Love at First Flight (21 page)

“Sorry. I forgot how early it is.”

“What do you want, Juliana?”

“You have to take care of Ma this weekend.”

“I don't gotta do nothing.”

“I'm going away, so it's you or no one
unless you can get Dona to help you.”

“As if. Are you off to see Mr. Wonderful
again?”

“No. I'll be back Sunday night. Check on
her, Vin. She's been worse than usual lately.”

“She's living on booze. I can't ever get
her to eat anything.”

“We're going to have to do something
about that one of these days.”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks for the help.”

“I'm going back to sleep.”

***

An hour later, Michael and Juliana were
driven home by a police officer.

“Let me go in ahead of you,” the cop
said.

“The window's already fixed,” Michael
noticed.

“Your boss took care of that himself. A
guy who grew up in Canton with Houlihan was over here at eleven last night to
fix it.”

“That's good of him,” Juliana said.

“Everything seems okay,” the cop said. “I'll
be right outside if you need anything.”

“We'll be leaving town until Sunday
night,” Michael said.

“I'll need to know where you're going.
Houlihan wants someone on both of you until the trial is over. Maybe even
beyond that.”

“We'll be in Rhode Island, so we won't
need coverage there,” Michael insisted. “I'll talk to Houlihan. Someone needs
to be with Juliana for about an hour while I take care of something, and then
we're good until Sunday.”

“Okay,” the cop said and left them.

Michael watched Juliana fixate on the
open space in the room, the coffee table's absence a glaring reminder of what
happened the night before.

Michael tugged her hand. “Come on.”

“They did a good job cleaning up,” she
said softly. “You'd never know.”

He steered her up the stairs. “Let's
pack and get out of here.”

***

Two officers in a police cruiser
followed them to Mrs. Romanello's house.

“Will you come in for a minute?” Juliana
asked Michael. “I'd like you to meet her.”

“Sure.”

He wore a black sweater with faded
jeans, but Juliana knew that when she pictured him, she would always see him in
a suit.

“Where's your house?”

Juliana pointed. “That one.”

He glanced at it and followed her up the
stairs to Mrs. R's front door.

“Hey,” Juliana called when they walked
in. They followed the sound of a mixer running in the kitchen. Juliana kissed
the older woman's cheek.

“Oh, hon, let me see.” Mrs. R turned off
the mixer and tipped Juliana's face so she could get a better look at the
wound. “It shouldn't leave a scar.”

“I'm not worried about it,” Juliana
said, touched by her friend's concern. “This is Michael Maguire.”

Mrs. R sized him up and reached out to
shake his hand. “Hello.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“I'm not pleased about this, young man.”
She gestured to Juliana's face.

“Believe me, I'm not either.”

“You'll come stay here,” Mrs. R said to
Juliana.

“That's a good idea,” Michael agreed. “We're
going out of town for a few days, and then Juliana will come stay here until
the trial's over.”

“Hello, I'm in the room,” Juliana
protested. “I'm not moving out, Michael, so you can both stop running my life.”

“It's not safe at my house.”

“Are you staying there?”

“Well... Yeah.”

“If you're staying, I'm staying.” She
gave him a look that let him know the subject was closed. “Go do what you need
to do so we can get going,” she said with a nudge to get him moving.

“I'll be less than an hour,” he told
Juliana. To Mrs. R he said, “Nice to meet you.”

“You, too. Keep this girl safe, do you
hear me?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, hesitating.

Juliana realized he wanted to kiss her,
so she walked him to the front door.

He slipped his arms around her. “While
I'm gone, how about you go next door and find something you can bring with you
to wear in a place with candles and wine and music, okay? Something you've been
saving for a special occasion.”

Amused, she asked, “How do you know I
have some-thing like that?”

“I know you.”

“Hurry back,” she said with a lingering
kiss.

Groaning, he tore himself away from her.
“I will.” Juliana watched him go and then returned to the kitchen.

“Oh, Juliana,” Mrs. R said with a hand
over her heart. “Oh, hon. What in the world are you going to do?”

“I love him.”

“I can see that.” Mrs. R put an arm
around Juliana, leading her to sit at the kitchen table. “You've been with him.
I see that, too.”

Juliana's face burned with
embarrassment. “Yes,” she said in a whisper.

“Where are you going this weekend?”

“To Rhode Island where his family lives.”

“Every minute you spend with him gets
you deeper into this. You know that, don't you?”

“I just need to be with him right now.
Maybe I'll feel differently when I see Jeremy again, but for now, this is what
I want. He's what I want.”

Mrs. Romanello clutched Juliana's hand. “God
bless you, hon. God bless you all.”

CHAPTER 18

JULIANA WENT NEXT DOOR TO PICK UP THE
MAIL AND THE dress Michael asked her to bring. She left two more letters from
Jeremy unopened on the kitchen table. The house smelled musty and a thin layer
of dust covered every surface. She would have to get over here to clean next
week.

Michael was back in forty-five minutes.
They bid Mrs. Romanello and their police detail good-bye and headed north on
Interstate 95 to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. As they left Baltimore and all
their troubles behind, Juliana began to relax.

“How long will it take to get there?”

“Six or seven hours, depending on the
traffic on the Jersey Turnpike, the Cross Bronx Expressway, and in Connecticut,
which is always the worst.”

“Do you usually fly or drive?”

“I fly because I never have much time,
but I prefer to drive.”

“If I had this car, I'd prefer to drive,
too.”

“Want to?”

Her eyes widened. “Really?” He pulled
over. “Really.”

Juliana clapped her hands with glee and
jumped out of the car to change places with him. Once in the driver' s seat,
she put on her seatbelt, shifted the car into first gear, and hit the gas.

“Jesus!” he said, gripping the armrest
with alarm. Juliana smiled at him. “Hold on to your hat, baby.”

***

“I've never gotten to Connecticut this fast—ever,”
Michael said just over three hours later. “How about giving me a turn?”

Juliana smiled. “Nope. I'm having too
much fun.”

He cringed when she darted between two
semis. “You're stressing me out.”

“Don't look.”

“The way you're changing lanes, I'll
puke if I close my eyes.”

“I never knew you were such a wimp.”

“You weren't calling me a wimp last
night.”

She glanced over at him. “Just a tad bit
full of your-self, aren't you?”

“Watch the road!”

Cruising along the southern coast of
Connecticut, Juliana confessed that she hadn't been to New England before.

“Never?”

“Nope. We didn't really go anywhere when
I was growing up. A daytrip to Ocean City was a big deal.”

He reached for her hand. “You didn't
have an easy go of it as a kid, did you?”

She shrugged. “It was what it was. Most
of the time, it was just my parents and me since the next oldest— Vincent—was
eight years older than me.”

“And your parents were unhappy together?”

“That's putting it mildly. They fought
like cats and dogs—when my mother wasn't loaded, that is.”

“Your brothers and sisters weren't
around?”

“Not unless they had to be. They all
moved out as soon as they turned eighteen.”

“Why didn't you?”

“Well, by then my father was heavily
into his 'extra-curricular activities,' as my mother called them, and she was
hitting the bottle pretty hard. I just felt like I needed to be there with her.”

“So how did you end up moving out?”

She glanced over at him and then back at
the road.

“Juliana?”

“Jeremy kind of put his foot down about it.
He hates the way my family treats me, so he insisted I move out of my mother's
house and in with him.”

“He
insisted?
”

“He gave me the push I needed to do
something about a bad situation.”

“Like an ultimatum?”

“Of course not.”

“I'm sorry.”

“He didn't give me an ultimatum,
Michael. It wasn't like that.”

“It's none of my business,” Michael
said, looking out the passenger window.

Juliana tugged on his hand. “Hey. Don't
check out on me. What're you thinking?”

“I forget sometimes that you're not
really free. Then I'll remember all of a sudden, and it just kind of hits me
right here.” He ran a hand over his gut.

She sighed.

He looked over at her. “What am I going
to do if you go back to him?”

“Can we not do this?” she pleaded. “I
don't have to make any decisions today, tomorrow, or even the next day. Can we
just be together for now?”

He studied her for a long time before he
answered. “I guess we can do that.” Kissing her hand, he added, “For now.”

***

They stopped for lunch in Mystic,
Connecticut, where Michael managed to wrestle the keys away from Juliana.

“It's so pretty,” she said an hour later
as she looked out over Narragansett Bay from the top of the Newport Bridge. “This
bridge reminds me of the Bay Bridge,” she said, referring to the span over the
Chesapeake Bay that connects the Annapolis area to Maryland's Eastern Shore.

“That bridge looks like it was assembled
from a bridge yard sale, like ten different kinds of bridges all in one.”

Juliana laughed. “You're right. It does.
Oh, look, there's a house sitting on the rocks out there!”

“The house is called 'Clingstone.'“

“I love that!”

He took the Newport exit, and as they
drove between two cemeteries, he said, “Guess what the name of this street is?”

“Cemetery Way?”

He shook his head. “Farewell Street.”

“Oh,” she said with a chuckle. “That's a
good one.”

“In the summer this road is jam-packed
with cars,” he said of America's Cup Avenue.

“It seems almost familiar in some ways.
I wonder why.”

“Annapolis reminds me a lot of Newport.
The colonial houses, the gas streetlamps, and the cobblestone streets are so
similar.”

“And there's a harbor here, too. Just
like Annapolis.”

He took a right on to Lower Thames
Street. “This part of Newport is called the Fifth Ward,” Michael said when they
had traveled about a mile down Lower Thames. “It's where all the Irish people
live.”

“Like Little Italy in Baltimore.”

“Yes, sort of,” he said, pulling into a
driveway on Carroll Avenue.

They stretched out the kinks from the
long ride.

“This is it.” He gestured to the small
ranch house. “This is where I grew up. We used to play baseball at the park we
passed at the corner.”

“Are your parents home?”

“I'm not sure what their schedules are
today. I didn't tell them we were coming.”

“What?”

He laughed, put an arm around her, and
kissed her cheek. “Don't sweat it, baby. They'll be thrilled to meet you.” He
tugged her along with him and used a key on his ring to unlock the door. It
took him about five minutes to show her around the small, tidy house that
smelled of lemon furniture polish and potpourri.

“Oh, is that you?” Juliana asked,
pointing to a faded framed photo in the hallway.

Michael grimaced. “I think that was
seventh grade.”

“You were so cute!”

“Were?”

Giggling, she studied the other photos
on the wall. “That's Pat.”

“You looked alike.”

“That's what people said.”

The bedroom that used to be Michael's
was now filled with toys belonging to his nieces and nephews. Another bedroom
contained twin beds.