Jack loved me back.
“I don’t know.”
“Lily, if you want me to have a serious talk with this joker, just say the word.” And he really meant it. I looked at Chandler with new eyes. This man would put himself through a humiliating conversation and not think twice about it.
“Will you make him go down on one knee and swear to forsake all others?” I was smiling a little, I couldn’t help it.
“Damn straight.”
This, too, he meant.
“What a great guy you are,” I said. All the aggression leaked out of me, as if I was a balloon with a pinhole. “You’ve been talking with Jack, haven’t you?”
“He’s an ex-cop, and no matter how his career ended,” and Chandler flushed uncomfortably since Jack had not exactly left the Memphis police force under creditable circumstances, “Jack Leeds was a good detective and made some good arrests. I called the Memphis cops, talked to a friend of mine there, as soon as I realized who he was.”
That was interesting. Chandler had known Jack was in town probably before I did-and had checked up on him.
“Fact is, the only thing this guy knew against Jack was that he’d hooked up with a shady cleaning lady,” Chandler said with a grin.
I grinned back. All the tension was gone, and we were old friends together. Without asking, Chandler paid for my milkshake and his meal, and I slid out of the booth and into my coat.
When he dropped me off at home, Chandler gave me a kiss on the cheek. We hadn’t said another word about Meredith Osborn, or Dr. LeMay, or Jack. I knew Chandler had backed off only because he owed me, on some level: The last time we’d been together had been a terrible evening for both of us. Whatever the reason, I was grateful. But I knew that if Chandler thought I was concealing something that would contribute to solving the murders that had taken place in the town he was sworn to protect, he would come down on me like a ton of bricks.
We might be old friends, but we were both weighted down with adult burdens.
Jack didn’t call.
That night I lay sleepless, my arms rigidly at my sides, watching the bars of moonlight striping the ceiling of my old room. It was the distillation of the all the bad nights I’d had in the past seven years; except in my parents’ house, I could not resort to my usual methods of escape and relief. Finally I got up, sat in the little slipper chair in the corner of the room, and turned on the lamp.
I’d finished my biography. Luckily I’d brought some paperbacks with me from Varena’s, anticipating just such a night… not that I would have picked these books if I’d had much choice. The first was a book of advice on dealing with your stepchildren, and the second was a historical romance. Its cover featured a guy with an amazing physique. I stared at his bare, hairless chest with its immense pectorals, wondering if even my sensei’s musculature would match this man’s. I found it very unlikely that a sensible fighting man would wear his shirt halfway off his shoulders in that inconvenient and impractical way, and I thought it even sillier that his lady friend would choose to try to embrace him when he was leaning down from a horse. I calculated his weight, the angle of his upper body, and the pull she was exerting. I factored in the high wind blowing her hair out in a fan, and decided Lord Robert Dumaury was going to end up on the ground at Phillipetta Dunmore’s feet within seconds, probably dislocating his shoulder in the process… and that’s if he was lucky. I shook my head.
So I plowed through the advice, learning more about being a new mother to a growing not-your-own child than I ever wanted to know. This paperback showed serious signs of being read and reread. I hoped it would be of more use to Varena than Ms. Dunmore’s adventures with Pectoral Man.
I would have given anything for a good thick biography.
I got halfway through the book before sleep overcame me. I was still in the chair, the lamp still on, when I woke at seven to the sounds of my family stirring.
I felt exhausted, almost too tired to move.
I did some push-ups, tried some leg lifts. But my muscles felt slack and weak, as if I were recovering from major surgery. Slowly, I pulled on my sweats. I’d committed my morning to cleaning Dill’s house. But instead of rising and getting into the bathroom, I sat back in the chair with my face covered by my hands.
Being involved in this child abduction felt so wrong, so bad, but for my family’s sake I couldn’t imagine what else I could do. With a sigh of sheer weariness, I hauled myself to my feet and opened the bedroom door to reenter my family’s life.
It was like dipping your toes into a quiet pond, only to have a whirlpool suck you under.
Since this was the day before the wedding, Mother and Varena had every hour mapped out. Mother had to go to the local seamstress’s house to pick up the dress she planned to wear tomorrow: It had required hemming. She had to drop in on the caterer to go over final arrangements for the reception. She and Varena had to take Anna to a friend’s birthday party, and then to pick up Anna’s flower girl dress, which was being shipped to the local Penney’s catalog store after some delay. (Due to a last-minute growth spurt, Anna’s fancy dress, bought months before, was now too tight in the shoulders, so Varena had had to scour catalogs for a quickly purchasable substitute.) Both Varena and my mother were determined that Anna should try the dress on instantly.
The list of errands grew longer and longer. I found myself tuning out after the first few items. Dill dropped Anna off to run errands with Varena and Mom, and Anna and I sat together at the kitchen table in the strange peace that lies at the eye of the storm.
“Is getting married always like this, Aunt Lily?” Anna asked wearily.
“No. You can just elope.”
“Elope? Like the animal?”
“It’s like an antelope only in that you run fast. When you elope, the man and woman who are getting married get in the car and drive somewhere and get married where nobody knows them. Then they come home and tell their families.”
“I think that’s what I’m gonna do,” Anna told me.
“No. Have a big wedding. Pay them back for all this,” I advised.
Anna grinned. “I’ll invite everyone in the whole town,” she said. “And Little Rock, too!”
“That’ll do it.” I nodded approvingly.
“Maybe in the whole world.”
“Even better.”
“Do you have a boyfriend, Aunt Lily?” Yes.
“Does he write you notes?” Anna made a squeezed face, like she felt she was asking a stupid question, but she wanted to know the answer anyway.
“He calls me on the phone,” I said. “Sometimes.”
“Does he…” Anna was rummaging in her brain for other things grown-up boyfriends might do. “Does he send you flowers and candy?”
“He hasn’t yet.”
“What does he do to show you he likes you?”
Couldn’t share that with an eight-year-old. “He hugs me,” I told her.
“Ewwww. Does he kiss you?”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“Bobby Mitzer kissed me,” Anna said in a whisper.
“No kidding? Did you like it?”
“Ewwww.”
“Maybe he’s just not the right guy,” I said, and we smiled at each other.
Then Mom and Verena told Anna they had been ready to go for minutes and inquired why she was still sitting at the table as if we had all day.
“You can manage at Dill’s by yourself, can’t you?” Varena asked anxiously. She’d returned from dropping Anna off at the party, complete with present. “You sure don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, hearing my voice come out flat and cold. I’d enjoyed talking to Anna, but now I felt
