As far as he could tell, all the older members of his family were still going strong, including Shamus, the family patriarch who had been instrumental in bringing the two factions of the family together.
“How old was he?” Duncan asked.
“Seventy-nine.” She waited, expecting Duncan to make a crack about Henry having one foot in the grave or something equally as tasteless—after all, how could someone as vital looking as Duncan even understand what an older person felt? But her partner merely nodded, as if he were taking down information from a witness to a crime. Noelle was pleasantly surprised. Maybe he wasn’t so shallow after all.
“So he’s a healthy seventy-nine-year-old who just suddenly expires.”
“That about covers it all,” she agreed, nodding. She’d met Henry a couple of times and had liked the older gentleman, but she couldn’t begin to imagine how Lucy had to feel, losing someone who she’d known for so very long. “What makes it worse for Lucy is that she told me that this is the second person she knew who died in the last six months.”
From his perspective, Duncan came to the only logical conclusion that he could. “Is she worried about being next?”
“No!” Noelle cried sharply, then relented, softening her tone as she said, “Well, maybe. What she really is, I think, is lonely. Her circle of friends is growing smaller and I guess it’s making her rethink her life.”
“Missed opportunities?” he guessed.
But Noelle shook her head. “I don’t think so. Lucy never talks about things like opportunities she felt she missed out on. For the most part, she’s always been all about the moment, not the past. That was why seeing her like that this morning really kind of threw me.”
He completely understood her reaction and it was rather reassuring to know that his partner actually was capable of these sorts of feelings. There were times, especially in the beginning, when he’d felt he’d been partnered with a robot or the latest version of someone’s rendering of artificial intelligence.
“She’s your grandmother, right?” he asked. When Noelle nodded in response, he added, “And you said she raised you.”
“She did.”
Personally, Duncan couldn’t imagine what that had to have been like. Growing up, he’d had both parents around, not to mention the rest of the mob scene. He was one of seven brothers and sisters, so he’d never had even a moment when he had felt lonely—no matter how much he’d wanted to on more than a couple of occasions.
Duncan got to the crux of his question. “Why do you call her Lucy?”
“Because it’s her name,” Noelle replied with a straight face. “And because she wouldn’t have answered if I’d called her Grandma or Nana or any of those other traditional labels. She once told me that hearing them applied to her would make her feel old. Since she was my whole world—when she didn’t have to be—I would have agreed to anything she wanted from me.
“Besides,” she went on to say, “it seemed pretty much like a reasonable request to me. Actually, at five, anything an adult asks you to do seems rather reasonable at the time. I never questioned her preference. To be honest, I was so happy to have someone who actually wanted to take care of me I would have called her anything she wanted me to call her.”
Noelle saw the light that entered her partner’s deep green eyes and she quickly headed off what she assumed was his conclusion before he could allow it to grow and flourish.
“My parents didn’t abuse me, if that’s what you’re thinking. They just really didn’t notice me very much at all. I was sheltered, fed, clothed and taken in for the necessary shots that eliminated a bunch of childhood diseases—”
Duncan refrained from saying that the same was usually done for a household pet dog. He had no desire to open up any of his partner’s old wounds on the outside chance that they might have actually healed. Instead, he said, “But Lucy took more than just a passing interest in you.”
Noelle smiled and he noted, not for the first time, that it rather lit up the whole room.
“Exactly,” she said. “So I want to be able to be there for her whenever I can.” She glanced over toward the small office where Jamieson, their supervisor, was sitting, apparently deeply engrossed in the telephone conversation he was having. “Think Jamieson would mind if I took a couple of hours personal time to attend the funeral with Lucy?” she asked.
For the most part, the lieutenant was an easygoing man. He didn’t act as if he had something to prove; neither was he trying to make a reputation on the backs of his detectives.
“I don’t see why he would. It’s not like we’re exactly drowning in work,” Duncan pointed out. And then he had another thought—because they weren’t drowning in work and because he wanted to meet this woman who preferred having her granddaughter call her by a nickname than the traditional title he personally thought of as endearing. “You want some company?”
The idea seemed to catch Noelle completely off guard. She looked at him, somewhat confused. “You mean you?”
Duncan laughed at the surprised expression on her face. “Well, I can’t very well offer up anyone else’s company to you, now can I? I mean, maybe I could—but I wouldn’t,” he added mischievously. “Yes, O’Banyon, I mean me.”
So far the only time she had seen Cavanaugh after hours and out of the office was at Malone’s, a local bar that was frequented by members of the Aurora Police Department and that had only been a couple of times. Not to mention by accident because she hadn’t known he was going to be there. Up until now, they hadn’t made arrangements to meet anywhere that didn’t have to do directly with police work.
Since he appeared to be serious—or as serious as he could get—Noelle considered his offer. Cavanaugh was a little unorthodox, but she figured that he meant well and besides, her grandmother responded well to good-looking men. Cavanaugh was nothing if not that.
“Sure,” she said. “Why not? If you’re there, it might help her keep her chin up.” And then she flashed her partner a smile. “Thanks.”
“Hey, what’s a partner for, right?” he said with an easy, sexy smile.
She tried not to notice just how easily that smile seemed to slip under her skin and unsettle her just before she managed to shut it down.
“Right,” she murmured, focusing on the gesture and not on the man. Her life was just about as complicated as she was willing for it to be. There was no room in it for anything extra.
Certainly not for a cocky police detective with magnetic green eyes and a sexy swagger.
“Are you sure that you’re up to this, Lucy?” Noelle asked her grandmother as they approached the cemetery that was on the far side of Aurora’s southern boundary three days later.
It was midmorning on Monday. She’d dropped Melinda off at school and driven here for the funeral with Lucy. There was a small, nondenominational chapel on the premises for those who wanted some sort of a service before standing at the deceased’s grave site, but her grandmother had opted to bypass that.
