Sweeter Than W(h)ine (11 page)

Dina smiled wanly at him, and he could read the “I’m sorry” in her eyes. Rafe wanted to cry, but after his mom, dad and Gracie had died, he’d put his emotions away, convincing himself that men didn’t cry and he needed to be strong because that’s what his parents would have wanted.

Everyone returned to
Rafe’s for the brunch he’d had catered from Bagels and Bugles. He’d also ordered a dessert tray from Nutsie Nan’s Café. Adam and Merissa’s friends had come, as well as some of Rafe’s friends from the nursing home and people he’d met at the singles dinner parties. It had been a long time since he’d had company in his home. Before everyone started eating, Adam spoke up.

Rafe
watched as his younger brother put his arm around Merissa’s waist. She was very pretty, with shoulder-length brown hair and amber eyes. Gracie had inherited her mother’s good looks, but she’d barely had a chance to date. Now she’d never grow up.

“For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Adam Farber,
Rafe’s younger brother, and this is my wife, Merissa. We have some news. We’ve been trying to have another baby for a couple of years now, and Merissa is expecting her second child.”

Rafe
felt a knot in the pit of his stomach. Angry thoughts welled up inside, but he kept them in check. Still, the senseless irrational things he was thinking kept popping into his head. Why didn’t Adam and Merissa just take Gracie and throw her into the Ohio River? Why bother with an expensive monument, and a sad service? It was as if they’d forgotten they had a daughter, and her favorite uncle was the only one who’d remembered. He tried to ignore the thoughts when everyone offered congratulations.

“
Rafe,” Merissa said, in that “I know how to wrap you around my little finger” voice she had. It was the same one Gracie had used when she wanted something extravagant like chestnut sauce on her French vanilla ice cream. Like her uncle, Gracie had learned to appreciate the finer things in life. “Aren’t you going to congratulate us?”

He cleared his throat. He cleared it a second time. He couldn’t form the words. “Of course,” he finally said, helping himself to a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice from the bagel shop.
“Mazel Tov to you both.”

***

Dina watched Rafe’s face turn pale when Merissa made her announcement. He was going to have a heart attack if he kept everything bottled up. Maybe it would be good to just have a good, old-fashioned argument with his brother, and get everything out in the open. He had to be angry. He probably felt like they were trying to replace his niece with another baby.

“Hi, Dina
,” Alec Stern said, almost making her spill her coffee when he showed up behind her. They sat at the butcher block table in the eat-in kitchen of the huge house. Dina had taken tuna fish on a bagel and a cup of coffee from Rafe’s one-cup-at-a-time coffee maker, but she didn’t feel very hungry. There were bagels, tuna, egg salad, and cream cheese arranged on aluminum trays on the granite kitchen island. Nutsie Nan’s desserts had been carefully placed on what looked like hand-painted stoneware platters. “It’s nice to see you up and around.”

Ruthie Gordon joined them at the table. “You’re doing great, Dina.
Rafe looks kind of mad, though.”

             
“Uh oh,” Alec said, winking at Dina. “Ruthie’s got that look in her eyes.”

             
“What look?” Dina asked, glad Alec’s banter took her mind off Rafe’s problems, at least temporarily.

             
“The look that says she’s going to ask him a bunch of probing questions, and see if she can get him to open up,” Alec said. “You should know by now that it won’t work.”

             
Ruthie took a bite of a plain bagel with cream cheese, and then spoke. “And you should realize by now that I’d never do that, Mr. Know-It-All.”

             
Alec got up again and started fiddling with the coffee carrousel, spinning it around until he saw what kind of beverage he wanted. Rafe had hot apple cider, hot chocolate, and decaf and regular coffee, each in little cups that brewed individually. “Hey, check this out, ladies.”

“We can’t take you anywhere, Alec,” Ruthie
said, but she smiled at him. He gave the coffee carrousel one more spin before picking out some regular coffee.

“How does this thing work?” he asked. Dina only had the mini-brewer at home;
Rafe had the big, complicated kind. She called him over. “I think Alec needs your assistance.”

She saw
Rafe break into a smile that was just a little too bright. “I’ll be happy to help you, old chap.”

“ ‘Old
chap?’” Dina said. “I heard Jay Galloway is related to a guy who drove a hackney back in jolly old England, but…”

“Dina,”
Rafe said, teasing lights appearing in his dark eyes. At least she’d made him smile, which had been her intention when she’d mentioned Jay. “I thought we’d gotten past the stage where you mention Saint Jay all the time.”

             
“That’s what you get for thinking. Besides, it’s true that Jay and Lorrie’s great-great-great-great-great grandfather drove a hackney in England, right around the time of the War of 1812.”

             
“This coffee’s first-rate, guvnor,” Alec said.

             
Dina didn’t miss the smile Rafe had for his friend and co-worker. “Thank you, my good man.”

             
Alec looked around. “I hear you’ve got some great desserts. Where are they?”

             
Rafe sang the first few words of “Over There” amid Alec and Ruthie’s laughter. “I’ll show you,” Rafe said. “Would you ladies like any dessert?”

             
Ruthie said “yes,” and Dina did, too.

             
“Okay,” Rafe said. “But, Dina, I won’t be getting you any bourbon ball cupcakes.”

             
Dina felt a blush creep into her cheeks at Rafe’s mention of her last encounter with the lethal dessert. “Very funny.”

             
The two men left to get the sweets, and Ruthie finished off her bagel and cream cheese. “It was nice of you to come to the unveiling,” she said.

             
“It was the least I could do. Rafe was such a big help to me and…”

             
“It’s more than that. You guys really seem to be hitting it off. I wish
I
could find somebody. I keep going to all these singles dinners, but I haven’t met anybody so far.”

             
“What about Alec?” Dina asked, remembering when she’d felt the same way Ruthie did. One cold March night when it was pouring down rain, she’d decided to go to a Friday night service at the University of Cincinnati’s Hillel. That was when she’d met Rob. “You two seem to get along really well.”

             
Ruthie wrinkled her nose. “Alec’s okay, but we’re just friends.”

“Message understood,” Dina said. “I’ll mind my own business. I guess I’m not a very good matchmaker.” She really did hope Ruthie met someone. She was about to tell her the story about Rob when Alec and
Rafe returned to the table with fancy plastic plates overflowing with treats—everything from mint chocolate brownies to mini bread pudding with caramel sauce.

“
Mmmm,” Dina said, digging in to the bread pudding. It reminded her of the dessert they’d served when the old department store, Shillito’s, had had a restaurant. Bread pudding had been one of their specialties, and Nan Moskowitz had made an almost-perfect recipe. “I wish I could save the rest of this stuff you brought me for Jay. If I eat all of this, I’ll have sugar overload and I don’t think my doctor would be very happy.”

Rafe
laughed. “I’ll pack it up for you and you can give it to him. I don’t want to be an enabler.”

“I don’t believe it!
You’re
packing up desserts for me so I can give them to Jay?”

“I ordered plenty,”
Rafe said. “There’s no reason Jay can’t have some and, as I said, I don’t want to be an enabler.”

The four of them,
Rafe and Dina, and Alec and Ruthie, were sitting there, laughing and talking, when Merissa came up to the table. “Hi, Merissa,” Rafe said, with a very solicitous grin.

“Hi.
Rafe, can I talk to you for a minute? Alone?”

Uh oh, Dina thought, hoping now wasn’t the time the doctor lost his cool.

***

              Rafe had never been sent to the principal’s office at Ida Malloy Academy. He’d always been the good son, or at least, that’s what his parents had said. They never compared him with Adam, but Adam had been a little more of a problem. Rafe had taken his role of first-born son seriously, but had always kept his sense of humor. He loved to laugh, but when Merissa glared at him in his office/library, he felt like he was a disobedient child ready to take his punishment from the principal.

             
“What’s the matter with you, Rafe?” Merissa said, tears streaming down her cheeks.

             
Rafe grabbed a tissue from the fancy box that sat on his oak computer desk. “There,” he said. “Don’t cry. I’m not so bad. I’m happy for you and Adam. I really am.”

             
Merissa sniffled, blew her nose, and tossed the tissue into the gold mesh waste basket. “Well, you sure don’t act like it.”

             
No way, he told himself. No way would he sit here and let her have the satisfaction of seeing him lose his temper and let loose a torrent of emotions. He wouldn’t let Merissa see that he hurt inside; that he really wanted to rant and rave and ask why she was having another baby. “I’m sorry.”

             
Rafe leaned back in his leather desk chair. Like his dad, he loved the scent and feel of good leather. When he needed a chair for his computer and desk, he’d bought the best. He stopped looking at Merissa and stared at the computer screen of the state-of-the-art PC. His screen saver was Gracie’s baby picture. Now there’d be a new…Rafe pushed that thought away. No one could replace Gracie and he wanted to tell Merissa that.

             
He didn’t.

             
“Apology accepted,” Merissa said. “Just quit joking around and admit that you’re mad and you think Adam and I are trying to replace Gracie. You have to know we could never do that. We tried for two years to have another baby. We might have gotten pregnant sooner, and our child would already be here, but this is the way it worked out.”

             
Rafe swallowed his pride, along with a sip of bottled water from the kitchen, and said, “I know that.” She had a point about how long she and Adam had been trying to have another kid, and he told her so.

             
Merissa came over to the desk chair and hugged him. “Thank you, Rafe. We found out what sex that baby is and it’s…”

             
Rafe held up his hand. “I don’t want to know. I’m old school. I’ll wait and find out when it’s born.”

             
“All right,” Merissa said. “I’m going back downstairs now. Are you coming?”

             
“Give me a few minutes.”

             
Crisis averted, he thought, when he heard her soft footfalls on the stairs. He really
was
old-fashioned when it came to babies. If he married, and was lucky enough to become a parent, he didn’t want to know the sex of the baby. And he’d pass out cigars. They might be chocolate or bubble gum, but that’s what he’d do.

             
“I’m getting tired, Rafe. Do you mind taking me home?”

             
Instead of snapping at her, Rafe smiled. “Bored with me so soon?”

             
“No. And you don’t have to put up a brave front for me, y’know? I understand that you’re upset with your brother and sister-in-law. They had no right to just waltz into Cincinnati and spring Merissa’s pregnancy on you. That was tasteless.”

             
“I’m not breaking my back putting up a front for you,” Rafe said, with a laugh. Dina laughed, too, at the mention of a really old song.

             
“If you say so.”

             
He got up from the chair. Dina looked around the room. It was like his house, tough and sturdy. She loved this room because it seemed to reflect Rafe’s personality more. “Ready to go?”

             
“Yeah.”

             
They went downstairs and Dina said “goodbye” to the guests who remained. Then Rafe whisked her out to the car. The ride home was pretty quiet and when they got to her condo, he didn’t kiss her.