She knew the pressure of proving herself. She’d done it at an early age too. But Lance had earned respect, not resentment. What was it about him that made everyone cut him slack? Everyone but the one who mattered. Had he set out to win over these older men to show his dad? Or had he filled the need with them instead?
Maybe she’d worked so hard to prove herself to Brad and the others because she needed so badly to hold Dad’s attention. He’d respected her skill, her eye for detail and relentless perfectionism. But she was never sure there was more to it than that. Now she suspected he’d resented her for forcing his hand with Mom, necessitating his wife’s confinement, even though she’d known nothing about it. She’d only been the one sucking carbon monoxide. Lance was right about children; it was too easy to mess things up.
His hand slid from her shoulder to the back of her neck and rubbed the tension evident there. “Is it something I said?”
She shook her head.
“Something I did?”
She slid him a glance. “It’s not always about you.”
“I hate that line.”
“Because you want it to be.”
He winced. “When did you find out?”
“When you walked in my door.”
“Ouch.”
She laughed, relaxing a little. “It’s past midnight. Is your mom waiting up?”
“Probably.”
Rese shook her head. “Will she think it’s my fault?”
“Nah. She’s onto me.” He slowed as they approached a darkened corner where three people clustered, their voices just discernible over the sounds of the city. Lance closed his hand over her elbow and stepped into the street, glancing only enough to register oncoming traffic. The street was clear, so they crossed mid-block and continued toward home. She started to look back where they’d been, but he blocked her view.
“What is it?” She dropped her voice instinctively. “What are they doing?”
“Better not to know.”
“Something illegal?”
He didn’t answer, just directed her around the next corner.
“Drugs?”
“Maybe bingo. I think they were playing bingo.”
She huffed. “So everyone just plays dumb?”
“See, there are people like Tony whose job it is to find out. Then there are people like us whose job it is to live through the night.”
“I don’t understand, Lance. If you know something’s wrong …”
“And you care about the person you’re with …” He dug his keys from his jeans.
“So you’ll call and report them?”
“They’re long gone.”
She paused under the light of his family’s entrance. “So we don’t do anything?”
“We did something. We got back here without bloodshed.”
She swallowed. “I can’t tell when you’re serious.”
“I’m serious. If they’d jumped you, I’d have fought to the death. If it’s not my fight, I leave it alone.”
“It wasn’t your fight today.”
He let them in and led her down the hall. “That’s different.”
“Why?”
“Someone could have been hurt.”
She climbed the stairs behind him. “You could have been hurt.”
He scratched the back of his neck. “It’s a judgment call.”
Her breath sharpened as they climbed. “That from the man who’s been knifed?”
“You choose your battles. You don’t always win them.” He followed the hallway back to the front and inserted the key to his apartment. She came up next to him. “Are you going to look in on Antonia?”
He glanced at the door across the hall and shook his head. “I have to get through the weekend. If she’s strong enough Monday, we’ll try the bank. But I don’t want to explain it beforehand, or she’ll stew herself into a state.”
“Doesn’t she know you can’t access the box without her?”
He shrugged. “I think she handed over the key because she thought I could get in. I’m guessing she hopes I’ll take care of it without her. She’s funny about banks.”
Rese frowned. “Funny how?”
He leaned a shoulder to the jamb. “Just … reluctant, I guess. Pop does her banking for her.”
“Then why wouldn’t she ask him?”
Lance looked back at the door across the hall and shook his head. “I don’t know. Some things … they’re just between us.” He turned the key and opened the door.
Star and Rico sat in the dark with the TV images lighting their faces and a bowl of sesame sticks between them. Star turned. “Come in and close the door. Edward Scissorhands is doing his first haircut. They’re just gonna love him.”
Edward Scissorhands, Star’s favorite misunderstood, maligned, and subnormal character. Johnny Depp at his weirdest.
Rese yawned. Maybe she’d actually sleep. The TV audio coming through the wall would be what Lance called white noise. She glanced over. By his worried expression, she guessed his thoughts were still with Antonia. He didn’t seem impressed by the flash and speed of Edward’s scissor hands, though no hairdresser on earth compared.
He caught her glance and pulled out of his funk. “Tired?”
She nodded. Another long day, charged with emotion, violence, and unreported crime. Maybe Lance was right about choosing battles. Right now she just wanted to curl up and … listen to him sing?
“Before you get settled, I need to grab a couple things.” He ducked into the bedroom and scrounged through a drawer.
Rese waited in the doorway. “They’re near the beginning of the movie. What’ll you do?”
Lance glanced past her. “I’ll take Rico’s bed. He can have the couch.”
She thought of all the beds lying empty at the inn, of the kitchen stocked and waiting, the online reservation requests she needed to check. But it all seemed so far away. She was trapped by the friends and family that embraced Lance like a net. It was starting to feel normal to come and go from the apartment, across to grandma, down to mom, up to sisters and nieces and nephews… . Okay, it wasn’t normal. It was intimidating. But she was nothing if not adaptable. She was the queen of adaptation. She could … delude herself. Hey, it ran in the family.
With a couple fresh shirts and boxers tucked under one arm, Lance joined her in the doorway. She looked into his face, saw there a worry and fatigue that once again made her want to hold him— Not what the trip was about. Or was she trying to compartmentalize things in a way that just didn’t work? At least with Lance Michelli.
To Lance everything was immediate, interconnected, and essential. He had said he wanted her in the middle of it all. He’d said he loved her, and she believed it. He loved everything and everyone. He loved until it hurt, then kept loving.
And she had no idea what to do with that, so she moved from the doorway into the bedroom—his cue to evacuate. And he got it. Didn’t try to kiss her or prolong the moment, just said, “Do you need anything?”
A flight home? “I’m fine.”
He touched his fingers to her cheek. “Good night, then.”
She swallowed. “Good night, Lance.” When he didn’t move out of the doorway, she rested a palm to the jamb and raised her brows.
He straightened reluctantly and moved out. “Sweet dreams.”
She sighed. “I’m hoping for none.” Just deep, solid stupor.
R
ese had never seen anything like the congregations of Latinos, Jamaicans, Cubans, Asians, Albanians, and other Northern Europeans who attended the church in the heart of the neighborhood. The man who’d greeted them at the door had pointed out people to her and included their country of origin or, if they were countrymen, he’d identified their region of Italy down to the village their family had left generations back.
During her first visit to the church, she had marveled at the beautiful architecture. Now she was intrigued by the different accents, shades of skin and hair, and the complete age spectrum represented. She saw nothing pretentious or affluent in the people around her, though money went into the basket that was passed, even if it was only change.
In comparison, her experience growing up seemed diluted somehow. Homogenized. People prosperously removed from their roots. Dad at the top of his trade, their generously compensated crews, and more than that, the people whose historic homes they had restored, whose weekend homes could have housed Lance’s extended family. What need had any of them for a supernatural presence telling them to hang on for dear life?
She looked at the cross, the paintings portraying Christ’s life, and felt enveloped by wonder. How had God found one little girl in the midst of all that and given her breath to stay alive? Lance reached down and squeezed her hand—reading her thoughts? Or just connecting.
Seated between him with his diamond stud earring and Rico with his double hoops and threaded hair, she felt plain and innocuous, especially compared to the adornments in the rows around them— chains and hoops and studs and hair in every twist and configuration. Star would have fit in, but she didn’t do church. Not even Evvy’s funeral had induced her to cross the threshold of a house of worship.
This service was different than any she had attended, more structured, what Lance called liturgical, an ancient rite practiced for ages. Studying the faces around her, she sensed the power of this gathering, this sharing of faith. Its reverence embraced her, but it was one more tentacle of Lance’s life, like the reminder he wore under his white dress shirt, in his very skin, of not just a debt but an obligation.
A tremor passed through her. She believed God had saved her life and her soul. But did she want to carry His cross? What if she had to bear something so awful it crushed her with its weight? It was one thing to take care of Mom, another altogether to become her.
And there was nothing she could do, no decision she could make, no skill she could develop or power of will that could change a reality that might strike in one weak moment and define the rest of her life. Fear rippled through her as the people dispersed and she and Lance walked the few blocks back.
Rico and most of Lance’s family had stayed behind with groups of friends, but Lance was going ahead to prepare food—basically opening the restaurant. From the sounds of it, most of the neighborhood would be there, everyone the Michellis knew and loved, and how could she hide the fear building inside with volcanic force?
Overly perceptive, Lance paused at the outer door. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
He cupped her elbow. “You don’t want to cook breakfast? Too much noise?”
“Stop trying to read my mind.” Her panic surged. “You might not like what you find there.”
His gaze bore into her thoughts and left them bare. “If we have to deal with that, we will.”
“We? What we?” He wasn’t the one with the genetic predisposition. “You think no one else is affected? That’s not how it works. When one person hurts everyone suffers.”
She could not put her mind around that. Too many years of insuring that no one knew her thoughts, hurts, and struggles made the idea of communal comfort impossible.
“If it happens …” His grip tightened. “I will be there.”
She knew better. Aunt Georgie said it broke his heart, but Dad had committed Mom. He and the court with all its witnesses. He’d made the decision he had to. And locked away with Walter, Mom’s hair had turned white.
Rese jerked away. Her throat closed up so tightly she could hardly breathe. She could walk scaffolding, roofs, and ridgepoles, take every kind of ribbing, snakes and mice in her lunchbox, and never flinch, but she now looked into the one thing she couldn’t bear—helplessness.
She had chafed at Star’s calling her a rock, resented her belief that nothing could shake Rese Barrett. But she wanted it to be true. Sweat dampened her forehead; she felt clammy, as though the sun no longer had power to warm her. People who couldn’t take care of themselves got put away, forgotten. Her heart sped; her breath shortened.
“Rese.” Lance gripped her arm and drew her off the street, into the narrow hall of their building. She tried to pull away, but he closed her into his arms and took control of her mouth. Her resistance shattered as he made his point until she wondered how she had doubted the possibility of connection, because in those moments she could hardly tell where Lance left off and she started. With dizzying comprehension, she experienced the sharing of her burden and wasn’t sure she could grab it back if she wanted to.
Pressed against the wall with Lance enclosing her, she hardly heard the door open or the jingle of keys until his dad was upon them. He took them in with a stare, then passed on down the hall. Rese sagged. Of all the impressions to make.
His mother followed immediately with another woman who moved with a smooth liquidity. She tapped Lance’s shoulder as she passed, her ebony limbs longer than his and an amiable expression on her face. “Nice to see you, Lance, and whoever you’ve got in your coils.”
He smiled. “You too, Alelia. It’s Rese Barrett, my business partner.”
Rese silently groaned.
The two old men who lived in the back passed with a waft of stale cigar smoke. “Business partner,” one of them muttered. “Get outta here.”
Rese stiffened, but Lance looked amused. “Guess we blew our cover.”
“You blew our cover.”
He loosened his hold. “You okay?”
The panic seemed to have vanished, but she clenched her hands. “I just wish I knew when it was coming, so I could stop it.” If she couldn’t even control the thought, how would she handle the reality?
“At least we found a cure.” He looked ready to administer it again.
How aggravating was that? “I’d rather handle it myself.”
“Yeah, well, you’re human.” His expression was vexingly vindicated. She raised her chin. “Not bulletproof?”
He laughed. “Let’s not find out.” Then he grabbed her hand and dragged her to the kitchen.
————
The clamor issuing from the restaurant could mean only one thing—Lance was cooking. Too shaky to reach the open window and look down into the street, Antonia nonetheless heard the voices coming and going through the doors propped open beneath. It would be mostly family, she guessed, some neighbors and friends. Lance wouldn’t charge anything, since the place wasn’t open in an official capacity, but people might pass a hat, a little something for the cook. They knew how good they had it when he was home. She sighed.