A black Mercedes was parked in the driveway when Kate got home. If she’d had enough wits about her to recall where she had seen it before, she would have turned around and gone back to her perch on the boardwalk. Her guilt about leaving Jimmy with her mother for far longer than she’d planned to, however, was overriding everything else at the moment.
“Oh, there she is,” she heard Lydia exclaim.
It was followed a second later by a male voice that instantly made Kate cringe.
“Looks like we won’t have to call the cops and report a missing mommy,” joked Brad.
They were both holding glasses of lemonade. From the looks of the full one in Brad’s hand, he had either arrived only a short time before Kate got there or was being indulged in Lydia’s effusive hospitality with a refill just to ensure that he was still on the premises when Kate got home. Nor did Kate miss the fact that the lemonade was in the crystal water glasses that her mother only brought out for holidays and “special” company.
“Look who just happened to drop by,” Lydia said with all the satisfaction of a Southern matron overseeing a successful cotillion.
“Where’s Jimmy?” Kate wanted to know.
It was Brad who casually answered that they had put him out in the backyard.
“He’s not a dog, Brad,” Kate snapped, outraged by his insensitivity. She strode past both of them en route to the back door.
Lydia instantly rose to Brad’s defense by explaining that it wasn’t what it sounded like. “He kept wanting to go out,” she said, “so we thought the fresh air would do him good.”
We? So now you’re making collective decisions with Brad? “He’s a five-year-old boy,” she reminded her mother, annoyed that the possibility of Jimmy hurting himself or wandering out an unlatched back gate hadn’t even occurred to her. “I can’t believe you’d leave him unsupervised.”
“You and your sister played out there plenty of times by yourself,” Lydia countered but Kate was already out of earshot.
A motionless Jimmy was seated cross-legged in front of the fledgling tree that he and John had planted that morning. The faithful, and discernibly dirtier, Mr. Ollie kept vigil on the ground next to him.
“Whatcha doin’, honey?” Kate asked as she knelt beside him.
Without looking over at her, Jimmy pointed at the anemic, leafless little stick and proclaimed, “Shoes!”
Kate suppressed a smile, wondering how “shoes” had come to represent Jimmy’s association with John. “Tree,” she gently corrected him. “Can you say ‘tree’?”
Jimmy responded by laughing and rocking back and forth.
She repeated her question but the giggling Jimmy had now scooped up Mr. Ollie and plopped him on top of his head.
Kate pointed to the tree. “Were you out here watching it grow?”
For a fond instant, she was reminded of the time Cassy had saved her allowance to send away for a pair of genuine seahorses. Her plan, she confided to her big sister, was to toss them in a full bathtub and watch them magically come to life as creatures that would be big enough for her to ride to school. That same watchful intensity was now on the face of her little boy.
Jimmy suddenly stopped rocking and looked from Kate to the tree and back again. “Beemstuck,” he happily blurted out.
“’Beemstuck’?” She shook her head. “What does that mean?”
Before he could repeat it, Lydia stepped outside to tell her that Brad had offered to buy dinner. “Wasn’t that nice of him?” she added. “Such a gentleman.”
Kate doubted that the invitation included her nephew and voiced it aloud.
“What he meant,” Lydia said, “was that he thought maybe you’d like to treat yourself to a night off. Besides, it will give the two of you a chance to talk about your little employment problem.”
Kate’s expression darkened with the realization her own mother had betrayed her current circumstances. “You told Brad what was going on with my job?”
“Former job,” Lydia corrected her. “Honestly, Kate, can I help it if he asked where you were working these days?”
“Was this before or after you invited him to ‘drop-in’?”
Lydia archly reminded her that Brad Leister was extremely well connected in the community and socialized with the heads of every major business. “I’m sure he has plenty of ideas.”
“None of which,” Kate predicted, “have anything to do with how I’m going to support Jimmy or keep him from being taken away by Luke.” Oh God, she thought in dread, you didn’t tell him about Luke, too?
“So. Fine,” Lydia retorted. “What’s wrong with just having a nice dinner with someone who still cares for you?” She glanced back toward the house. “It’s rude, you know, to keep him waiting for an answer.”
“I gave him an answer over fourteen years ago, Mom. And no amount of time will ever change it.”
Lydia’s eyes narrowed “You’re not taking up with that Neal boy again, are you?”
Kate informed her that she wasn’t ‘taking up’ with anyone and that her priority was Jimmy.
“I’m only thinking of what’s best,” Lydia insisted. “You have no idea what it’s like to try to raise a child on your own.”
Kate was about to point out that she and Cassy had spent the majority of their upbringing in a two-parent household, a scenario that rendered Lydia’s argument moot when she noticed that the cocky Brad had just emerged from the house.
“So do I hear a ‘yes’ on that dinner?” he asked.
“Looks like you and Mom are on your own,” she informed him. “Jimmy and I have already made other plans.”
As she walked over to retrieve her nephew from his attentive tree-staring, it was to the sound of Brad sarcastically asking what kind of person made plans that revolved around a five-year-old.
“Obviously, you know nothing about parenting,” she calmly replied, scooping up Mr. Ollie with one hand and extending her free one to Jimmy.
“So is Blue Man Group holding local auditions?’ John asked when he saw his mother’s latest beauty experiment.
Abby insisted that her friend Margaret swore by it.
“If you find a third,” John quipped, “you could start your own act and give ‘em some competition.” He helped himself to a beer from the fridge and grabbed a treat from the ceramic canister for Shelby. “How’s Dad doing?”
In the background, the sounds of a TV game show were in boisterous progress. From the sound of applause, another contestant has just hit the jackpot.
Abby related that Sean had spent part of the afternoon outside with her and seemed to like it. A wistful smile found its way to her lips. “Sitting with him,” she said, “reminded me of what it used to be like before.” She laughed. “Not that we ever sat around that much doing nothing but, well, you know what I mean.”
Beneath their feet, Shelby was earnestly crunching on a dog treat.
“I’ll need you to take him to his therapy appointment tomorrow,” Abby continued. “We’ve got an audit coming up and I promised Joe I’d come in early.”
“Sure.” He proceeded to tell her about his day, holding off until the last to mention that he had helped Jimmy plant a tree.
Abby’s memory needed refreshing on who, exactly, Jimmy was. “You know that’s the funniest thing,” she said on the heels of his reply, “but Lydia Toscano called just before you got home. I can’t believe it completely slipped my mind.”
“Lydia called here? Why?”
“Well, that’s what was strange. She wanted to know if her daughter was here.”
“This is getting stranger by the minute,” John remarked. “Did she give any clue why she thought Kate was here?”
“If she did, I missed it,” Abby said, reminding him that the last time they’d talked was back before Jeremy was born. “Oh, and I remember your father and I saw her at the funeral for her husband but there was such a crowd.” Lydia, she recalled, had made a point of keeping her distance from all but her closest friends.
“Lydia Toscano has friends?” John quipped.
The kitchen timer went off, a signal that it was time for Abby to go upstairs and engage in the next step of her latest treatment.
“You know I’m thinking a pizza from Capparelli’s might be good tonight,” she opined.
John offered to run out and pick one up.
“Oh, and you know what would also be nice?” she said.
John thought she was referring to a side order and started naming them from memory.
Abby interrupted to ask if he’d mind taking his father along when he picked up their dinner. “Not to go inside with you or anything,” she hastily clarified, “but you know how he loves riding in the truck. I think a change of scenery would be good. Not to mention it would also get him away from that silly TV.”
John agreed, feeling only slightly guilty that her request would also give him a chance to cruise by the Toscano house just to make sure everything was okay. In the event Lydia spotted his truck, he rationalized, the sight of his dad in the passenger seat would help allay whatever dark suspicions were already building in her mind.
There was something oddly comforting, John reflected, about having the presence of another person without feeling the pressure to keep up a conversation. It had been easier than he thought to help his father maneuver into the passenger seat and as they pulled out of the driveway, he was pretty sure he even detected a smile on the older man’s face.
“Wrong…way,” Sean told his son as they turned down Chelsea Lane.
“I know, Dad, just taking the scenic route. No rush, we got a few minutes before the pizza’s ready, anyway. Besides, don’t you like the drive?”
“Good to be…out.”
His fond recollection of time spent with his father was quickly replaced by a twinge in his gut as he drove by Lydia’s house. As the only Mercedes in Avalon Bay, Brad’s car was instantly recognizable parked on the quiet street in front of the house.
“What’s wrong?” Sean asked his son, noticing the change in his demeanor.
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong, Dad,” John lied. “Let’s go pick up dinner.”
Kate wasn’t looking for a conversation that evening beyond talking to Jimmy and placing her order for pizza and soft drinks. Unfortunately, the best place in town for satisfying her current hunger level was Capparelli’s. Whatever plan she might have had for them to unobtrusively slip into a back booth was squelched as soon as she heard Maria call out her name.
“Moonlighting, are you?” a puzzled Kate asked, taking note of the apron that was tied around her friend’s waist.
Maria laughed it off in preface to confiding that helping out the short-handed Antonio and Mama by waiting tables was a way to hang out with her hunky honey. “Big Tony likes anybody he can get who’s cheap.”
“That probably didn’t come out the way you meant it,” Kate said but Maria had already bent down to say hi to Jimmy.
“How’s my little juice box man?” she greeted him. She looked up at Kate. “So, you guys doin’ some takeout tonight or you want a table?”
“I was thinking a booth.”
“You got it, hon.”
The back-corner obscurity Kate was hoping for didn’t materialize. Instead, Maria parked them in plain sight of the entire room. “This way, you and the little man won’t miss anything,” she said.
Even after Kate told her what they wanted to order, Maria was clearly in no hurry to leave their company.
“Aren’t you going to get in trouble?” Kate asked, especially when her friend settled hip-shot against the corner of the table and was rambling into her latest bit of town gossip about Cliff firing his latest editor for being a certifiable idiot.
“Believe me, hon,” Maria replied, “Big Tony would rather have me schmoozing with the clientele out here than smooching with his son back in the kitchen.”
“He does know about the two of you, doesn’t he?” Kate cautiously inquired.
“Let’s just say we’re leaking it to him in stages.”
Maria had peeled herself away from Kate and Jimmy’s table only long enough to place their pizza order but was back again regaling Kate with the latest she had heard via the Avalon Bay grapevine.
“She’s gorgeous and she’s French and she wants to have a bazillion kids,” she was saying with a mischievous giggle.
Kate was reticent to echo Maria’s laughter even if it would have masked the turmoil she was feeling. A part of her was hoping Jimmy would knock over his soft drink just to send Maria scurrying for a wad of napkins to clean up the puddle it would make. Jimmy, however, was being surprisingly well behaved and offering no diversions from what was proving to be a painful conversation.
Even the brief, enthusiastic appearance of Antonio who fussed about “the bambino” failed to derail Maria’s train of gossip. No sooner did he table-hop to greet his other customers than she immediately started in again, this time nudging the conversation toward the past. “Funny,” she said, “but I always thought you ‘n’ John would have a full house by now.”
“So, tell me more about Little Tony,” Kate interrupted, even though hearing about Maria’s Italian stallion ranked high on the list of vacuous topics.
Maria started to reply when Jimmy suddenly sprang to life and excitedly pointed toward the door.
“John!” he squealed in delight.