Unforgotten (9 page)
Pop came in. “Where’s the dessert? The children are getting restless.”
Getting
restless? Lance heard at least two babies crying, a skirmish of raised voices and bumped furniture and parents hollering exasperated threats. “Why don’t you skip dessert and send them all home.”
“Skip dessert!” Momma looked wounded.
Annoyed, Pop pushed him toward the living room, a.k.a. Bronx Zoo. “Go make yourself useful. Isn’t that what you do these days?”
Yeah, it was what he did. But the naked kids in South America were easier to deal with than his nieces and nephews en masse in his mother’s living room. “
Basta!
Everyone under five feet down in the garden.
Spicciatevi!
”
With squeals and screeches they crashed through the door; their thundering feet on the stairs could bring the whole place down. He looked at Tony’s oldest son, Jake, who hadn’t moved from his place in Pop’s corner recliner. “What’s wrong with you? Butt glued to the seat?”
Jake almost smiled. “I’m not under five feet.”
Lance glanced at Gina, caught the tightness of her expression, then back to his nephew. “Prove it.”
With sloth-like languor, Jake rose.
Lance swallowed. When had the kid sprouted those extra inches? He would have to spend some time with Jake before he left. “I’ll make an exception.”
Jake looked toward the wall, neither answering nor moving.
“Come on. I’ve loosed the horses of the apocalypse. Someone’s gotta control the aftermath.” Lance scooped a sniffling tot from Lucy’s arms and told Jake, “Let’s do it, hotshot.”
Jake came to him, glanced up—but not that far—then headed for the door. Lance looked at Rese, but Monica had her ear, so he went down alone to the garden with the rabble.
C
haz sat curled over his book at the small table in the kitchenette, the lamplight gilding the pages as Rese slipped into the apartment, names and faces jamming her head—voices, questions, squalls. The silence around Chaz gaped, and she was sucked into the amber glow, the peace.
He spread his broad, white smile and stood to hold her chair. Towering in the cramped room like a benevolent giant, he said in his Jamaican intonation, “You’ve met the family.”
“That’s not a family; it’s a horde.”
He laughed the slow rippling laugh she had come to appreciate in his short time with her in Sonoma.
She sank into the chair. “How dazed do I look?”
“Like that first morning without Lance.”
The morning after she’d kicked him out and had to manage unappreciative guests who expected Lance’s kitchen creations and the evening entertainment her Web site had promised, when Chaz and Rico had stuck by her even though they were Lance’s friends, when Chaz’s gentle style and Rico’s pancakes and Star’s fast-talking had kept her from punching someone.
The scene tonight had been close, panic lodging in her throat like a gob of peanut butter over her windpipe, and Lance too enmeshed in family dynamics to notice. If she had realized what she was agreeing to, she’d have sent him off to grandmother’s house without her. She had enough wolves at her door without disapproving mothers, prying sisters, knowing aunts, aggressive brothers-in-law, and so many children her head spun.
“Relax,” Chaz said softly.
She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I’ve never heard anything like it. They’re so …” She shook her head. “I’m not like them.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“I think I’m supposed to prove something.”
“You’re a daughter of the King. What is there to prove?”
She lolled her head to the side. “A daughter of the king.”
“Absolutely.” Chaz flipped pages and stopped. “ ‘The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children … heirs of God and coheirs with Christ.’ ”
Well, that was fine, but so far she’d been called a cow and an egg and endured conversation in volumes intense to deafening, and if she was any kind of heir, no one seemed to know it but Chaz. She frowned. “Lance told me we were coming to discuss the inn with his grandmother. Why can’t he ever give me the whole story?”
“I don’t think he sees the whole story. He’s a dreamer, a visionary. He sees what he hopes for.”
Her skeptical mind turned that thought over. Did Lance really not see, or did he not want her to? At the moment, she was disinclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. “I wouldn’t have come if he’d told me.”
“You’re here now.”
“Is there an escape hatch? A trapdoor? I don’t even mind a skeleton or two.”
Chaz laughed. “You could try the dumbwaiter. But it only goes to the cellar.”
“Not far enough.”
“Then you must be content in your circumstances.” She sighed. “But how?”
“ ‘Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice.’ ”
Rese startled. Rejoice always? No matter what? That was as bad as Lance’s Scripture that said to boast in affliction that developed character. She’d be stellar by the end of this. “Where do you get all that?”
He tapped his book. “God’s Word is my university.”
The door opened and Lance came in. “Can I play?” He smiled as he took a chair and rocked it back, squeezing his shoulder blades to stretch his chest.
She had an unmistakable desire to overturn the chair with her foot.
He raised his brows. “Still in one piece?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve lost hair and a pound of flesh, but I’ve still got my teeth.”
“You did get the worst of it out in the yard.”
“You saw that?”
“I assume you were the center of the mob.” She had snuck a look from the bathroom window, where she’d hidden long enough to give her ears a rest.
“Nice to be loved.” Lance rubbed a red mark on his arm.
And that was it, Rese thought. In spite of the bickering, the bantering and squalling, the playful and not so playful scuffling, there was a possessiveness, a cohesion in his family she couldn’t help but envy. Lance could hardly draw a breath without someone wanting his attention or showering theirs on him. Only his father had remained aloof. But maybe that was normal for them. Even though she and Dad had been partners, they’d had little relationship outside the work they both loved.
“Don’t let it go to your head.” Chaz gestured with his elegant fingers. “Better a humble stone than a coveted gem.”
Lance eyed him. “Jamaican proverb? Or Chazian?”
Chaz laughed. “A stone is used to build. A gem causes strife.”
Rese looked from one to the other, knowing what Chaz meant, but also that Lance hadn’t forced or even craved the attention he got. Unlike Bobby, who’d grown increasingly domineering and selfimportant, Lance had focused on everyone else, as he had with her when they first met, drawing her out as no one had before. Caring, as no one had before.
She didn’t want to care back, but how could she stop it? There was something inherently attractive about him, even with his faults. Maybe because of them, if there was anything to that affliction thing proving character. She said, “A gem is a stone. It just depends on what’s been done to it.”
“That”—Chaz raised a finger—“is an excellent point. The transforming power of adversity.” And he gave her a secret smile.
She got the point but didn’t like it. Dinner had been torture, and she did not feel better for it. Lance might complain about their knowing him too well, but he’d been energized by the interaction. He was the perfect personality to run the inn. He liked people.
She felt drained. Lance had seemed talkative when they first met, but nothing like the rest of them, at least all together in one place. Nonna Antonia had been silent on her right, but on her left Monica had run on about her kids, her Bobby, her nausea, and everyone else had talked to her from whatever position they were in, hollering questions over the din. How was she supposed to take a bite?
But she had worked the food in somehow. Her stomach was full, though she had no idea what she’d eaten. Rese sent her gaze to the bedroom where, even if she couldn’t sleep, it would be quiet and private— no, she was sharing with Star. But then … where were Star and Rico?
“Recording in the subway tunnel,” Chaz told her when she asked; then as he filled Lance in on their new venture, she escaped to the bedroom. The nights with Dad after a long day on a jobsite, after she’d fed him and he had slipped off to watch TV without even a thank-you, seemed normal now, or at least low-stress. Dynamic discussions they’d had on-site or driving or walking together, scoping out opportunities or just dreaming, dried up the minute they’d gotten home.
It was as though Mom hovered invisible between them, and neither knew how to be without her. Dad had the secret of Mom’s committal lodged in his throat, and she’d kept so many things from him when he’d come home and questioned her as though she were the adult that it was easier to be silent. Whereas tonight she’d probably learned the whole Michelli genealogy in one meal.
She changed into sleep shorts and top, gathered her toiletries and went through the connecting door to the bathroom, then locked the other two. Three entrances into a bathroom that was the length of the bedrooms that flanked it, only narrower. A useful layout made interesting by the black and aqua Art Deco tile and fixtures that she guessed again were original. Lance bathed in a museum piece. Did he know it?
There were cracks along the ceiling and floor, but the building had been moderately preserved. Except for a scatter of Star’s things, the room was also clean and in order. Which of the men kept it that way? She’d wager on Chaz over Rico, but her perceptions could be wrong, even though she’d trained herself to judge people’s strengths and weaknesses. She hadn’t seen Lance coming, and it made her wonder how many others she’d gotten wrong.
She washed and brushed her teeth, ran damp fingers over her hair, and noted the weariness in her face. Sleep would be great, but she didn’t expect it. She now recognized the fear that had kept her awake year after year—fear that she would die if she gave in, fear she’d learned the night she almost did. She believed her life was in God’s hands. But knowing the truth didn’t change years of habit all at once. The best nights she’d had were when Lance sang or talked her to sleep. But she wasn’t going there.
As though on cue, a tap came at the door and Lance asked, “Need anything?”
She could swear the man read her mind. She opened it a crack. “No thanks. I packed adequately.”
He tipped his head. “Neck rub?”
Her neck was steel cables, but she glanced behind him at Chaz in his “university” and shook her head. “I’m okay.”
“I should have warned you about all this.”
“You should have.”
“You like to know what’s coming.”
“That’s right.”
He leaned on the jamb. “But you survived.”
“I’m good at that.”
“Strongest woman I’ve ever known.”
She tipped her head. “That’s saying a lot.”
He winced. “Yeah, well …”
“And according to Monica they were not all hard-luck stories.”
“What would she know?”
“Some right out of
Glamour
magazine, she said.”
“A glamorous woman can’t have problems?”
“Monica said you’re spoiled. With three big sisters, cousins, aunts, mother, grandmother, all treating you like a prince, how would you ever settle for one girl?”
“Monica’s a font of wisdom? Try sisters, cousins, aunts, mother, and grandmother all bossing, scolding, squeezing, kissing. Enough to make me take holy orders.”
Rese raised her brows. “Which still gets you out of choosing.” She’d been right to resist his charm. He didn’t discriminate.
He reached for her hand, twined their fingers. “Sometimes there is no choice. You open your eyes, and it’s been made for you.”
There was the intense sincerity that only Lance could produce and the devastating impact it had on her insides. But she kept her face wooden. No one made her choices, least of all Lance, who couldn’t even tell her the whole story.
She loosed her fingers. “Good night, Lance.”
————
Lance sat down with Chaz and sighed. “Think I’ll ever get it right?”
“You should have told her what to expect.”
“She wouldn’t have come.”
“She deserved the choice.”
Chaz was right—as always. Lance leaned back and closed his eyes. “Why do I see it after the fact?”
“You don’t look before.”
He wanted to argue, but he hadn’t told Rese on purpose, because if he’d painted the picture, she would have resisted—no, downright refused. He’d imagined her here with Nonna, sharing their plans, their hopes. He hadn’t imagined her with the rest of them. He loved his family, but he’d avoided the thought of them all with Rese.
Dinner had been a gauntlet. He’d argued, but Monica was right that they felt responsible for him. They couldn’t turn off their nurture; it was ingrained from his infancy. Another reason to stay in Sonoma. He could grow up there.
He reached for Chaz’s Bible, found the passage he wanted.
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”
He ran away when Tony died because he didn’t know how to become the man his brother had been. He threw himself into projects to help the world, one cause after another, then moved on before he had a chance to fail. He’d always denied it, but maybe his mother had named him after the knight who fought hard and faithfully, but in the end brought ruin to Camelot.
She should have given him a solid Italian name like Frank or Dominick or Vinnie, or Roman like Pop. Why had she grown whimsical when she clutched his waxy, squirming body? Pop could have put his foot down, but what did he care? He had Tony.
Lance looked up.
Chaz met his gaze. “Find what you need?”
“Am I still the guy who showed up with a hammer at your father’s church, thinking I could change the world?”
Chaz formed a slow smile. “Yes and no.” He turned the book to see the passage, then said, “You thought your hammer would make things better, and it did. It gave shelter where there was no shelter. You dug ditches and laid pipes for clean water to stop disease. You taught food preparation to minimize the contamination that caused swelling in bellies, sores, and hives. Because you suffered, you eased suffering.”