Yesterday's Stardust (46 page)

She was four blocks away when she remembered the diary.

Someday, for Franky’s sake, she’d go back for what wasn’t rightfully hers.

D
ani turned up the music and smiled at the childlike face of the pregnant girl dozing on the couch.

She walked past the place where there had once been bloodstains on the wall and looked away, out the front window at Bracciano. Morning light glinted on the windows. Half a day after he’d turned his back on her, his footsteps still tapped in her mind. The constant ache in her chest had metastasized to an all-over pain she knew she’d have to learn to live with.

Would his reaction have been different if he’d taken the time to hear that she was only using this place as an office—that she and China had moved in with Vito and Lavinia? She turned away from the window. He hadn’t cared enough to hear her out.

The music pouring out of her computer lifted her out of her pain and into her purpose. She opened an e-mail from the man at her church who’d started helping her landlord paint the outside of the house.

A knock at the door. She slipped out of her shoes and picked up her phone. Standing to the side of the door, she looked through a tear in the flimsy curtain. Rena.

She flung the door wide.

“There’s someone you have to meet.”

“Who?”

“Just come with me.”

“Not to the restaurant.”

“They’re just outside.” Rena turned and flew down the steps.

Dani slipped her shoes on and followed.

An elderly couple stood on the sidewalk.

She knew, without an introduction, who they were.

Lois’s arm rested on Dani’s as they crossed the street toward Bracciano. Dani helped her up the curb. Lois thanked her and looked at Rena. “Before we go in, we’d like to have a little talk with Dani. Rena, will you tell your brother we’ll only be just a minute?”

“Sure.”

Rena walked away, and Dani looked from one soft, lined face to the other. Faded eyes radiated kindness. Lois touched her hand. “Since you’re a person who likes stories, I’d like to tell you part of ours.”

“I’d love that.”

“This part goes back over sixty years. My dashing young man got down on one knee, asked me if I would make him the happiest man in the whole world, brought me to tears and a promise that I would follow him to the ends of the earth, and then decided to mention God had told him to move back to India to live in squalor and poverty…with his new bride.”

Frank laughed, placed a thin hand against his chest, and fingered a wooden cross hanging from a leather thong. “I was young and impulsive.”

“And thoughtless and insensitive.” Lois smiled sweetly up at him. “I was furious. I felt betrayed. Angry, hurt, scared…I moped and I stomped and I threw things.”

“Including the engagement ring.”

“Yes.” Lois dabbed dampness from the corner of her eye. “After days of that, I was finally too worn out to fight. And that’s when I heard that still, small voice whispering ‘Trust Me. I’ll never lead you to a place where I am not.’”

Tears stung Dani’s eyes. A beautiful story, but it was Nicky who needed to hear it.

“We were married three months later.” Lois took her husband’s hand. “We have smuggled Bibles, preached the Word in places where it was forbidden, and been held at knifepoint because of it. But God has never led us to a place where He was not.”

Dani blinked hard and nodded.

Frank touched her arm. “The point of telling you this is that we had a nice long time to visit with Nicky on the way back from the airport yesterday.”

Lois nodded. “Frank has a way of drawing people out. Your Nicky has a good heart.”

My Nicky.

“And Lois has a way of helping people see God’s hand in every situation.” Frank nodded toward Bracciano. “If you’re willing to wait for God to—”

“Dani.”

She looked over Lois’s shoulder. Nicky stood, arms at his side, a black T-shirt stretching across his chest.

Frank and Lois walked into the restaurant. Nicky didn’t move toward her. His gaze fastened on the sidewalk.

She waited.

A deep breath shuddered through him. “I’m scared. I don’t want to lose you.” He looked up. A single tear etched a track down his left cheek.

She stepped toward him, but he held up one hand. “I don’t have their kind of faith, and I don’t know if I can handle worrying about losing someone else. But I know I have to try to trust God to keep you safe because you don’t have any street smarts, but clearly that’s not going to stop you from doing dumb things. So if you’re willing to put up with me hovering around and being overprotective and getting cranky when you take stupid chan—”

She ran the last few steps and stopped his words with a kiss.

Frank stood in the doorway of the storeroom. The diary lay open on the old iron table, but Frank didn’t go in. Instead, he walked into the dining room.

“This is so familiar, yet so different.” He pointed to the far wall. “There used to be a bar there with a huge mirror lined with bottles of every color alcohol you could imagine. I remember Santo shining those bottles.” He walked farther into the room. I don’t think there were windows back then. It was always dark. I remember the music and the smoke—so thick you could barely breathe.”

Nicky looked at his father.

Carlo shook his head. “There’s never been a bar here,” he whispered. “And there have always been windows.” He gave a look that echoed what Dani was thinking. Poor Frank suffered from mental lapses like Nicky’s grandfather.

Nicky pointed toward the doorway. “I’ll show you the diary.”

Frank walked in the storeroom. He reached out for the book but didn’t pick it up. He stepped back. His lips parted and a smile crossed his face. “The tunnel.”

The poor man. Lois put a hand on his arm. “Frank?”

Frank grinned at Nicky. “Do you still use it?”

“The…table? Yes. All the time.”

“The tunnel. Is it still safe?”

Awkward looks shot around the room. Confusion masked Frank’s face. “You don’t know about the tunnel?” He rubbed his forehead as if that would clear his brain.

Carlo stepped toward Frank and put his hand on Lois’s back. “Nicky made cinnamon rolls. Why don’t we all go sit down and—”

Frank handed the diary to Lois, grabbed onto one end of the table, bent his knees, and yanked. His wife latched onto his arm. “Frank, what’s going on? What are you—”

Nicky gasped. Rena moved in closer. The table, still attached to floorboards, rose up several inches, boards and all.

“Lift the sides,” Frank ordered the men.

Nicky grabbed one side. His father took the other. They lifted. The table swung up and back. Thick curved bars rose out of a hole in the floor. The table made a
thunk
as it came to a stop, resting on one end on the floor.

In the gaping hole, dust-covered wood stairs led down into blackness.

Nicky rubbed his thumb across the back of Dani’s hand as they descended. Ahead of them, Frank arced a flashlight at messages and dates etched and painted on the pale yellow brick.

J&R 1926

B
UD AND
L
ANA
- J
UST
M
ARRIED!

R
ALPH
E. A
PRIL
9 ′28

D
ROP YOUR WEAPONS, BOYS.

T
ELL NOT A SOUL WHAT YOU FIND HERE.

“My initials are here somewhere. Santo let Luca and I use his knife but warned us to never tell Renata.” He stopped and shined the light straight overhead. “So many secrets back then.”

Nicky ran his hand along the cool bricks. Beside him, Dani counted the steps. There were only eight. Frank bent over when he reached the bottom. Nicky copied his posture. There was just enough room for Dani to stand up straight.

He’d expected to meet a wall at the bottom, expected it to open into a basement they never knew existed. But Frank walked straight ahead. Which meant… “We’re between the buildings.” They had to be directly under the empty lot between the restaurant and the vacant garage. His pulse tripped.

The flashlight beam ricocheted off something ahead. “More stairs,” Dani whispered.

Shoes clogged against wood as they picked their way up another flight of stairs. They reached a landing and turned. There was a door to their left, but Frank walked up yet more steps. When he reached the top, he burst out laughing. “And here I thought I was losing my mind.”

The room before them was pitch black, but every spot the flashlight beam illuminated sent chills down Nicky’s spine. Though dirty and in shambles, the room was a scene straight out of one of his fantasies.

A massive, carved frame surrounded an enormous mirror. In front of it stood a curved bar made of rich, dark wood. Teak or mahogany. A player piano sat in one corner. The center of the room was filled with square tables, some overturned, some still covered in tablecloths, now moth-eaten and coated with a layer of dust.

Dani gripped his arm. “Look.” She reached out for Frank. “Shine your light on the mirror again.”

The mirror was cracked right down the middle and what could only be bullet holes pocked one side. Scrolled letters etched in an intact pane of frosted glass above the mirror spelled out S
TARDUST.

“Why did they leave it like this? All these years…” Nicky rubbed a hand over his eyes. Had Dani found her time machine? Had they all stepped back in time with her?

Dani released his arm and shined her light on a spot on the floor. A stain. “Someone died here.” She looked up and locked eyes with him. “Renata told Francie the Fiorini family was superstitious and wouldn’t enter or take anything from a place where someone was murdered.”

Frank’s hand slid over his mouth then fell to his side. “My aunt would never talk about what happened here. I’ve often wondered if it was just a dream.” He looked down at Carlo. “Your grandfather. Was he killed by a gunshot?”

An odd look passed over his father’s face. “He died when I was about ten. But he had a scar.” He pointed to a spot just below his right collarbone. “He told me and my cousins it was how a gangster made him believe in God.”

Frank nodded. “That was the night we left. Mama was sick. Aunt Francie begged her to get out of bed, but she couldn’t.” His voice drifted as if he were miles away. “I never saw my mother again.”

Lois put her hand on his back. The sound of her hand rubbing his shirt echoed in the silence. Nicky closed his eyes, sharing the hurt this man felt even after all these years.

“We took a train to Chicago. When we got off, a man I’d never seen before ran up and hugged us both. He kept saying, ‘Finally, finally.’ I was terrified. My aunt was sobbing. The guy kissed her and she kissed him back.”

Dani gasped. “Theo?”

Frank nodded. “He scooped me up in his arms and said, ‘How’d you like to ride an elephant?’ That’s all it took to win me over. A few months later we were on a boat to India.”