Authors: Joanne DeMaio
So she jumps when there is a knock at the kitchen screen door. It comes suddenly, not preceded by a vehicle pulling into the driveway or a car door slamming. She sits up and looks out the window before going to the kitchen.
“Hello?” Celia calls through the screen just as Amy turns the corner.
“Hi,” Amy answers, seeing Celia and some luggage on the other side of the door. “Going somewhere?”
“Uh-huh. Can I come in?”
Amy pushes the screen door open. “The lock’s broken.”
Celia glances at the lock before walking in cool and casual in her frayed denim skirt and green tank, setting a grocery bag on the blue table. She goes back out to the stoop and returns with a duffel bag in one arm and her pillow beneath the other, which also holds a leash connected to Sasha.
“What’s going on?” Amy asks as her kitchen fills up with Celia and her things.
“Well, it’s kind of like a pajama party, minus the party.” She turns to the dog. “Sit, Sasha.” The golden retriever obeys, waggling with happiness as she does so. “Will Angel mind the dog?”
Amy shakes her head. “She’s still with Grace at my parents’.”
“Oh, I thought they’d be back by now.”
“No, they’re staying up north till after the fashion show. I’ll close up Wedding Wishes for a few days afterward and head up there then.”
“All right. And I’m keeping you company in the meantime.” She pulls two containers of ice cream from the first bag and shoves them into the freezer.
“That’s really nice of you, but I actually have to stop in at my shop.”
“Now? Why?”
“The fashion show’s tomorrow and twenty-two people reserved a seat. Everything’s ready except for the seating and a few finishing touches.”
“Perfect. I’ll help.”
“Wait. I thought you were going somewhere?”
“I am.” Celia reaches into the second bag for two new pairs of terry cloth flip-flop slippers. They are thick and bright, one pair lime green, one hot pink. She hands Amy the pink pair. “And I’ve just arrived.”
* * *
George dials the number, but upon hearing Nate’s voice, hesitates. Can he end his brother’s life like this, with him not even seeing it coming? Can’t they settle this another way? Can’t they sit down with a deck of cards and play out a very private hand?
“I’ve been thinking about something you said, Nate.” He sits on the sofa, leaning his elbows on his knees.
“What’s that?”
“Taking advantage of the situation.”
“Okay, like how?”
“Like finding that bike with my name on it.”
“What brings this on? I thought you were tight with Amy.”
Come on, Nate
, George thinks, standing then.
Ante up
. “She wants to cool things down, you know? She’s still a new widow and that day at the bank shook her up. Too much shit like that’s on her mind. Maybe now would be a good time to take that road trip. Give her some space.”
“You serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious.”
“But you said you wouldn’t touch the money.”
“I’ll put it back. I just need the bike for the trip, then I can sell it after.” He walks to the slider and looks out while talking. “Or hell, maybe we’ll make this an annual thing.”
“No shit. What’d you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a few weeks out on the west coast?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why? Jesus, we’ve planned this since we were kids.” George opens the slider and pulls out a chair at the patio table.
“And you’ve always shot it down. Why the sudden change of heart?”
“Sudden, Nate? You’ve been talking me into this since you clipped those baseball cards on my bike spokes.” George squeezes his eyes shut for a long moment.
“I don’t know, man. I’m pretty busy with work.”
He’s not sure if Nate’s on to him and playing him right back, and so George keeps pressing. “Well we’re not getting any younger. And it’s Amy, too. We need some space, you know what I mean? It’s a good time for me.”
“What about The Main Course?”
“Dean will cover it.” George pauses and sits at the outdoor table. “Hey, if you’d rather wait, that’s fine. I just thought it’d be good now.” A drink would be good now, too. He stands just as quickly and heads back inside. “And you kind of owe me one.”
“When?”
“August? Mid-August.”
“I’ve got a few jobs lined up, but I guess I can rearrange them.”
“As long as I can get my hands on a bike. I’ll have to do a little shopping. Let’s have lunch tomorrow and we’ll talk.”
“At your shop?”
“No. Let’s go out.” George told the authorities about Nate’s dream of the two brothers taking a cross-country road trip and of their talks at Joel’s over the years. So that’s where they want it to happen. He’s sure the bar is being scoped out as they speak. George takes a long breath. This is it. His next words will frame his brother and end any semblance of a relationship. Nate will hate him. Their family will be finished. He thinks of Amy and Grace and realizes that he has no family. “Meet me at Joel’s about one.”
* * *
“Maybe it’s true?”
Amy looks back over her shoulder, her arms raised to the top of the portable archway. Clouds of tulle spill from her hands as she wraps it on the frame.
“No, listen,” Celia says as she opens another folding chair and sets it in line with the others in Wedding Wishes’ showroom. “George saw what was going down in the parking lot. And I’m just saying, what if he really did put himself on that truck just for the child’s sake? It sounds like something he might do, don’t you think?”
Amy finishes wrapping the tulle around the arch and reaches for the string of twinkling lights, entwining them in the fabric. “Do
you
think it’s true? That someone could commit a crime for honorable reasons?”
Celia shrugs and opens the last chair. “Anything’s possible, I guess. You know what they say, truth is stranger than fiction.”
“No kidding. And you swear you and Ben won’t tell anyone about George, right? I need to trust you guys on this.”
“You’ve got my word, don’t worry. And Ben’s word is good as gold.”
“So you promise?”
“Promise.”
“Okay.” Amy steps back from the archway. “Hit that light switch, Cee.”
Celia flicks the wall switch and the lights sparkle. “Oh, beautiful. They look like tiny stars floating in clouds.”
“Perfect,” Amy says, seeing her bridal shop magically illuminated so that the brides picture themselves in the celestial wonder. Twinkling lights are strung around the display window and checkout counter and along the top of the gown racks. “I’ve just got to line up the gowns for the models so they wear them in the right order.” She moves to the wall rack and pulls off a tea-length dress.
“Who’s doing the modeling?” Celia takes the dress from her and hangs it on the empty rolling rack near the dressing area. A silver room divider separates the fashion show dressing area from the viewers’ chairs.
“A few girls from the high school and, if you can believe it, I talked Sara Beth into modeling too.”
“No way! Oh she’ll have lots of fun, definitely. She’s game for anything antique.”
“She already dibbed wearing the Jackie Onassis dress. Except that one’s not for sale.”
“No surprise there. It looks amazing in your window with Jackie’s photo.”
“I’m showing seven decades of gowns tomorrow, imagine?” She hands Celia a peplum gown of shadow organza, the fabric airy and soft. “This one’s the oldest, from 1944.”
“Can you picture the first bride’s story? It was probably war time, maybe she married a soldier.”
“That’s what I love about these, their story. I wanted to pair that one with my grandmother’s veil, which now I can’t find. I thought I brought it in last week but it must be at home. Hang that one first on the rack; they’ll be wearing them in order of the decades.”
Celia slides over the other gown and sets the organza first.
“This one’s always been a favorite of mine.” Amy hands her another, satin with a fitted bodice overlaid in lace and pearl ribbons. “It’s mid-seventies. So it goes fourth in line.”
Celia takes the gown and drapes it over her arm. “Amy,” she says softly.
The shop is quiet, with just the rustle of gowns sounding as Amy brushes through them lined on the wall. “Celia, don’t,” she finally says. “I can’t talk about it anymore and I’ve got to get this done.”
“But it’s only one thing. Because honestly? I’ll bet George never took his eyes off Grace that day.” She pauses and Amy stops looking at the dresses, closing her eyes against her tears. She knows, oh she knows darn well that Celia won’t finish her thought until she turns and looks at her. Silently, she does. “I really can’t believe that he wasn’t helping you,” Celia says then. “You just never knew it.”
Amy takes a long breath. It’s so hard to admit something, when it feels like admitting it is an affront. When something is right, but you want it to be right a
different
way, a way when George stopped the day from happening. “So what do you think I should do?”
“Listen. It boils down to two things. Either you’re going to pack your bags and uproot your home and work and move your whole life to New Hampshire and be done with the situation here.”
“Or?” Amy asks.
Celia lifts the satin and lace gown and holds it up to Amy, draping it along the front of her body. “Or you’re going to marry him.”
Thirty-three
GEORGE GOES IN TO WORK early on Friday, like he does every morning, opens up the shop, pulls a black apron over his head, ties up two roasts, checks on the weekend’s special orders and waits on several customers. Tom Riley tells him about the Yankees game he and his family went to the Sunday before while George weighs two pounds of chicken cutlets.
“Great seats,” Tom says. “Left field, main box. In the shade, so it was good.”
Does he know how lucky, how God-awful lucky he is? George glances up from the scale at the middle-aged man talking about spending a Sunday at the stadium. It is all George wants, that kind of luck, that kind of life.
“It was hot in the Bronx,” Tom is saying. “But you know, a couple ice cold beers, hot dog on the side and the day was perfect. There’s nothing like it, you know what I mean, George?”
Lillian March mentions that her car needs tires. “What do you think I should buy?” she asks as George wraps a prepared meatloaf.
“I don’t know, Lil. Depends on how long you’re going to hold on to your car.”
“A year or two, that’s about it.”
“Well put on decent tires, you want to be safe.” Amy’s SUV is a couple years old. Has she checked her tires recently? Is the tread good? The tire pressure right? He wants to check her tires, that’s all he wants. That’s it. He can hardly believe how he aches to be able to do only that for her. Inspect the tires, walk around her vehicle, crouch down and run his open hand over the tread, hold a pressure gauge to the valve stem, maybe check the oil, too. “You can probably pick up something good on sale to get you by.”
The Houghs are throwing a Jack and Jill wedding shower for their daughter beneath a tent in their backyard, and they want to barbecue afterward. A barbecue beneath a tent, that’s as intense as their lives are right now. George wants only to be blessed with that type of fortune, to sit at a picnic table and have a cheeseburger. They order the hamburger and sausage patties, chicken and side salads for the shower the following weekend. George can’t imagine the following weekend. He is about to be wired to help convict his brother. It’s getting closer to lunchtime and his hands tremble while writing down their order. It gets so bad he has to set the pencil down and wipe his damp palms on his apron.
“When’s the wedding?” George asks without looking up.
“Second week in August. Jennifer’s teaching over at the middle school and has to be back for September.”
September seems worlds away. Another lifetime when all this—the heist, his affair with Amy, his last thread of family—when it will all be a dream he’ll try to remember. What will he do then? Will the Marches, the Houghs and Rileys still frequent his butcher shop if they learn what he has done? Will they trust him to provide their meals, respect him still?
By the time Dean takes over at the shop and he settles in at Joel’s, it doesn’t much matter. This is the most difficult day yet, being wired to cull the damning words out of his brother. But Nate is dangerous, and brother or not, George has to stop him.
So for now, he acts normal. That’s the irony of all this. The normalcy of two brothers meeting for lunch and a beer, talking up a bike trip. No one will look twice. It is normalcy that started it all in a bank parking lot two months ago when Nate insisted—hosiery over their heads, a two-year-old hostage in the back of the armored truck—that they resume their normal lives, that blending in provided the best cover. Nate became expert at keeping up that ordinary front, and now George manipulates normalcy’s cover to hang him.
He orders a pitcher of beer. Let them try to stop him. He’s wired and ready to relay Nate’s incriminating words to an undercover van parked close by. Let them say he needs to be stone straight for this to stick. He pours a tall glass and takes a slow drink, looking around the bar. Even he doesn’t know who is who—who came in off the street for a sandwich and who flew in to help take down his brother. They all look alike: regular guys working for the town, a family lawyer with an office down the street, federal law enforcement agents, a couple guys from the hardware store, a local electrician. On a hot summer afternoon, the character lines delineating identity blur. They all sweat the same.
He wipes his brow and sits back for a long moment. It is a moment when he wonders if undercover eyes are on him; a moment when law enforcement officials sit in that van tuned to hear his every word; when special agents wait, armed to stop any resistance as his brother is restrained; when Miranda rights swim through the officials’ minds, ready to be recited to the man behind Addison’s most notorious crime; when a press conference is only a phone call away. A moment when Amy and her daughter are still at risk.
He turns in his seat and is surprised to see Hayes standing in the open doorway. Bright sunshine glares outside behind him, but the bar is dark and cool. And everyone knows something’s up; anyone who matters watches Hayes walk over to George.