Tommy Gabrini 4: Dapper Tom Begin Again (3 page)

“She’s
fine,” Grace said before he could ask her.
 
“She’s with the nannies.”

But
Tommy could see in her eyes that all was not well, and the way her jeans and
sweat shirt seemed to be thrown on rather than carefully placed the way she
usually wore her clothes didn’t scream normalcy either.
 
“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

Grace
regretted this move almost as soon as she rang the bell.
 
He didn’t want this, she could tell it in his
stormy eyes, and she wasn’t at all certain if she wanted it herself.
 
But she was here now.
 
There was no turning back.
 
“May I come in?”

 
Tommy hesitated, as their interactions now
were more awkward, maybe even with an undercurrent of anger, than loving.
 
But he stepped aside and allowed her passage
in.

Grace
walked into Sal’s gorgeous penthouse and made her way to the sofa.
 
“It feels so cozy in here,” she said.

Tommy
walked over to the flanking chair and, after she sat on the sofa, he sat down
too.
 
She moved to the edge of her seat,
which wasn’t like her.
 
Neither one of
them were anxious people.
 
But she was
behaving anxiously tonight.

“What’s
wrong?” he asked her again.

“Nothing’s
wrong.”
 
She attempted to smile.
 
She failed.
 
“I was driving around and thought . . .”
 
That sounded lame even to her.
 
She looked at her soon-to-be ex-husband.
 
“I was thinking about us, is the truth of it.
 
And I thought that maybe . . . I thought
maybe we could. . .”
 

Tommy
didn’t try to help her.
 
Because he knew
how fruitless even entertaining yet another reconciliation would be.
 

But
Grace didn’t come all this way for nothing.
 
Not for nothing.
 
She forged
ahead.
 
“I thought that maybe we could
begin again.”

Tommy
stared at her.
 
He had a good idea what
was driving this, but he wondered if she realized it.
 
“Begin again?”

“Yes.
 
The divorce isn’t completely final yet.
 
Maybe we could pull it back.”

Again,
Tommy stared at her.
  
“Why would we do
that, Grace?” he asked her.

And
unsurprisingly to him, she had no answer.
 
None.
  
Because they had already
asked and answered that question in so many different ways that there was no
new way to answer it.
 
It used to be
because of love.
 
They really did love
each other.
 
It used to be because of Destiny.
 
She was worth giving it their all.
 
It used to be because the grass was never
greener on the other side, their vows to stay together for better or for worse,
and on and on and on.
 
But none of those
reasons held up to the scrutiny of everyday life.
 
Grace didn’t want this marriage anymore.
 
She felt so strongly that the negatives
overcame the positives by whopping margins that, in time, Tommy began to feel
it too.

But
right now, Tommy didn’t know what she felt.
 
And from what he could tell, as she sat on the edge of her seat inside
Sal’s apartment, neither did she.
 

Grace
shook her head.
 
“I don’t know why we would
want to reconcile,” she finally admitted.
 
“I don’t even know why I came. Yes, I do, I take that back.
 
I know why.”
 
She looked him squarely in the eyes.
 
“You’re courting again.”

She
said this and looked at Tommy, as if she needed him to confirm that truth.
 
What an old fashioned word to use, was
Tommy’s first thought. Especially since it wasn’t true.
 
He never really
courted
any woman except Grace.
 
He slept with women, he romanced women, but he courted Grace.
 
But that felt like ages ago.

Grace
shook her head.
 
“It was a mistake coming
here.”
 
She stood up.

Tommy
stood up too.
 
“Do you truly want to give
this another try, Grace?”
 
He knew it
wouldn’t work, just like all of those other tries didn’t either, but if she
wanted it bad enough he was not going to turn her down.

But
Grace shook her head.
 
“No, that’s not
it, if I were to be honest.
 
I don’t want
you anymore.
 
But what I think is going
on is that I don’t want anybody else to have you either.”
 
She looked at him with a small smile on her
face.
 
“How selfish is that?”

 
Tommy felt the same way, when she first
started seeing her doctor friend.
 
“It’s
not selfish,” he said.
 
“It’s human.”

Grace
stared into his big, greenish-blue eyes.
 
Somehow she knew, when she walk out that door tonight, it would be the
final nail in the coffin of their marriage.
 
The separation didn’t seal it.
 
The filing for divorce didn’t seal it.
 
And even the divorce proceedings themselves didn’t seal it completely in
her mind.
 
But the fact that he was
getting out there again, and seeing other women again, was going to seal the
deal.
 
Tommy was a lot of things in their
marriage, but a cheater was not one of them.
 
If he was going to bed another woman, then their marriage, in his eyes,
no matter how badly she tried to dress it up, was done.

She
headed for the front door.
 
Tommy walked
with her.
 
When he opened the door, she
lingered.
 
But it wasn’t about second
thoughts or any new way to answer that
let’s
stay together
riddle.
 
It was all
about gratitude.
 
She was grateful that Tommy
had been in her life.
 
She was grateful
that he helped her produce the most wonderful little girl in the world.
 
They would always have that bond.

She
didn’t turn back to him.
 
She didn’t tell
him what he already knew.
 
“Goodbye,
Tommy,” she said, and she left.

Again.

April 26, 2014

Saturday

Five months
before that fateful night

She
plopped down in the oversized chair and allowed her gown to pool around
her.
 
Nancy Morton, her mother,
smiled.
 
Of all of her children, she would
have never expected Grace to be the star of their family.
 
But she was.
 
Especially today.
 
“You look like
a cabbage patch doll,” she said.

“Cabbage
patch my foot,” Ed responded.
 
He was so
happy he was giddy.
 
“If you have to go
there, go there right.
 
She looks like
Cinderella at the ball, long before midnight.”

Nancy
laughed.
 
“I don’t know about that.
 
I still say Cabbage Patch, given that
princess gown she chose to wear.”

“What
do you say, Grace?” Ed asked. “Which one would you say is more like you?”

“I
feel like Cinderella,” Grace said with that sideways smile that made Ed know
she was giddy too.
 
“But Mom’s
right.
 
I look like an overstuffed doll.”
 
But then she reached out her hand.
 
“But it was a lovely ceremony, wasn’t it?”

Ed
hurriedly took her hand and sat in the chair beside her.
 
They were in the dressing room in the back of
the reception hall, just after their huge wedding, and their presence would be
required at the reception in a matter of minutes.
 
But they needed a breather before they could
even begin any partying.
 
This day was
the accumulation of a long series of days for both of them.
 
They needed time to relish this.

“It
was the perfect ceremony,” Ed said as he held her hand.
 
He looked her in the eye.
 
“And you were the perfect bride, Mrs.
Jefferson.”

It
would take considerable time for Grace to get used to that name, just as it had
with her first marriage.
 
Grace
Jefferson.
 
Mrs. Jefferson
.
 
She smiled
and looked at her new husband.
 
“As long
as you don’t start calling me
Weezie
,”
she said, “I’ll be okay.”

Ed
laughed.
 
He was having the time of his
life.
 
He had himself a woman who was not
only smart and beautiful, but she owned her own company too.
 
She had no real skeletons in her closet,
except for once being married to a Gabrini, but his people had already devised
a strategy to rebut any blowback if that ever became an issue.
 
Because he was going places with her by his side.
 
Neurosurgeon today, but so much more,
politically, tomorrow.
 
Together they
were going to be an unstoppable African-American power couple.
 
And he loved Grace too?
 
There was no stopping them now.
 
He had it all planned out.

The
door opened suddenly and Micah, Grace’s assistant, peered inside.
 
“His limo just drove up, ma’am,” she said to
Grace.

Grace
looked at Ed.
 
Ed looked at Micah.
 
“Escort him back here when he enters the
Hall.”

“Yes,
sir,” Micah responded, and then hurried back out.

“This
is when I make my exit,” Nancy said as she began walking toward the door.
 
“Don’t be too long.
 
The party won’t be the same without you two.”

Ed
smiled.
 
“And they say mother-in-laws are
horrible people.
 
I’m glad I’ll never
know what they’re talking about.”

“Me
either, Ed,” she said with a laugh.
  
“Me
either!”

But
Ed immediately noticed that Grace wasn’t smiling anymore when her mother
left.
 
He squeezed her hand.
 
“Don’t let him ruin your day,” he said.

But
Grace’s eyes gazed over at such a comment.
 
“I ruined his life, and you expect me to worry about him ruining my
day?”

“Oh,
Grace, stop saying that now,” Ed implored her.
 
“You didn’t ruin anything for that man!
 
You hear me?
 
You took all you
could take of his gangster lifestyle, and you had to get out of it.
 
I’m thankful you had the courage to get
out.
 
For your sake as well as
Destiny’s.
 
So don’t you dare feel guilty
about doing the right thing.
 
You did
what any good mother would have done.
 
You realized, after the birth of your child, that you made an awful
mistake marrying that man to begin with.
 
And you corrected it.”
 
And then
he smiled.
 
“In fact you overcorrected,”
he added, “because look at the prize you won!”

  
Grace laughed.
 
But a part of her, a very real part of her,
knew that she broke Tommy’s heart.
 
And
that wasn’t funny on her wedding day, or on any other day of the week.
 
It was no laughing matter to her.

Outside
of the Hotel Julington’s reception hall in northwest Seattle, the driver
hurried around and opened the limo door.
 
There was a moment’s hesitation, and then Tommy Gabrini emerged out of
the back seat, buttoned the coat of his Armani suit, and then made his way up
the steep steps that led to the ballroom’s entrance.
 
He was on his way to the airport, on a
business trip to Europe, but he knew he had to do this first.
 

Not
that he wanted to come anywhere near this place today.
 
He didn’t.
 
But he wanted to make an appearance for his daughter’s sake.
 
She was two years old now, and precocious as
hell.
 
This was one of the happiest days
of her mother’s life, and little Destiny wanted him to share in that
happiness.
 
And since he and Grace had
committed to always show a united front in front of their daughter, he
came.
 
Not to the ceremony.
 
That would have been asking too much.
 
But at least he would show his face at the reception,
and congratulate Grace and Ed.

But
as Tommy entered the ballroom, and then was ushered by Grace’s assistant down a
narrow hall that led to the back dressing room, he could not help but feel a
sense of loss.
 
It had been a long haul
for him and Grace.
 
They had had so many
starts and stops and stops and starts.
 
Then came that painful realization that their happily ever after was
probably not going to come true, and that their marriage was not going to
last.
 
They remained separated for an
entire year, and still kept trying.
 
But
then, by the end of that year, they divorced.
 

And
now, another year later, this.
 
The woman
who had been his wife, was now another man’s wife.

Grace
would never admit it, but Tommy knew their end began with that shooting in
Vegas, where Reno Gabrini’s wife nearly died in a hail of gunfire inside a jazz
club, and Grace was there.
 
She never
could move on after that night.
 
She
claimed she had, countless times she insisted she had, but Tommy knew
better.
 
She wanted out.
 
She wanted a new life.
 
She wanted a vanilla existence far away from
Tommy’s world of chocolate.
 
Dr. Ed
Jefferson, conservative Republican African American neurosurgeon, gave her that
way out.

“Right
in there, sir,” Micah said after she escorted him to the closed door of the
dressing room.

Tommy
thanked her, and watched her leave.
 
He
smoothed down his blondish-brown hair, let out a sharp exhaled, and then
entered the room.

Grace
was sitting in an oversized chair, still in her wedding gown, and Ed sat beside
her.
  
Grace was a pretty lady, and Ed
was a nice-looking man.
 
They looked like
the perfect couple to Tommy.
 
But what he
appreciated about Grace was that she didn’t smile and behave as if they were
friends from way back when he walked in.
 
She didn’t attempt to erase the highs and lows of their past just
because she was about to embark on a new life with Ed.
 
They had a history and always would.
 
A very happy and very painful history.
 
At least she still respected him enough to
not ignore that truth.
 

“Hello,
Tommy,” she said as he closed the door.
 
“Thank-you so much for coming.”
 
Ed stood up as Tommy walked over to the bride and groom.
  

“Congratulations,”
Tommy said matter-of-factly, as he leaned down and kissed Grace on the
cheek.
 
There used to be a time when he
couldn’t do it.
 
He couldn’t look her in
the eye without feeling some kind of way about her; some kind of serious
anger.
 
Now, whenever he was around
Grace, he didn’t know what he felt.

“I
sent invitations to your family members,” she said.
 
“To Sal and Gemma and Reno and Trina, and the
rest of them, but surprisingly none of them responded back.”

Tommy
looked at her with alarm, as if he didn’t understand why that would surprise
her.
 
What did she expect them to
do?
 
She knew how the Gabrinis were.
 
She knew that they viewed loyalty as a ride
or die eternal contract, not some situational agreement.
 
In their eyes, she reneged on the contract.
 
They were done with her.
 
The only reason he showed up at all was
because of his daughter.
 
He wanted to
show his face for her.
 
That was why he
endured it. And the fact that the mother of his child had found happiness
again, was a plus too.
 

He
shook Ed’s hand.
 
“Congratulations,” he
said to him also.

“Thank-you,”
Ed said jovially.
 
Tommy Gabrini was a very
in-demand man.
 
The idea that Grace would
have chosen him over Tommy, even with Tommy’s issues, and Tommy would have
chosen Grace out of all the women he could have chosen, made Ed feel ten-feet
tall.
 
Grace had to be worth it, he
concluded, if Tommy Gabrini once wanted her.
 
And Tommy wasn’t the one who wanted the divorce!
 
“Thank-you very much,” he added.
 
“Please,
 
have a seat.”

“No,
I can’t stay.
 
I’m on my way out of town,
and I have somebody in the car.”

Grace
knew what that meant.
 
One of his females
was going to accompany him on this trip out of town.
 
Not that it was her business anymore.
 
It wasn’t.
 
But for some reason that baffled her, it still stung whenever she
thought of him with somebody else.

“But
before I took off I wanted to be sure to offer my congrats,” Tommy
continued.
 
“And to give Desi a kiss
goodbye.
 
Where is she?”

“We
have a section set up for the children,” Grace spoke up.
 
“She’s playing with the other kids.
 
She’s playing like she’s a
four-year-old.”
 
Tommy smiled.
 
“I’ll send for her if you’d like.”

“Please,”
Tommy said.

Grace
picked up her cell phone from off of a side table, and text Micah to bring
Destiny back to see her father.

“Now
will you at least sit down until she comes?”
 
Ed asked.
 
“It’ll take a little
while.
 
And we do need to discuss
something with you.”

Tommy
would rather not discuss anything with either one of them on their day.
 
He’d rather kiss his daughter goodbye and get
the hell out of there.
 
But she wasn’t
readily available.
 
He had to wait.
 

He
sat down.

“Good,”
Ed said as he sat down too.
 

Tommy
had a definite impression of the man.
 
Although Grace undoubtedly loved him with all of her heart, and he was a
doctor at the top of his profession with a glowing reputation in the greater
Seattle community, Tommy saw a naked ambitiousness about the man that was very
off-putting.
 
Some of his distaste, he
knew, had nothing to do with the man.
 
And ambition was usually a good thing.
 
But this guy, this Ed Jefferson, seemed to take it to another
level.
 
As if Grace was not only his
beloved wife, and Tommy did believe Ed loved Grace, but that Grace was also a
chess piece in a larger game.