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me believe? When I don’t want to talk about my past, you call me evasive. And when I do bring it up, you make light of it, like it’s so much water under the bridge. So which is it? What do I call you when you don’t want to talk about the past?’
    â€˜Call me a fool for chasing you around all those years, dodging your brothers and thinking I was something more than practice. You can call me whatever you damn well please. And you can have your gun back.’
    She took it and for a split second before she stashed it in her purse, Lou got a glimpse at what Franny Patterson looked like with a gun in her hand. It wasn’t a pretty sight. There wasn’t anything appealing about a woman wielding a thirty-eight special except if she was in her underwear and the gun wasn’t loaded and she didn’t happen to be your sister or your daughter or your wife. It wasn’t that he’d felt threatened. Franny had managed to intimidate most men without a gun in her hand. But guns did have a tendency to go off. And Lou was beginning to feel like he didn’t want to be around when Franny found a reason to use it.
    â€˜It was my father’s gun, you know. Jimmy said it was his off-duty gun.’
    â€˜Does he know you have it?’
    â€˜Jimmy doesn’t think girls and guns mix. He always said I’d either shoot myself or someone would take it away from me.’
    â€˜He’s probably right. Do you think that gun is going to protect you from Brian Haggerty?’
    â€˜He knows I have it and he doesn’t seem threatened by it in the least. He doesn’t have a problem with the idea of a woman wanting to protect herself.’
    â€˜Most men will tell you just what you want to hear with a gun pointed at their gut.’
    â€˜Not all men. Not you. Not my brother.’
    Lou lit a cigarette. He lit one for Franny and passed it to her.
    â€˜Do you know about Haggerty’s first wife? Do you know what happened to her?’
    â€˜You must think I’m a very stupid woman, Lou. If Brian keeps anything from me, it’s because I allow him to. I give him that because he needs it. He needs to have his little secrets. But they’re harmless secrets. They can’t hurt me or anyone else. I know about Brian’s past. I know about his father and his business. I’m not as much in the dark as you think.’
    â€˜The gun proves that.’
    â€˜For your information, I’m not scared of Brian either.’
    â€˜Then what are you scared of? Jimmy said there’s been a lot of tension between you and your mother-in-law, that you’ve had your share of disagreements. He seemed to imply that she controlled the money in the family and used that to control her son.’
    â€˜Brian might be afraid of her but I’m not. She’s a cruel, vindictive woman, Lou. The fact that I’m not afraid of her is the very reason she hates me.’
    She leaned back in the chair, crossed her legs and blew a couple of smoke rings toward the ceiling. She twirled a loose strand of hair in her finger and her eyes seemed to be somewhere else, looking into the past or into herself. He realized now that what he’d seen in her face had been a facade, her stage face. And what he was seeing now was a child’s face, lost in orbit around a world she could no longer control, a family where she never really belonged and now threatened to squeeze her out. Her false confidence dripped with contempt and Lou was beginning to feel sorry for her. For all her beauty and feigned strength she still needed approval, still wanted to be something she wasn’t and the thought of not having it scared the hell out of her.
    â€˜Jimmy also mentioned that Mrs Haggerty might be on her last legs.’
    â€˜Jimmy’s got a lot to say. You know how many times Brian has called to tell me his mother was on her death bed? That she could go anytime? But miraculously she always pulls through.