Yesterday's Stardust (43 page)

Franky’s nose wrinkled. “Frazzy wants us to fold napkins. That’s girl work.”

“It is?” Francie matched corners on the cloth she’d just pressed. “And what is boy work?”

“Catching bad guys.”

“And putting them in the slammer.”

Francie nodded. “You’re right. I’ll do the girl work, and you two keep us safe from bad guys.”

“And put ’em in the
slammer.”
Luca’s chubby fingers made the motion of locking a door.

Franky put his hand on Luca’s back. “Come on. You be the robber this time.”

They ran out the door, leaving Francie alone with her thoughts and the crucifix. And the calendar on the wall.

Today was Mr. Walbrecht’s birthday.

She propped the back door open wider and finished the ironing. Renata was alone in the kitchen. Francie picked up a slice of fresh bread and took a bite. “Your husband has his faults, but no mere man has ever made bread this
delizioso.
I think I’ll go work on your dress for your anniversary.”

Renata’s cheeks pinked. “Do you think I’m a silly woman to be still in love with him?”

“No. I think you are a hopeful woman with dreams of a better future.”

“Time, and God, will tell.” Renata mopped perspiration from her face with a towel then washed her hands.

Francie peered into a steaming kettle. “It smells fishy. What is it?”

“Risotto ai frutti di mare.
Rice and fish and vegetables.” Renata stirred the concoction. Carrots, tomatoes, and parsley swirled around chunks of fish, wafting hints of saffron and fennel. “My mother added clams and mussels. I was homesick today. This reminds me of Bracciano.”

Francie nodded. “Do you know what I want when I’m homesick? It will make you gag.”

Her friend tipped her head to one side. “What is it?”

“It’s called
grut.”

“Groot?”

“Kind of like that. Theo said I never pronounced it right because I’m not Norwegian. It’s made of milk and flour.”

“And…?”

“And nothing. If we were lucky, we had butter on it. On Christmas we got cinnamon and sugar to sprinkle on top.”

“Poor families make do. We had this”—she held out a spoonful of rice and fish—“because my brothers fished and my mother grew vegetables.”

“Why did you leave?”

Renata leaned the spoon against the pot. “My husband’s family is very superstitious. They believe the spirits of the dead will return.” She stared into space, as if crossing the ocean in her mind. “They believe you should never enter or take anything from a place where there has been a murder.”

Francie shivered. “There was a murder?”

“Santo’s father. He owed money he could not pay.” She stirred the soup again. “They took his life because they could not get his money. In front of his wife and his children. My mother-in-law said her husband’s spirit would return with other angry spirits and never let them live in peace. She turned her back on her home, and that is when we decided to come here and start a new life.” She picked up a bowl and ladled soup into it. “We do what we have to do, don’t we? Here, take some to your sister.”

Francie’s hand spread across her throat as she drew in a tight breath. She stared at the bowl held out to her. “You are so good to her.”

“She is a child of God.”

“How could she have allowed this? She has a child. How could she have done this to Franky? And to
me?”

Renata offered a sympathetic smile that only seemed to fuel the fire in her. “You have lost the sister you once knew. It is your loss that makes you angry.”

“It’s her choices that make me angry. I sacrificed everything for her, and look what I get in return.”

“You sacrificed for that little boy. And you would do it all over again even if you’d known what your sister had become.” One eyebrow tilted. “Look what our Savior gets in return for His sacrifice.”

There were times she didn’t appreciate her friend’s wisdom. “I can’t feel mercy the way you do. I don’t know how.”

“You don’t have to feel it. Just do what God is calling you to do.”

Francie felt her throat constrict. Renata’s challenge pulled her away from the subject of Suzette. Today was Mr. Walbrecht’s birthday. She looked up at the clock. She had three hours to decide if she was going to do what God was calling her to do. She took the bowl of soup and carried it across the street. With no feeling of mercy, she spoon-fed her sister then spent the rest of Monday afternoon in her shop, letting the drone of her sewing machine drown out the voice of her conscience.

“Just do what God is calling you to do.”
Just before six, she left the shop and walked back to Bracciano in the dark, fingertips trailing the cold wall as she descended. A strange peace had enveloped her from the moment she’d decided to do the right thing.

It was time to catch bad guys. And put them in the slammer.

N
icky tossed his damp towel on the bed and threw on shorts and a T-shirt. He tensed at a knock on his bedroom door. Gianna’s comment still simmered, and he wasn’t in the mood for more psychoanalysis.

“You in there?” Todd turned the handle and opened the door before Nicky had time to answer. He wore a uniform that looked freshly pressed, which hopefully meant he was on his way to work.

Nicky gestured to the chair and sat on the bed.

“Man, you look awful.” Todd rubbed his chin. “But the ladies love the scruffy look.”

“Are you here for a reason?”

“Yep. I’m here to surrender. You can have her.”

“As if you were ever in the running.” He shoved his hair out of his eyes. “But you win by default. She’s all yours now.”

Todd reached in his pocket. “Well
she’s
all yours.” He held the Javelin keys out to Nicky. “I’m waiving the last payment for all the good times. You can still keep her at my place.”

Nicky’s mouth opened. “You don’t have to—”

“I know.” He stood. “Gotta get to work. Just remember this gesture of kindness when I steal your ex.”

“You can’t
steal
an ex.” The damp towel hit Todd in the middle of the back as he walked out.

Nicky stood in the hallway. A single guitar chord drifted through Rena’s door. He pushed it open the rest of the way. She sat on her bed, head bent over her guitar, hair forming a shaggy fringe around her face. She looked up. Tears streaked her face.

They hadn’t talked much in the past two weeks—other than the night he’d forced her to tell him everything Dani hadn’t. He’d been too preoccupied licking his own wounds to deal with hers. Maybe it was time. She’d spent a night in jail, and her boyfriend was still there. As grateful as Nicky was for that fact, Rena had to be hurting. He stuck his head in. “How’s it going?”

“Life? It’s not.”

Uninvited, he walked in and cleared a place on her loveseat. “I don’t think I’ve actually told you how proud I am that you stepped in and stopped that robbery. Mad as all get out that you took that chance but proud of you.”

Rena wiped her face on the corner of her sheet. “Thank you.”

“Do you miss him?”

“Jarod? No. I’m glad he’s gone. He was way more of a jerk than I realized.” She tipped her head to one side. “It was a God thing, don’t you think, that he happened to have all that crack on him when the cops came?”

Nicky nodded. “I guess it was.” He stared at a dark green sweatshirt wadded in a corner. “What happens now—with the Sevens?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. They might retaliate. They won’t be protecting me…or the restaurant.” Vacant eyes knifed him. “Yeah, I lied about that.”

“Protecting you, and us, is my job.”

A sneer curled her lip. “Should be Dad’s job.”

He leaned forward, folding his hands. “What’re you crying about, Wren?”

She swiped her cheek. “Dani got fired. Because of me. She told us not to involve her in anything illegal, and then I had to go and—”

“You talked to her?”

Rena shook her head. “She wouldn’t answer my calls, so I called the paper and they said she didn’t work there anymore.”

“Maybe she quit.”
Maybe she moved.

“I called her friend Evan. He said she got fired. And she hadn’t left her apartment since she got fired. He was worried about her.”

His chest muscles tightened. “She’s smart. She’ll find another job.”

A pale ring blanched around Rena’s mouth. “You think she’s that messed up over a job? Duh. You are so dense. It’s you. I checked your phone. She’s called you like a million times. Did you call her back even once?”

Nicky shot off the loveseat. “I don’t need to listen to her trying to justify what she did. She didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth when it mattered. I don’t give a rip now.”

He stomped toward the door.

“Do you know why we don’t have two parents?”

He stopped, smacked the door frame with both hands, but didn’t turn around.

“Gianna told me. Dad wasn’t like he is now until after Mom left. Mom didn’t leave ’cause Dad kept having affairs. It was one. Just one night. He made one mistake and came to Mom on his knees, begging her to forgive him, but she wouldn’t listen. She froze him out, shut him down. Just like you’re doing to Dani.”

Nicky’s right hand balled into a fist. Without a conscious thought, he thrust toward the wall. Patching plaster crumbled onto bare feet. His knuckles throbbed. Biting back a string of words he never used anymore, he stomped into his room and slammed the door.

He had to get out of here. Away from women who thought they understood him. But first he had to delete the one he’d thought he understood. He dialed his voice mail.

“Nicky, it’s Dani. Can we get together? I need to explain
—” He pushed 7.

“Your call has been deleted.”

“Nicky, I know you’re mad. I don’t—
”

“Your call has been deleted.”

“Hi…it’s Dani. You’re probably ignoring all my—
”

“Your call has been deleted.”

“I just got a call from Frank’s wife.”

Nicky’s finger hovered over the button, but he decided to listen.

“Frank has cancer. He’s dying.”
Her voice dipped.
“She asked…if we could send the diary right away. His birthday is in two weeks, and she wanted to give it to him then. Her address is…”

Nicky saved the call and threw his phone on the bed. His hand shook. Not from the news that a man he’d never met was dying, but from the raw, rasping pain in Dani’s voice. He sank onto the bed.

“She froze him out, shut him down.”
Rena’s words scraped his nerves. He was eleven years old again, in this same room. His mother thought he was asleep. She’d walked in, smelling like the patch of lilies of the valley that grew behind the restaurant. “I’m going on a little trip, Nicky. You be good for Daddy and take care of your sister.”

He hadn’t moved. He didn’t know why. Maybe he knew it would do no good to tell her to stay. Maybe even then he knew she wasn’t coming back. Only when he heard Rena’s cries over his parents fighting at the bottom of the stairs did he get up.

“Nita. Stay,” his father had begged. “It won’t happen again, I promise. I’ll make it up to you. I can’t take care of two kids and run a business at the same time. Think of the children.”

“No.” His mother had waved her plane ticket in his face and handed Rena to him.
“You
think of the children. For once, I’m thinking of myself.”

The screen door slammed. Nicky ran down the stairs and out on the street, screaming and running after the taxi as it turned the corner and disappeared.

“Shut him down…”

Did his mother know—did she care?—that she’d also shut down her son?

He’d put the diary in the top drawer of the desk in the storeroom, thinking someday, in the middle of the night, he’d finish it. Sometime when it didn’t hurt so much to think of reading it alone.

Now he walked through the kitchen as the lunch rush was winding down, nodded to the servers and cooks bustling around the room. He had one foot through the open doorway of the storeroom when his father walked into the kitchen with a tray in one hand. Nicky waved. He still hadn’t figured out why the man was hanging around so much. It was too much to believe he’d actually changed, was actually making good on a threadbare promise.

He headed to the desk in the corner. The crucifix caught his eye.
“Are you Catholic?”
she’d asked.

“I was raised in the church.”

Her eyes had searched his soul.
“And now?”

He hadn’t answered. Not until that prayer had sprung from some sealed, forgotten place inside of him. Thinking about it now, he wondered if he’d dreamed that prayer. Was that really him? As he’d listened to her talk about her mother squelching her dreams, something had started to crack inside him, something that made him want to reach out, take her broken dreams in his hand, and mend them. In that same instant he’d known it wasn’t his job. As he traced the curve of her face, he’d replayed the conversation they’d had in the car.

“Think of what you know to be true about the character of God. What’s the first thing you learned about Him when you were a kid?”