Dearly Beloved (15 page)

But obviously, they had mattered.

Because in the end, she’d abandoned him.

Just like the others would, in years to come.

With a sigh, he opens his eyes and his gaze falls on the portable stereo.

Oh, yes. He mustn’t forget to bring the music.

He hurries over to remove the round silver CD he’d been playing, presses it into the plastic case, and puts it away in alphabetical order.

Then he reaches for a cassette tape from the stack on the table. It took him several days of combing record stores to find all the right songs to record on this tape.

He checks the neat lettering on the inside sleeve of the plastic cassette case to make sure he has the right one.

Yes, this is it.

The one that begins with “One Hand, One Heart” and ends with Mendelssohn’s wedding march.

“I
’m telling you, it isn’t right,” Tony Cavelli repeats, this time thumping the table with his fist so hard that the ladle topples out of the bowl of sauce, sending tomato-colored splatters all over the plastic tablecloth.

Danny and his wife Cheryl, who is seated to his right, exchange a glance.

Cheryl raises her eyebrows slightly, as if to say,
Aren’t you going to stick up for your sister?

Danny sighs inwardly. Cheryl’s right. But he hates to get into this whole thing about Sandy and some weekend trip she’s apparently taken.

He and his father don’t get along very well as it is. Never have. Pop doesn’t understand why he’d insisted on going to college or why he hadn’t gone into the family business. Or why he’d married a girl who wasn’t Italian when he could have settled down with Donna Aglieri, his high school sweetheart.

It isn’t that Tony Cavelli doesn’t like Cheryl. Who can help but like her? She’s sweet and kind and pretty with dark blond hair and big blue eyes and the kind of smile that lights up her whole face.

No, Pop is crazy about Cheryl. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think Danny should have stuck with his own kind and married Donna.

After all, both Tony Junior and Frankie managed to find Italian wives. You wouldn’t find a happier family man than Tony Junior, as Pop points out every chance he gets. Maryanne is pregnant again—with their fourth child; they’re trying for a son—Tony the third, of course—to add to their brood of daughters, all of them under seven.

Meanwhile, Frankie and Sue have been separated more than a year now, but Pop refuses to acknowledge that one of his sons might end up divorced—or that it might be Frankie’s fault. Everyone in Greenbury knows about Frankie and Char, the new beautician down at Hair and Now. Of course, no one in the Cavelli family ever brings it up. No one ever asks Frankie about Sue, either.

Danny clears his throat. “You know, Pop, a lot of women travel on their own these days. It’s not like when you were young. It doesn’t mean Sandy’s a . . . well, you know.”

A
putana
is what his father had called her. Italian for whore. Well, Pop hadn’t exactly said his sister is one, just that when single girls go away alone, people talk. People, according to Tony Cavelli, would say that Sandy is out looking for men.

And even though Danny suspects people would be right, he isn’t about to tell his father that. What his sister does is her own business. Still, these days, you can’t be too careful.

“I know it’s not like when I was young,” Tony says, wiping an orange smear of sauce from his mustache before spearing another gnocchi on his fork. “You don’t have to tell me. I just expect my daughter, my own flesh and blood, to behave like a young lady. Not like a—”

“Frankie, what’s the matter with you?” Angie interrupts, jabbing her middle son in the arm. “Don’t tell me that’s all you’re gonna eat.”

“Ma, I had a huge plateful.” Frankie pushes back his chair and stifles a burp.

“Where are you going?” Tony Junior asks, resting an elbow on the back of Maryanne’s empty chair. She’s in the kitchen, making sure the kids are eating.

“What do you mean where am I going? It’s Saturday night. Bowling, where else?”

“Well, before you go, you have to come over and help me move that dresser out of the baby’s room. You said you would.”

“Oh, geez, I forgot. Come on, Tony, I’m late already,” Frankie says, checking his watch. “I’ll help you do it tomorrow.”

“Can’t. We have Maryanne’s mother’s birthday party right after church.”

“Danny will help you,” Angie says, looking at him. “Right?”

This time, Danny sighs out loud. “I’ll help you,” he tells his oldest brother. “But we have to make it fast. Cheryl and I are going to the movies at eight-thirty.”

Maryanne, just coming back into the dining room, says, “The movies! God, Tony, remember when we used to go to the movies on Saturday nights?”

“We still go to the movies sometimes.”

“Yeah, Disney matinees.” Maryanne looks at Cheryl. “Enjoy it while you can. As soon as you have kids, you two will never get away by yourselves again.”

Cheryl catches Danny’s eye.

He knows what she’s thinking.
If only we had kids.
They’ve been trying since their wedding night, with no luck. For a while, Cheryl had been pestering him to let her see a specialist, a doctor who’s had a pretty good success rate with patients who have difficulty conceiving. Danny has resisted, not wanting to get into that.

A friend of his at work has been through the whole gamut. Tests. Fertility drugs.
In vitro
fertilization. He and his wife drained their bank accounts, took out a second mortgage on their house, endured years of stress and prayers, and nothing worked. Now they’re trying borrow money to adopt.

Danny supposes that as a last resort, he and Cheryl can go that route, but he can’t help wanting to hold out longer, to see what happens. And Cheryl seems to have started to see things his way lately. At least, she hasn’t pestered him about that doctor for the last month or so.

There’s a sudden sound of breaking glass in the kitchen, followed instantly by the sound of one of Danny’s little nieces wailing and another one saying, “I told you not to touch that.”

“Ashley? What happened?” Maryanne is in there like a shot.

Angie jumps up and follows her, saying, “Eye-yi-yi, I hope that wasn’t my new water pitcher.”

A moment later, the crying has escalated, and Danny’s oldest niece, Caitlin, appears in the doorway, her dark eyes solemn. “Daddy? Ashley cut herself on some glass and she’s bleeding.”

Tony Junior gets up. “Where?”

“Over by the stove.”

“No, I mean, where on her body? Never mind I’ll come.” He, too, disappears into the kitchen.

Frankie pulls on his leather jacket, says a quick “later,” and heads out the side door.

“Crazy,” Tony Cavelli says, throwing his hands up in the air, then picking up his fork again.

“What’s crazy, Pop?”

“This family, what else?” He shovels some gnocchi into his mouth, then says around it, “Three girls. Your brother better hope this new baby isn’t another one. He has his hands full already. Raising a daughter isn’t easy.”

“Oh, come on, Pop, Sandy never gave you any trouble growing up.”

“Then, no. Now . . .” He shakes his head.

“What’s she done now?”

“She won’t lose weight. She won’t get married. She’s off alone on some crazy island. . . .”

“What island?” Cheryl asks brightly.

“That’s the worst part. Tide Island. I took you kids there when you were little, remember?” Tony asks Danny, who nods. “Crazy place. All kinds of hippies there. Not the kind of place where a young lady should go alone.”

Danny pushes his chair back abruptly. “Come on, Cheryl. Let’s go make sure Ashley’s okay.”

As they head into the kitchen, leaving his father alone at the table, Danny wonders if the day is ever going to come when he can stop coming to Sandy’s rescue.

S
andy’s heart has been pounding for the last half hour or so as the time for her big date drew near.

Now, when she peeks through the glass in the front door of the inn and sees the shiny black sedan outside, her heart starts pumping so violently that it almost hurts.

Relax
, she tells herself as she reaches for the knob.
Act as though you’ve seen it all before . . . done it all before . . .

“Ah, Sandy, your date must be here.”

She jumps and turns to see Jasper Hammel behind her. “I guess that’s him.”

“May I help you with your coat?”

“Oh . . .” She has it slung over her arm.

She’d pictured Ethan Thoreau coming up to the door to greet her, had imagined how his hands would brush against the bare skin at her neck as he gallantly helped her into her coat.

Now, it’s Jasper Hammel who takes it from her and holds it open so she can slip her arms into the sleeves. Disappointed, she glances out the window again with a frown.

“Um, are you sure that’s Ethan?” she asks Jasper.

“Ethan? Oh, no, that’s not Mr. Thoreau. It’s his driver, of course.”

“Of course.” Though startled, Sandy can’t help but feel relieved. Her mother had taught her, back when she was in high school, that if a date didn’t come up to the door, she shouldn’t go out with him again.

But chauffeurs don’t count,
Sandy thinks gleefully now as Jasper holds the door open for her and she walks out into the rainy night.

The driver’s side door opens and a tall, dark figure puts up an umbrella in one quick movement. He comes to the bottom of the steps and tips his hat at Sandy. “Good evening, Miss Cavelli.”

“Good evening,” she says coolly, practicing for later. She wants Ethan Thoreau to think that she’s sophisticated.

Like Liza.

An image of the woman flits into Sandy’s brain, and she frowns. She has nothing in common with Liza Danning. But it probably wouldn’t hurt to imitate her haughty attitude, under the circumstances.

The chauffeur holds the umbrella over her head as they walk back to the car. He opens the door and helps her into the back seat, grasping her arm firmly with a black leather glove. He’s wearing tinted aviator-framed glasses and a long, dark wool overcoat.

As they pull away from the Bramble Rose, Sandy settles back against the leather upholstery and takes a deep breath, then exhales slowly.

This is it
, she thinks.
I’m off to meet the man of my dreams.

Then she feels a sudden prickle of panic.

What is it? What’s wrong with you?

She knits her brows, confused.

There’s something. . . .

Something triggered a completely negative sensation inside her just now. She has no idea what it was, but it was there, as real as anything she’s ever felt in her life.

In the dark back seat of the car, she starts to chew her lower lip, then stops when she realizes that she’ll ruin her lipstick, which she applied so carefully for Ethan’s benefit.

What’s bothering her? She stares vacantly at the back of the chauffeur’s head, trying to put her finger on whatever it was that made her uneasy.

Was,
because she no longer feels an acute sense of something unpleasant. Still, though the anxiety is fading, she can’t shake it entirely.

In the depths of her consciousness, something has stirred.

Something disturbing.

She blinks and looks over the front seat, through the rain-splattered windshield. The road ahead, the one she walked along earlier this afternoon, is rain-slicked and deserted. The headlights cast a murky glow in the rain. Outside, the steadily howling wind mingles with the rhythmic crashing of the ocean and the squeaking of the windshield wipers.

“Is the house far from here?” Sandy’s voice is strained even to her own ears.

“No,” the chauffeur says simply, not turning his head.

She looks at his black-gloved hands, notes the way they clench the steering wheel. His posture is stiff and he focuses intently on the road.

He must be nervous about driving in such nasty weather,
Sandy tells herself. It certainly is getting worse. The rain is streaming over the windshield despite the furiously moving wipers, and she can feel the car being buffeted by the gale.

Is that why I’m so edgy?
she asks herself.
It must be the storm.

That makes sense. After all, who would want to be out in weather like this, in a strange, out-of-the-way place? Anyone might feel a little nervous about it. Anyone might confuse that feeling for something else.

Déjà vu.

That’s what Sandy thought she was feeling a moment ago. It was as though she’d done this before, somehow. But . . .

A romantic weekend on a beautiful island, a chauffeur, a date with a wealthy, gorgeous man . . .

Nope, you’ve never done anything like this before,
she tells herself wryly.
But if you’re lucky, maybe this is only the beginning. . . .

L
iza lies on her bed, trying to read the manuscript she’d started this afternoon. Normally, her experienced editor’s eye can whiz through three-hundred-and-fifty pages in a matter of hours. But it’s taken her ten minutes to read two paragraphs, and she finally shoves the white pages aside again in frustration.

D.M. Yates still hasn’t called back again, and Liza is more and more certain that she’s been had.

The only thing that’s keeping her from being entirely sure is Jasper Hammel.

If he’d merely spoken to Yates on the telephone, it would be one thing. Someone could have called the inn pretending to be the reclusive writer.

But Jasper said Yates was actually here, in the inn, looking for her.

Would Albie—or whoever is behind this scam—actually come all the way out to this island and pose as Yates? Or, even more farfetched, would he go to the trouble of hiring an impostor?

Somehow, Liza can’t picture it. After all, Albie—he’s the only one she really suspects—is an incredibly busy man. If she’s not mistaken, he’s in Washington until the end of the month anyway.

So what’s going on here, then?

If it’s not a wild-goose chase, there’s only one other solution. D.M. Yates actually did summon Liza to this island, and he really did come looking for her.