
Maybe it was time to let go of thinking about what could have been mine and look for what would be mine.