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“Hey, you want to come get a drink once we’re done with this?” Frannie’s partner Katie asked. It was four thirty on Friday afternoon and they were doing statements. Frannie took pride in making sure that her statements were always nice and clear and all the long words she used were the right long words, but it was the kind of pride she took when she wasn’t doing them, rather than when she was. When she was, it just sucked. “You don’t have to do pickup on Friday, do you?”
“Nah, Ma’s got the kids,” Frannie said, “but I gotta get home anyway. My brother Ray’s in town, family dinner, you know how it is.” Katie had a big family too. It was one of the reasons they got along.
“That’s the one who moved to Canada, right?” said Katie. She’d moved to Chicago and joined the PD a couple of years after both of Frannie’s brothers Ray (the real one and the fake one) had left town. She thought all the stories about them and Fraser were just stories, even though Frannie had sworn on her first-born child (Jessica) that they were true, even the thing about the submarine. Both submarines.
“No, the one who moved to Florida,” Frannie said. “It was my fake brother Ray who moved to Canada.”
“And his wife is called Stella?”
“No,” Frannie said patiently, “Ray in Canada got divorced from Stella. She’s married to my real brother Ray, in Florida. But she couldn’t come this time because she had a case or something.” Stella’s career as a full-time bowling alley operator had lasted about six months, which kind of made sense to Frannie; it was all well and good for Ray to decide he’d been shot enough times and he was done, but Stella still had things to do. She liked Stella. She was a real go-getter. Maybe she liked her a little bit more because she lived in Florida, but who was asking.
“Your brother Ray in Florida, who was partners with the crazy Mountie,” said Katie. “Is that right?”
“No, Ray in Canada is partners with the Mountie, and Fraser isn’t crazy,” Frannie said. “Well, except that he’s up in the frozen wherever being partners with Ray, when he could have had me. I mean, he did use to be partners with my real brother Ray too. But not like that, if you know what I mean.”
“So there’s -” Katie was frowning. “There’s two Rays, and one’s your fake brother and one’s your real brother, and one of them moved to Canada and one of them moved to Florida, but they were both married to women called Stella -”
“To Stella,” Frannie said helpfully. “There’s just one Stella. She used to be an ASA for Cook County.”
“They’ve been married to the same - and they both worked with - and they were both at the 2-7 -” Katie shook her head. “Nope. I give up. You have one brother Ray. This is an elaborate joke.”
“I have photos!” Frannie said. “They don’t look anything alike! Which is why it was so dumb when -” but Katie just shook her head, and turned back to her own desk.
Frannie sighed. It really wasn’t that complicated. She didn’t know why people couldn’t keep it straight.
The thing where she’d sent the wrong Christmas cards to the wrong houses last year, though - well, she was a working mother of three. She couldn’t be expected to get everything right.