Doubt (Chapter 5 - Pressure)
Title:Doubt
Author:glasheen25
Pairing/Characters:Nancy/Ned, Nancy/Frank
Series:post-files
Word Count:2663
Rating:R
Summary:In the first instance Ned misses his flight, missing Nancy's birthday in the process. In the second instance Ned makes his flight, arriving on time. How a seemingly inconsequential event could lead Nancy's life in two completely different directions.
Spoilers:None
Warnings:None
A knife lay on the ground beside the blood-drenched body of Evelyn West, but this was not the weapon that had been used to murder the unfortunate woman; a single gunshot to the back of the head had been the cause of that. Evelyn, a professor of fine arts at a local university, had been performing the mundane task of chopping vegetables for dinner when she had been shot from behind, the knife clattering noisily onto the ground beside her. The gleaming white kitchen was now showered in blood, long tracks of red staining the walls.
“These guys are too fucking good,” she heard a colleague mutter disconcertedly beside her, and he was right.
The perpetrators had chosen their target well; the house was set back a considerable distance from the road and surrounded by a high red-brick wall. Even in broad daylight it would be possible to slip in the gates unnoticed, without being spied upon by prying, meddlesome neighbors. These men didn’t take chances, didn’t take risks. They planned their attacks well in advance and had yet to make a single mistake. Worse still, these men weren’t motivated by money or greed like the average scumbag criminal; they were driven purely by the kill, and that made them all the more dangerous.
Riverside was one of the wealthiest suburbs of Chicago, where the houses sprawled to almost obnoxious proportions and cars cost the equivalent of an average American’s lifetime earnings. Cossetted by their six-figure salaries and luxurious lifestyles, the residents were initially horribly indignant that such a thing could happen in their precious neighborhood. Now they were just scared, turning as usual to their money and investing in the latest in technological advances in security to protect them.
“What’s your take on this, Drew,” Derek Johnson, a senior colleague, demanded of her abruptly, seeing the speculative look on Nancy’s face as she took in the grisly scene.
“Evelyn West is preparing dinner when our intruder comes in and shoots her in the back of the head,” Nancy surmised grimly, her eyes drinking in the bloodied details of the scene. “She has no chance to react and dies instantly.”
Nodding wordlessly, Derek urged her to continue, following the trail of destruction out of the kitchen, where bloodied footprints had been stamped all over the gleaming white.
“Now it gets more complicated,” Nancy continued, stepping over the smeared pools of blood, careful not to disturb anything. “They hear a scream. It’s Caitlyn, the daughter who’s home visiting her parents for the weekend.”
“The men aren’t expecting anyone else to be there,” Derek contributed in an absent tone, his eyes intently studying the series of bloody marks on the wall.
“Exactly,” Nancy agreed with a slight smile. “And now they begin to panic and in their haste to find the girl, one of the men steps in the blood and accidentally tracks it all over the house. Caitlyn has no doubt seen the news, guesses what’s going on and is terrified.” Nancy sighed, kneeling down beside the dead girl's body.
Vivid red scratches run the length of her arms and face, her fists reduced to a bloody pulp, and it’s obvious that the girl put up a commendable fight, but ultimately it’s not enough, Caitlyn’s flailing limbs no match for her opponent's gun.
“She was pretty,” Nancy commented quietly, a picture of Caitlyn dressed up for her senior prom catching her eye.
“Not anymore,” Derek sighed dejectedly, taking a final glance at Caitlyn’s bloodied remains before walking out of the room.
xxxxx
Their home was a charmingly quirky, mid-terrace house that Nancy had become infatuated with the second they had walked in the door. Falling in love with the blue-and-white papered walls, Nancy had declared with uncharacteristic frivolity that it was the perfect house and it simply had to be theirs. The pair had moved in the following week, taking the next step in their quickly developing relationship. The house boasted an enviable location, within walking distance of some of the best bars and restaurants in the city, which was ironic considering that since that crazy, alcohol-fueled night, Nancy and Frank hadn’t so much as gone for a drink together. Their work schedules were crazy and the few hours they managed to scrape together were far better spent at home in each other’s arms than in a bar at midnight, straining to hear each other over the ridiculously loud music. Moving in together wasn’t some big decision they had made, deliberating feverishly for weeks; the decision had in fact been made for them. Nancy and Frank had both been posted to the same field office and it had just made sense.
The house was shrouded in darkness as Nancy pulled up outside, not even a crack of welcoming light peeking out through the windows. Frank wasn’t home yet, Nancy realized with a sigh as she slung her bag over her shoulder and slammed the car door shut, her keys rattling noisily in her hand. Chicago was in the grip of winter and the weather was bitterly cold and frosty, the snow never far away. Smoke snaked gracefully from the chimney of an adjacent house and Nancy regarded it jealously as she shivered into the collar of her coat. Temperatures had plummeted to well below freezing all day and Nancy could only imagine how cold their lonely, empty house would be.
Flicking on the television, Nancy collapsed gratefully on the sofa, tucking her legs comfortingly underneath her and resting her head on the plush softness of a cushion. Under normal circumstances Nancy would miss Frank now, would crave for his company and the feel of his arms wrapped tightly around her, but tonight she didn’t care. She was ridiculously tired and hungry and her needs stretched only to fulfilling these basics.
The answering machine blinked red, but Nancy ignored it, knowing it would be her father. She didn't have the heart right now to have to justify her relationship with Frank for what seemed like the millionth time. It wasn’t that Carson didn’t like Frank, he did; and he didn’t wholly disapprove of the relationship, just the speed of it. Nancy curled up a little tighter on the couch, deciding to put that particular conversation on the back burner for now.
Tomorrow, she promised herself, when she got home from work a little earlier and her head throbbed a little less and she had a bottle of wine on standby in case the conversation disintegrated like last time, into another fiercely blazing argument.
Adding her empty bowl to the collection of half-full coffee cups strewn all over the floor, Nancy sighed, unable to ignore the untidy state of their living room for a moment longer. Though both Nancy and Frank tried to keep their home clean, it was rarely tidy. Frank had heaped files unsteadily on the already overflowing coffee table and Nancy was equally guilty of the scattering of shoes and clothes left tossed on the carpet and draped on furniture throughout the house. Frank had never treated Nancy like a typical girlfriend, had never expected her to cook and clean; they had started out as equals and that had never changed. In fairness, Ned had never expected that from her either, but they had been going out for so long that the expectations were still there, from his parents and her father, who had all presumed that someday she would leave all this behind her and settle down and marry Ned, giving him the stability he so desperately craved and she so desperately needed.
The cheerless ring of her cell phone, buzzing on the table, momentarily startled her.
“Hey Derek,” she mumbled into the phone, rubbing at her eyes wearily. “What’s going on?”
“There’s been another one,” he informed her somberly, and Nancy could hear the same exhaustion in his voice. “The boss needs you down here right away.”
“Already,” Nancy sighed disbelievingly, pulling herself into a sitting position and wondering how she was ever going to muster the energy to shower and dress, much less work another blood-drenched crime scene. “These guys sure moves fast.”
Swallowing a quick glass of orange juice and scribbling a note for Frank, Nancy pulled open the door and stepped outside, wondering what the next few hours would hold for her.
The night glowed blue as Nancy pulled in front of the sprawling red-brick house, the sirens of seemingly every police cruiser in Chicago wailing in the air. The scene was chaotic; work-weary officers were swarming the yard and the perimeter of the house, searching for God knows what, considering the men hadn’t left so much as a fingerprint behind them so far.
It was blistering cold, the beginnings of a frost already starting to glisten on the boot-trodden grass, but Nancy barely felt it, a nervous sweat already starting to rise on her skin. Edging her way through the crowds of newscasters and reporters clamoring desperately for interviews, Nancy flashed her credentials at the police officers standing guard, who with a cursory glance and a nod let her through.
A simple holly wreath garnishing the door momentarily diminished the horror of what was waiting inside before the reddish-brown trail of blood sweeping across the hall instantly pulled Nancy back into reality.
The house was a blood-soaked horror scene, the crimson sprays shockingly vivid against the stark white of the walls. It glistened red, everywhere Nancy looked; it seemed there was nowhere the blood hadn’t touched. Pin-prick splatters were sprayed across furniture and leather bound books, framed family photographs grotesquely defaced by the blood.
There were no bodies yet and Nancy followed the trail of blood, feeling like Hansel following the fabled crumbs of bread, only this path would have no fairy-tale end, no gingerbread cottage, just the certainty of more death and carnage.
Nancy saw him first. David Andrews, the proud family man, was now reduced to this, his body splayed out awkwardly on the floor and his final expression one of abject horror and grief. They had determined that his wife had died first, a single gunshot wound to the head, and he had more than likely witnessed her death, the ligaments binding his arms and legs preventing him from rushing forward to her aid. The cruelty of the act was unimaginable, the man being forced to watch his own wife being shot to death, knowing he was next.
“Fuck, what a way to go,” Derek muttered joylessly as he surveyed the scene with a mixture of resignation and horror on his face. An FBI agent for over twenty years, Derek had thought he’d seen it all, but the events of the past few weeks had even him shaken. The attacks were getting more violent and more erratic by the day, but it would be hard to top this, he concurred grimly as he knelt down beside the female victim, the majority of her face dissolved into a gleaming, sticky mess.
“Any evidence?” Nancy asked, not holding out much hope as she knelt down on the carpet beside him.
“CSI are working on it, but so far not a thing,” he shrugged, turning away from the body and glancing at Nancy sharply. “You okay, Drew? You look a little pale,”
“I’m fine, just a little tired,” Nancy replied dismissively, turning back to the crime scene. She was touched by his concern, though. Derek was ex-Army and was not usually known for his caring disposition.
His phone rang and Derek answered it impatiently.
“The boss is on the way down here,” he relayed to Nancy gruffly the second he slid the phone angrily shut. “The mayor is giving him hell. With elections coming up, he’s afraid this is going to seriously damage his approval ratings.”
“Typical,” Nancy sighed under her breath, hating the politics that seemed to constantly interfere with their job. Everyday the newspapers carried the newest spin on the Riverside murders, who was responsible, who should resign. From police policy to the department budget to the FBI who had been drafted in to help, it seemed that everybody was at fault and the mayor’s campaign to be reelected would be seriously in jeopardy if this messiness wasn’t resolved soon.
“Five bodies in one day, it’s a fucking disaster,”
“Five,” Nancy echoed warily. “You mean, there’s another one.”
Derek nodding in reply, Nancy followed him down the hall to another open door, a child’s name spelled out in bold, colorful letters.
Nothing could have prepared Nancy for the horror that awaited her in that final room, the sight of the little girl’s bloodied body lying on the bed, jarring with the childish images of fairies and princesses adorning the wall.
Sudden sweat glistening on her forehead and nausea rising in her throat, Nancy hadn’t time to answer Derek’s questioning look. Turning on her heels, she ran, the contents of her stomach spilling all over the frosted lawn.
xxxxx
The smell of omelette, hissing on the pan, greeted Nancy as she pushed open the front door and wandered wearily into the kitchen, where Frank pulled her immediately into his arms, planting a soft kiss on her lips.
“I missed you last night,” he murmured lovingly, kissing her deeply before leading her gently to the kitchen table.
A lone candle flickered on the table and though the effect wasn’t as romantic under the bright morning night, it was a lovely gesture, and Nancy couldn’t help but smile at seeing it.
“Champagne, madam,” Frank asked jokingly as he poured some coffee for Nancy with a grand flourish.
“This is so sweet, Frank,” Nancy sighed in amazement, noticing the plate of fresh croissants on the table that must have come from that bakery in town she had raved so much about. He’d even managed to tidy up, the dishes stacked neatly in the sink and the floor looking suspiciously like it had just been vacuumed. “What on earth possessed you to go to so much trouble?”
“Maybe because I love you,” he murmured gently, leaning in to kiss her.
Nancy hesitated slightly as she cut into her omelette, the images of the previous night still raw in her mind. Frank noticed but didn’t say anything, instead placing his hand gently over hers.
“How about we go skiing for Christmas,” he suggested lightly, gratified when that thought mustered a smile from Nancy. “Long days at the slopes, log fires, no fights over where we have to spend Christmas day...”
“It would be perfect,” Nancy finished helpfully, throwing her arms around Frank’s arms and pulling herself into a seated position on his lap.
“You need the break, Nancy,” he commented lightly, tilting her face up to his and kissing her gently. “You have been working too hard, even for you.”
“You know, maybe a trip to the doctor might be in order,” he suggested after a pause, seeing how Nancy was struggling with her food. “You haven’t been yourself over the last few weeks.”
“Maybe,” Nancy shrugged dismissively, flashing him a reassuring smile before forcing herself to spoon some of the omelette into her mouth.
The pair lingered over breakfast, indulging in the morning papers and idly discussing various holiday plans, but Nancy couldn’t stop thinking about what Frank had said, and it made her wonder.
The second Frank had left for work, grazing her cheek with a kiss, Nancy had crept out silently behind him, slamming the door shut.
Author:glasheen25
Pairing/Characters:Nancy/Ned, Nancy/Frank
Series:post-files
Word Count:2663
Rating:R
Summary:In the first instance Ned misses his flight, missing Nancy's birthday in the process. In the second instance Ned makes his flight, arriving on time. How a seemingly inconsequential event could lead Nancy's life in two completely different directions.
Spoilers:None
Warnings:None
A knife lay on the ground beside the blood-drenched body of Evelyn West, but this was not the weapon that had been used to murder the unfortunate woman; a single gunshot to the back of the head had been the cause of that. Evelyn, a professor of fine arts at a local university, had been performing the mundane task of chopping vegetables for dinner when she had been shot from behind, the knife clattering noisily onto the ground beside her. The gleaming white kitchen was now showered in blood, long tracks of red staining the walls.
“These guys are too fucking good,” she heard a colleague mutter disconcertedly beside her, and he was right.
The perpetrators had chosen their target well; the house was set back a considerable distance from the road and surrounded by a high red-brick wall. Even in broad daylight it would be possible to slip in the gates unnoticed, without being spied upon by prying, meddlesome neighbors. These men didn’t take chances, didn’t take risks. They planned their attacks well in advance and had yet to make a single mistake. Worse still, these men weren’t motivated by money or greed like the average scumbag criminal; they were driven purely by the kill, and that made them all the more dangerous.
Riverside was one of the wealthiest suburbs of Chicago, where the houses sprawled to almost obnoxious proportions and cars cost the equivalent of an average American’s lifetime earnings. Cossetted by their six-figure salaries and luxurious lifestyles, the residents were initially horribly indignant that such a thing could happen in their precious neighborhood. Now they were just scared, turning as usual to their money and investing in the latest in technological advances in security to protect them.
“What’s your take on this, Drew,” Derek Johnson, a senior colleague, demanded of her abruptly, seeing the speculative look on Nancy’s face as she took in the grisly scene.
“Evelyn West is preparing dinner when our intruder comes in and shoots her in the back of the head,” Nancy surmised grimly, her eyes drinking in the bloodied details of the scene. “She has no chance to react and dies instantly.”
Nodding wordlessly, Derek urged her to continue, following the trail of destruction out of the kitchen, where bloodied footprints had been stamped all over the gleaming white.
“Now it gets more complicated,” Nancy continued, stepping over the smeared pools of blood, careful not to disturb anything. “They hear a scream. It’s Caitlyn, the daughter who’s home visiting her parents for the weekend.”
“The men aren’t expecting anyone else to be there,” Derek contributed in an absent tone, his eyes intently studying the series of bloody marks on the wall.
“Exactly,” Nancy agreed with a slight smile. “And now they begin to panic and in their haste to find the girl, one of the men steps in the blood and accidentally tracks it all over the house. Caitlyn has no doubt seen the news, guesses what’s going on and is terrified.” Nancy sighed, kneeling down beside the dead girl's body.
Vivid red scratches run the length of her arms and face, her fists reduced to a bloody pulp, and it’s obvious that the girl put up a commendable fight, but ultimately it’s not enough, Caitlyn’s flailing limbs no match for her opponent's gun.
“She was pretty,” Nancy commented quietly, a picture of Caitlyn dressed up for her senior prom catching her eye.
“Not anymore,” Derek sighed dejectedly, taking a final glance at Caitlyn’s bloodied remains before walking out of the room.
xxxxx
Their home was a charmingly quirky, mid-terrace house that Nancy had become infatuated with the second they had walked in the door. Falling in love with the blue-and-white papered walls, Nancy had declared with uncharacteristic frivolity that it was the perfect house and it simply had to be theirs. The pair had moved in the following week, taking the next step in their quickly developing relationship. The house boasted an enviable location, within walking distance of some of the best bars and restaurants in the city, which was ironic considering that since that crazy, alcohol-fueled night, Nancy and Frank hadn’t so much as gone for a drink together. Their work schedules were crazy and the few hours they managed to scrape together were far better spent at home in each other’s arms than in a bar at midnight, straining to hear each other over the ridiculously loud music. Moving in together wasn’t some big decision they had made, deliberating feverishly for weeks; the decision had in fact been made for them. Nancy and Frank had both been posted to the same field office and it had just made sense.
The house was shrouded in darkness as Nancy pulled up outside, not even a crack of welcoming light peeking out through the windows. Frank wasn’t home yet, Nancy realized with a sigh as she slung her bag over her shoulder and slammed the car door shut, her keys rattling noisily in her hand. Chicago was in the grip of winter and the weather was bitterly cold and frosty, the snow never far away. Smoke snaked gracefully from the chimney of an adjacent house and Nancy regarded it jealously as she shivered into the collar of her coat. Temperatures had plummeted to well below freezing all day and Nancy could only imagine how cold their lonely, empty house would be.
Flicking on the television, Nancy collapsed gratefully on the sofa, tucking her legs comfortingly underneath her and resting her head on the plush softness of a cushion. Under normal circumstances Nancy would miss Frank now, would crave for his company and the feel of his arms wrapped tightly around her, but tonight she didn’t care. She was ridiculously tired and hungry and her needs stretched only to fulfilling these basics.
The answering machine blinked red, but Nancy ignored it, knowing it would be her father. She didn't have the heart right now to have to justify her relationship with Frank for what seemed like the millionth time. It wasn’t that Carson didn’t like Frank, he did; and he didn’t wholly disapprove of the relationship, just the speed of it. Nancy curled up a little tighter on the couch, deciding to put that particular conversation on the back burner for now.
Tomorrow, she promised herself, when she got home from work a little earlier and her head throbbed a little less and she had a bottle of wine on standby in case the conversation disintegrated like last time, into another fiercely blazing argument.
Adding her empty bowl to the collection of half-full coffee cups strewn all over the floor, Nancy sighed, unable to ignore the untidy state of their living room for a moment longer. Though both Nancy and Frank tried to keep their home clean, it was rarely tidy. Frank had heaped files unsteadily on the already overflowing coffee table and Nancy was equally guilty of the scattering of shoes and clothes left tossed on the carpet and draped on furniture throughout the house. Frank had never treated Nancy like a typical girlfriend, had never expected her to cook and clean; they had started out as equals and that had never changed. In fairness, Ned had never expected that from her either, but they had been going out for so long that the expectations were still there, from his parents and her father, who had all presumed that someday she would leave all this behind her and settle down and marry Ned, giving him the stability he so desperately craved and she so desperately needed.
The cheerless ring of her cell phone, buzzing on the table, momentarily startled her.
“Hey Derek,” she mumbled into the phone, rubbing at her eyes wearily. “What’s going on?”
“There’s been another one,” he informed her somberly, and Nancy could hear the same exhaustion in his voice. “The boss needs you down here right away.”
“Already,” Nancy sighed disbelievingly, pulling herself into a sitting position and wondering how she was ever going to muster the energy to shower and dress, much less work another blood-drenched crime scene. “These guys sure moves fast.”
Swallowing a quick glass of orange juice and scribbling a note for Frank, Nancy pulled open the door and stepped outside, wondering what the next few hours would hold for her.
The night glowed blue as Nancy pulled in front of the sprawling red-brick house, the sirens of seemingly every police cruiser in Chicago wailing in the air. The scene was chaotic; work-weary officers were swarming the yard and the perimeter of the house, searching for God knows what, considering the men hadn’t left so much as a fingerprint behind them so far.
It was blistering cold, the beginnings of a frost already starting to glisten on the boot-trodden grass, but Nancy barely felt it, a nervous sweat already starting to rise on her skin. Edging her way through the crowds of newscasters and reporters clamoring desperately for interviews, Nancy flashed her credentials at the police officers standing guard, who with a cursory glance and a nod let her through.
A simple holly wreath garnishing the door momentarily diminished the horror of what was waiting inside before the reddish-brown trail of blood sweeping across the hall instantly pulled Nancy back into reality.
The house was a blood-soaked horror scene, the crimson sprays shockingly vivid against the stark white of the walls. It glistened red, everywhere Nancy looked; it seemed there was nowhere the blood hadn’t touched. Pin-prick splatters were sprayed across furniture and leather bound books, framed family photographs grotesquely defaced by the blood.
There were no bodies yet and Nancy followed the trail of blood, feeling like Hansel following the fabled crumbs of bread, only this path would have no fairy-tale end, no gingerbread cottage, just the certainty of more death and carnage.
Nancy saw him first. David Andrews, the proud family man, was now reduced to this, his body splayed out awkwardly on the floor and his final expression one of abject horror and grief. They had determined that his wife had died first, a single gunshot wound to the head, and he had more than likely witnessed her death, the ligaments binding his arms and legs preventing him from rushing forward to her aid. The cruelty of the act was unimaginable, the man being forced to watch his own wife being shot to death, knowing he was next.
“Fuck, what a way to go,” Derek muttered joylessly as he surveyed the scene with a mixture of resignation and horror on his face. An FBI agent for over twenty years, Derek had thought he’d seen it all, but the events of the past few weeks had even him shaken. The attacks were getting more violent and more erratic by the day, but it would be hard to top this, he concurred grimly as he knelt down beside the female victim, the majority of her face dissolved into a gleaming, sticky mess.
“Any evidence?” Nancy asked, not holding out much hope as she knelt down on the carpet beside him.
“CSI are working on it, but so far not a thing,” he shrugged, turning away from the body and glancing at Nancy sharply. “You okay, Drew? You look a little pale,”
“I’m fine, just a little tired,” Nancy replied dismissively, turning back to the crime scene. She was touched by his concern, though. Derek was ex-Army and was not usually known for his caring disposition.
His phone rang and Derek answered it impatiently.
“The boss is on the way down here,” he relayed to Nancy gruffly the second he slid the phone angrily shut. “The mayor is giving him hell. With elections coming up, he’s afraid this is going to seriously damage his approval ratings.”
“Typical,” Nancy sighed under her breath, hating the politics that seemed to constantly interfere with their job. Everyday the newspapers carried the newest spin on the Riverside murders, who was responsible, who should resign. From police policy to the department budget to the FBI who had been drafted in to help, it seemed that everybody was at fault and the mayor’s campaign to be reelected would be seriously in jeopardy if this messiness wasn’t resolved soon.
“Five bodies in one day, it’s a fucking disaster,”
“Five,” Nancy echoed warily. “You mean, there’s another one.”
Derek nodding in reply, Nancy followed him down the hall to another open door, a child’s name spelled out in bold, colorful letters.
Nothing could have prepared Nancy for the horror that awaited her in that final room, the sight of the little girl’s bloodied body lying on the bed, jarring with the childish images of fairies and princesses adorning the wall.
Sudden sweat glistening on her forehead and nausea rising in her throat, Nancy hadn’t time to answer Derek’s questioning look. Turning on her heels, she ran, the contents of her stomach spilling all over the frosted lawn.
xxxxx
The smell of omelette, hissing on the pan, greeted Nancy as she pushed open the front door and wandered wearily into the kitchen, where Frank pulled her immediately into his arms, planting a soft kiss on her lips.
“I missed you last night,” he murmured lovingly, kissing her deeply before leading her gently to the kitchen table.
A lone candle flickered on the table and though the effect wasn’t as romantic under the bright morning night, it was a lovely gesture, and Nancy couldn’t help but smile at seeing it.
“Champagne, madam,” Frank asked jokingly as he poured some coffee for Nancy with a grand flourish.
“This is so sweet, Frank,” Nancy sighed in amazement, noticing the plate of fresh croissants on the table that must have come from that bakery in town she had raved so much about. He’d even managed to tidy up, the dishes stacked neatly in the sink and the floor looking suspiciously like it had just been vacuumed. “What on earth possessed you to go to so much trouble?”
“Maybe because I love you,” he murmured gently, leaning in to kiss her.
Nancy hesitated slightly as she cut into her omelette, the images of the previous night still raw in her mind. Frank noticed but didn’t say anything, instead placing his hand gently over hers.
“How about we go skiing for Christmas,” he suggested lightly, gratified when that thought mustered a smile from Nancy. “Long days at the slopes, log fires, no fights over where we have to spend Christmas day...”
“It would be perfect,” Nancy finished helpfully, throwing her arms around Frank’s arms and pulling herself into a seated position on his lap.
“You need the break, Nancy,” he commented lightly, tilting her face up to his and kissing her gently. “You have been working too hard, even for you.”
“You know, maybe a trip to the doctor might be in order,” he suggested after a pause, seeing how Nancy was struggling with her food. “You haven’t been yourself over the last few weeks.”
“Maybe,” Nancy shrugged dismissively, flashing him a reassuring smile before forcing herself to spoon some of the omelette into her mouth.
The pair lingered over breakfast, indulging in the morning papers and idly discussing various holiday plans, but Nancy couldn’t stop thinking about what Frank had said, and it made her wonder.
The second Frank had left for work, grazing her cheek with a kiss, Nancy had crept out silently behind him, slamming the door shut.