She was wearing her long hair loose this time, her warm-up outfit replaced by a white silk blouse, suit skirt, and heels. “It was so nice of you and your mom to invite me to dinner,” she said. “I hear you’re quite the cook.”
Before he could rally a reply, Abby explained that their guest had spent all day talking to bankers about her plans for the school she wanted to open in Avalon Bay.
John could think of at least one banker she hadn’t talked to that day and felt it was his duty to warn her.
“Leister?” she repeated, shaking her head. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Not one of my son’s favorite people,” Abby informed her. “The two of them went to high school together and some of the terrible things that man has done.”
“Uh, excuse me, Mom, but haven’t you got something burning in the kitchen?” he interrupted her.
Abby sniffed the air. “I don’t think so,” she replied, turning to ask Gabrielle for her opinion on the subject.
“Maybe we should go check just the same,” John said, his intonation leaving no mystery as to why he wanted to take his mother aside.
Abby excused herself as she got out of her chair. “Just make yourself at home, dear. This should only take a minute.”
“It’s a good thing you made so much lasagna,” Abby happily chirped as soon as she and John were out of earshot of their guest. “Do you think we should have some garlic bread, too, or would that be too much?”
John, with arms folded as he leaned against the counter, regarded her with a steely squint that spoke volumes.
“Oh, don’t get all Clint Eastwood on me,” Abby playfully chided him. “You have to admit she’s a lovely girl.”
“No question,” John replied. “But what’s she doing in our living room?” He raised a warning finger. “And don’t tell me she just happened to be walking by.”
“Maybe it was the lasagna,” Abby suggested, taking a deep whiff for emphasis. “I think it’s the best batch you’ve ever made.”
“Mind telling me what kind of matchmaker mischief you’re up to?”
“Actually, Mr. Smarty Pants, she’s here on business,” Abby corrected him.
“What kind of business?” he asked in suspicion.
“Well, you know how I mentioned she’s thinking of opening up a school for children with special needs?”
“Several times, yeah. So, she needs some trees planted around it or what?”
“What she needs,” Abby continued, “is someone who can give her some good advice about Avalon Bay.”
“Isn’t that what she has a mother for? Why doesn’t she just ask Helen?”
“Pffftt! Helen’s a dear but she sometimes has the sense of a radish when it comes to knowing what’s going on. Anyway, I was just thinking that with everything you know about the town.”
“Mom?”
“What?”
“She can stay for dinner but I don’t want you to start picking out china patterns.”
“Don’t be silly,” Abby retorted, adding a whimsical postscript, “I hardly even know her.”
John smirked. “Funny, I could have sworn she was your new best friend.”
Abby shooed him out of the kitchen with the suggestion that he should offer Gabrielle a glass of wine while the lasagna finished cooking. “Besides, I need to go upstairs and see how your dad’s doing.”
John queried whether his father had followed the doctor’s orders and behaved himself that day.
“Not without being a grump,” she said. “I asked him a couple of times if he wanted to join us for dinner but he didn’t seem all that interested.”
John nodded thoughtfully, sensitive to the fact that the Neal sense of pride ran deep. Even if he couldn’t articulate it, it was as if the older man didn’t want strangers to see him, and possibly form a poor opinion, unless he was at his best. Certainly, John himself had initially embraced that attitude when he was recovering from his injuries, allowing only his immediate family and friends like Lenny to come and see him. Pride, he had quickly discovered, came at the price of loneliness.
“Well, if he changes his mind,” John told his mother, “let him know I’m home and can come up and help him.”
When he returned to the living room with two glasses of vino, Gabrielle was at the fireplace and admiring the collection of framed photographs that paraded across the mantle, crowding one another for visibility.
“I hope my being here isn’t an imposition on your family,” she apologized as she accepted a glass from him.
He faltered a moment, wondering how much she had overheard of the conversation in the kitchen. Hoping that maybe she hadn’t heard any of it. “No, no problem at all,” he insisted. “Italian food always goes better with a crowd.”
She cheerfully clinked her glass against his. “Amore! Fortuna! Salute!” she said.
John shook his head. “I’m sorry?”
“Love, luck, health,” she translated. “I spent six months in Italy while I was working on my Master’s. Beautiful country! Have you ever been there?”
“Nope. Basically a hometown boy. Someday, though. Maybe.”
“Well, you don’t know what you’re missing,” she continued. “In fact, when things went south with my marriage, I was torn between whether I wanted to open a school in Jersey or just hop the next plane back to Italy,” she stopped and smiled. “Stop me if I’m being boring.”
“Not at all.”
“But I’m a guest in your home,” she said. “I should be asking you about, well, all these pictures, for instance.” She pointed at the closest one in a frame decorated with stars and glued-on seashells. “Where was this one taken?”
“Cape May,” he replied. “I swear I don’t know what my father was thinking when he bought those scary shorts.”
Gabrielle laughed. “And this one?”
“That’s my Aunt Patty when she took us to Popcorn Park Zoo. She had this thing for homeless tigers.”
“Homeless tigers?”
John explained how the zoo had been set up as a haven for animals—mostly exotic—that had been victimized by humans. “Even after her health started failing and she couldn’t go there anymore,” he explained, “she loved those tigers so much that she used to send a check every month to keep them in steaks.”
“We should all be so lucky,” Gabrielle remarked. She picked up a high school graduation photo at the end of the mantle. “This can’t be you,” she said, holding it up to his face for critical comparison.
“It’s not,” John quietly replied. “It’s my younger brother Jeremy. He was killed several years back.”
Jimmy had gone to sleep with nary a whimper of protest, the faithful Mr. Ollie tucked under one arm. Kate sat and watched him for a long time, as mystified as ever by where his dreams took him. She had watched him closely since their arrival for signs of recognition. A part of her, in fact, half-hoped that he’d head straight for his grandmother’s closet and start pulling out her shoes for an impromptu parade. Just before he went to bed, she showed him a framed picture of Cassy.
“She’s always looking over you, you know,” she told him, tapping the glass lightly with her index finger. “She loved you more than anything in the world, honey.” She searched his face for the faintest flicker of recognition. Although his face remained stoic, he quickly snatched the picture from Kate’s hand and pushed it under his pillow. Kate realized he must be going through an emotional rollercoaster since Cassie’s death and the cross country moves. He needed some stability.
There was finally no postponing the inevitable. As she left the bedroom and started down the stairs, she mentally rehearsed all the things she wanted to say. All the things she needed to say. And yet when she stepped into the living room and saw the back of her mother’s head, the latter engrossed in a crime investigation show, all of the words failed her.
“Mom?”
Lydia picked up the remote and switched it to mute. “What?”
“I think we need to talk and come up with some sort of a plan.”
“We could have talked while you were still in Las Vegas.” She set down the remote and folded her arms. “I seem to recall the last time you were here you couldn’t get back to it fast enough.”
Kate mentally flinched and retreated a cautious step before confessing, at the risk of an ‘I told you so’, that what she needed was more than just a voice on the phone from over two thousand miles away. “I guess it gets down to you being right when you said I was biting off more than I could chew. Even if things with Jimmy weren’t as challenging as they are, I swear I don’t know how Cassy did it all on her own without running herself ragged. I mean at least I have a high-paying job and the resources to help him, but she always seemed to keep it together.”
“A job you just walked away from,” Lydia reminded her, along with the curt observation that her younger daughter was hardly a poster child for quality motherhood. “How long do you think you can last if you’re unemployed?”
“I’m only taking a breather, Mom. The job will still be there when I get back.”
“I singular?”
“We, plural,” Kate emphasized, offended that her mother should even think otherwise. “Dee was great about my taking time off to deal with all this.”
Her listener wasn’t convinced. “Once people find out they can live without you, they usually find a way to do exactly that.” Her face closed as if guarding an unpleasant secret.
It would be futile, Kate realized, to offer assurances that her boss wasn’t anything like the norm. Instead, she played to the flattery of reminiscing how well her mother had kept things together for the three of them after her father died. “I guess I never appreciated at the time how many hats you had to wear for us until I became an overnight parent myself.”
There was a long and prickly silence.
“So now that you’re back here,” Lydia said, “what, exactly, do you intend to do with him?”
Kate came around in front of her, obstructing the view of the television. “It’s what I intend to do for him, Mom. That’s the only thing that matters. And frankly, I just don’t have all the answers.”
Lydia’s expression held a note of mockery. “Wasn’t that what your fancy school was supposed to teach you? All the answers?”
It was a throwaway accusation but it hit home.
“Okay, I’m confused,” Kate challenged her, “but you used to tell people you were proud to have a daughter at Amherst. Ever since we got here, though, you keep telling me I should have stayed in town and settled for Brad. Which is it?”
“‘Settled’ is hardly the right word. Anyone can see that he’s done very well for himself.”
Kate kept her tone civil despite her anger. “So have I, Mom, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Then all the more reason not to throw it away on something that’s not meant to be.”
“You’re getting ahead of me,” Kate said. “What are you talking about?” As if I don’t already know.
“You’re not a teenager anymore, Kate, but twice in a row now I’ve noticed how you go all gaga whenever that Neal boy is around.”
“Oh, come on, now. John and I haven’t even seen each other in years.”
“Even if he were available, I wouldn’t encourage you to go chasing after him.”
The words froze in Kate’s brain. The dreaded disclosure that she didn’t realize until this moment she’d been obsessing about ever since she saw him. And this surprises you why exactly, a little voice in her head chimed in. Did you really think that a handsome, sweet and chivalrous hunk like John Neal would sit around and wait for you forever? “So,” she managed to nonchalantly inquire, “who did he marry?”
“How should I know?” Lydia retorted. “It’s not as if I stay up on their lives. The point here is that—”
So maybe the point is that you don’t know at all, Kate thought. Maybe he’s just been biding his time, building up his business and—
“Are you even listening to a single thing I’m saying?” Lydia said. “You just can’t count on a Neal man to ever keep his word or be your knight in shining armor.”
That she suddenly leaped from condemning John specifically to all the Neal males, in general, struck Kate as a bit strange but she chose not to call her on it. “Believe whatever you want, Mom, but I didn’t come back to Avalon Bay to catch myself a husband. I came back to see if maybe just once you and I could be on the same page and do the right thing for your grandson who doesn’t have anybody else to depend on.” She drew a deep breath that burned in her throat. “If you honestly don’t think that’s possible, then you may as well come out and tell me now and I’ll start making other arrangements for us in the morning.”
Neither a “yes” nor a “no” came forth from Lydia’s pale lips, pre-empted instead by the muffled scuffle of small feet entering the room.
“Jimmy, honey, what’s wrong?” an anxious Kate asked as she hurried toward him. He was hugging the picture of Cassy to his chest and when she gently tried to take it from him, he resisted with a high-pitched squeal of dissent. “No, no, it’s okay,” she cooed. “I just don’t want you to fall with it and hurt yourself.”
His head and his whole body were shaking back and forth in defiance and he squeezed the frame even tighter, the top edge of it now dangerously close to his neck. Oh God, she thought in panic, desperate to get it away from him before the glass cracked.
“He’ll never come if you keep doing that,” she heard her mother remark. Before Kate could respond that it wasn’t a good time for a lecture, Lydia suggested she come back to the sofa instead.
“But, Mom, he’s—”
“Trust me,” Lydia said calmly. “It worked with you and your sister all the time.”
Reluctantly, Kate moved away from her young charge, backing up until she had reached the sofa.
“Sit down,” Lydia murmured, whereupon she began to casually chat about the weather, the price of mushrooms and the latest book she had finished reading.
To Kate’s amazement, a wide-eyed Jimmy drew closer to the two women, culminating in his thrusting the picture toward Lydia’s lap.
“Oh my,” she said in feigned amazement as if she had never seen it before. “And who is this?”
Jimmy stared at her for the longest time before reaching out to splay the fingers of one hand across the heavily smudged surface. His eyes locked in fierce communion with those of his grandmother, he blurted out a single, unmistakable word: “Mama.”