"Well, here's the thing: I'd like to walk you down the aisle."
She stared. "You what?"
"I've looked out for you for fourteen years. With Vernon gone, I'd say that qualifies me to walk you down and give you away."
She looked at the other guys standing as dumbfounded as she. If he was pulling something and they were all in on it . . .
"Got someone better?"
She shook her head. She had thought for a moment Mom might, but came immediately to her senses.
"Then what do you say?"
"What is it with you and weddings? Are you still witnessing—" as his face darkened, she shifted tactics—"the other?"
"Don't change the subject."
She looked around the room. "Why don't you guys get back to work?"
"Hey, no way." Their grumbles flowed.
"You heard the lady." Brad didn't have to say
lady
with such irony.
She turned back to him as they grudgingly feigned industry. "So?"
"So what?"
"Are you still standing up at your ex-wife's wedding?"
"What's that got to do with
my
question?"
"I'm trying to find out if you've gone completely nuts."
He expelled his breath. "Your beau asked my permission. I think that qualifies—"
"He asked your blessing."
"Same thing."
"No it's not. You don't have charge of me."
" 'You don't have charge of me,' " he mimicked. "Now who's the twelve-year-old?"
"Fine." He didn't have to sound fatherly, either, even if gray threads shone throughout his hair.
He spread his hands. "Why is this a fight? I'm doing something nice here."
"That's what scares me."
"You think it's a prank?"
"Are you wearing a wire? Got a hidden camera somewhere?"
"What's with the paranoia, Rese?"
She crossed her arms. "I don't have good reason?"
"Maybe you do. But this isn't a joke."
The truth was their battles had filled half her life, and she wasn't sure how to take his overture.
Brad cocked his head. "I'm just saying, if you're going through with this—"
"Going through with it?"
"Well, who is this guy? He barges into your life, and now you're getting married?" He dug the pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
"You just had one."
He shoved it back in. "It's not something to decide lightly. I mean look how you sold the company. You can't tell me you don't regret it."
She'd been dazed by Dad's death, hardly known what she was doing, only that she couldn't go on without him. And now here she was doing just that.
He cocked his jaw. "I don't want you to make a mistake."
"Are we talking about me?"
He rubbed his palm over his thigh. "Marriage isn't easy."
"I think we know what we're doing."
"Yeah," he scoffed. "Sure you do."
She clutched his wrist. "Brad. Tell her how you feel."
"She knows."
"She can't. She wouldn't have asked you to be there for her if she did."
He stared a long moment at the floor, then looked up. "What do you see in Lance that makes you think a lifetime together can work?"
His love for his family, his need to be integral, his laugh, his passion. The way he slipped in and handled things. The way he cared. His faith. His faithfulness. But she wasn't about to say all that. "Lots of things."
"Marriage isn't all hugs and kisses."
"I don't expect it to be. Lance can be as infuriating as you."
"You're never ticked off."
"I just don't show it."
"Except the other night in the shed. You got pretty riled about the stairs."
She glared. Lance had broken down so many of her walls, she couldn't hide as well as she used to. "Are you the same person you were nineteen years ago?"
"I hope not." He grabbed the pack from his pocket again and shook a cigarette loose.
"Then why do you think Joni is?"
"I've seen her; I know her." He flicked his lighter and inhaled, then held up and scrutinized the smoking cigarette. "See this? I know it's bad for me, but I can't quit." He took a long, hard drag. "That's how it is with Joni. An addiction I can't shake."
"Maybe you're not supposed to."
"You're hounding me all the time to get off the smokes."
"I never hound you."
"Encourage, then. Call it what you want."
She straightened. "You need to open up to Joni."
He slapped his thigh. "Open up? Did those words even come out of your mouth?"
"Ha-ha."
"Does Lance Michelli know everything?"
"What everything?"
"Like that you offered me a different sort of partnership when you came back?"
She frowned. "I only did that to make sure you wouldn't accept."
"Uh-huh."
"I didn't want personal feelings interfering with work."
"Yeah, so you said. But I don't suppose you've mentioned it to your fiancè."
"Why would I?" She flicked a wood shaving off the carving she'd almost completed.
"Because it's the kind of thing that comes back and bites you."
"Only if you open your big mouth."
"You're missing the point. I'm trying to say there are all kinds of things that can go wrong, and you don't see it coming. Then it goes from bad to worse, and before you know it, you can't fix it all. You don't even know where to start."
She looked into his face. "You start at the beginning. Strip it down to what matters, the essential core, whatever's salvageable. You find the heart of it. Then little by little you build it back up, rub and sand and varnish, paint over the blemishes, maybe even carve a flourish or two."
He released a jagged breath. "I wish it was that easy."
She took the cigarette from his hand and stubbed it out. "Tell her."
His brow pinched. "Then I . . ." He cleared his throat. "It would be right out there that all these years . . ." He bunched his fingers into his hair.
"You've loved her?"
"I told you it's a love-hate thing."
"If she believed you hated her, she would not have come to you for help."
"She comes to me for money and . . ." He looked away.
Rese folded her arms. "The fact is she turned to you. Are you really going to let her walk into another marriage when you're the one she wants?"
Jaw cocked, he shook his head. "She's moved on twice now. I'm the one who can't."
"Maybe she's moved on because you're too stubborn to try again."
"You won't let it go, will you."
"Not when I'm right. You should know that." She picked up her chisel but kept her eyes on him. "I'd like you to stand in for Dad. It would mean a lot to me." To her utter dismay, tears stung her eyes.
Brad looked at her long and hard, then nodded. "Me too."
She played and replayed it all the way home. What would Lance think of Brad walking her down the aisle? Should she have asked Lance first? And why did Brad have to bring up that . . . episode? It meant nothing. It . . . She pulled up to the house. Lance's bike was there. Sofie's car wasn't. They must not be back from the hospital.
She went inside, climbed the stairs, and noticed her mother still in bed. She took in Star's empty room across the hall and headed up to the attic. While her mother chose to stay in her room some days, Star usually managed, with her strange mixture of silliness and insight, to get her out of bed. Rese no longer questioned the relationship they'd formed, Star finding in Mom—impossibly—what she had never known from her own mother. Love and acceptance. It sometimes seemed as though Star was the true daughter and Rese Barrett the graft. But she didn't begrudge them, not with her own feelings so mixed.
She mounted the narrow stairs to the long attic, which smelled of oil paint and age. Lance had cleaned out the mouse-infested clutter as one of his first tasks for her, and she deeply appreciated it, though his ulterior motives had later come to light. "Star?"
Star stood at her easel and didn't turn. Coming up from behind, Rese saw the start of her new painting slashed down the middle. The paring knife in her hand explained what had happened, but definitely not why.
Rese moved around to see Star's face. "Didn't like it?" Usually she'd paint over something that wasn't working and save herself stretching a new canvas.
"I did." Star's eyes sparkled with tears. "Too much. I should know when things feel right"—her voice quavered—"to 'beware the ides of March.' "
"Did something happen, Star?" She hadn't broken down like this for a long time. The fact that she'd hurt the painting and not herself showed improvement, but still.
Star laid the knife on the easel.
"Is this about Lance? About our getting married?" Star had seemed brittle since their announcement, but Rese hadn't pursued it. Now it occurred to her that Star spent a lot of time with Lance during the day, and Lance was . . . Lance. "Are you in love with him?"
Star's laugh was broken glass. "No more than everyone else."
"Then what? Why the 'Et tu, Brute?' "
Star gaped. "Did that come out of your mouth? A quote?"
Rese shrugged. "You're rubbing off."
"And you knew it, too, the ides of March and Brutus."
"I'm not a total loser." Rese planted her hands on her hips. "Now, tell me what's wrong."
Star bit her lip. "You've really heard me? When I say things?"
"I hear everything you say, Star. I thought we worked this out. You're my friend—more like my sister."
Star wrung her hands. "I'm afraid I'll disappear."
"How can you, when you shine so brightly?"
She sucked in a sob. "Do I? Do I still shine?"
"Why would you doubt it?"
"Will you want me to leave, when you marry Lance and have his children? I think there will be no room for me."
"We might have to rearrange a little if we do have kids, but—"
"Room inside, I mean."
"Star. Loving Lance has made me a better friend, a better person. I don't think love takes up space; I think it enlarges what's already there."
Star stared into her face. "I like that. I feel so much better." She turned to her canvas and cried, "Why didn't I talk to you before I did that?"
"Because you're Star." A commotion sounded downstairs. "Sounds like Lance is home. Let's hope he has Maria."
"What, hoping for a full house? Where's my friend Rese, and what have you done with her?"
M
att followed Sofie and company to the villa, where they were met by women bringing flowers, clothing, and baby supplies. He recognized Michelle Farrar and the midwife. The others were probably church women, as well, informed of Maria's homecoming and there to make it an event.
The tone inside the house was ebullient. Everyone acted as though reunification were a foregone conclusion, and that concerned him since things could turn on Maria's psych evaluation. His doubts, and Cassinia's, were valid, but no one there seemed to agree.
He leaned toward Sofie in the overcrowded parlor and whispered, "Is there somewhere we can talk?" Last night's tête-à-tête hung between them, and he felt the need to rationalize.
"Sure." She brought him out the back door, across the garden to the stone carriage house behind the villa. The place looked ancient on the outside, newly refurbished inside, though the stone floor was probably at least a hundred years old. The glass-fronted sitting room with a wood-burning stove that made him want to settle in and relax for a spell had a more masculine feel than the main house.
"The bedroom is Nonna Antonia's." Sofie motioned to the door at the end. "I'm staying in here with her until Maria and Diego go home."
"That's not certain yet." He glanced around. "Isn't this close quarters for the two of you? What if Maria stays?"
Sofie shrugged. "There's always downstairs."
"Down . . ."
She stooped down and pulled open a hatch that had been invisible in the floor.
"Holy hole in the donut. A bat cave?"
She laughed. "Close. The tunnel leads to a wine cellar."
"Tunnel? You just energized my inner spelunker."
She pointed to the shelves. "Grab that flashlight."
"Can I go first?" He took the heavy-duty torch and turned it on.
She motioned him down with her elegant fingers. He descended the surprisingly well-preserved steps to the tunnel beneath. A boyish excitement welled up that he hadn't felt since he and Jacky had climbed through the mud hole into a room-sized cavern they'd sworn blood oaths to keep secret. Jacky had kept it to his death two months later. Strange that he could now think of that without the numbing pain.
He turned to Sofie behind him. "Sure this is a wine cellar?"
"A rather large one. The property originally had a vineyard. After learning that caves were used to age the wine in Italy, my great-great-grandfather built the cellar to imitate that here. We suspect his son, Vittorio, added the tunnel during Prohibition."
"A little bootlegging?"
She led the way through a metal gate. "Not successful, as you'll see by the inventory. Nonno Vito was killed before he could sell it—if that was his intention. As I told you before, Antonia escaped the gangster assassins through here."
He'd only half believed the story she'd told him in the car. But this place was proof. "Your grandmother Antonia?"
She nodded. "Our great-great-grandfather died in the tunnel. Lance found his skeleton."
"Down here?" A thrill found his spine as the tunnel opened on a vast cellar that held stacked wooden casks and fully stocked racks. The torch's beam disappeared among their ranks.
"They had a great year in 1931—an exceptional vintage." She waved her hand. "Each of these bottles should sell at auction for two hundred to two thousand dollars."
He scanned the cellar. "Wow."
"So." She turned. "You wanted to talk?"
"Here?"
"You said alone."
He laughed. Alone must be hard to come by. He sobered as he set the torch on the end of a rack, its reflection on the ceiling casting a glow. "I wanted to explain about last night."
"You think you need to?"
Oh yeah
. "I haven't talked about Jacky that way in twenty years. A few people know it happened, but not the details, not the things I told you. When you asked for my story"—he hung his hands on his hips—"it came out like a geyser, and it hasn't stopped. But you have to know last night was not typical."