A few minutes later, pie in hand, Ali left the gym. Shaken by her mother’s over-the-top interference, Ali was glad to have her assigned pie-delivery errand as an excuse to bug out early. When she pulled up in front of Dave’s rented house, she saw that his battered Nissan Sentra was parked on one side of the driveway, but the county- owned sedan that was usually parked next to it was nowhere in sight. That meant Dave wasn’t home, but since lights were on inside, Ali figured his daughters were.
She parked in the street and carried the pie to the front porch, where she rang the bell. Seconds later, Crystal, Dave’s older daughter, pulled the door open but only as far as the length of the security chain.
“Ali,” Crystal said, peering through the crack. “Dad’s not here. He got called out on a case.”
Ali didn’t bother asking what case. She already knew. Well into the first forty-eight hours after Morgan Forester’s homicide, there could be little doubt that the officers charged with solving her murder-Detective Dave Holman especially-would be working pretty much round-the-clock.
“I’m not here to see your father,” Ali announced. “I come bearing gifts. My mother baked a pie for your dad and you. I’m here to drop it off.”
“A pie?” Crystal asked, undoing the chain and opening the door the rest of the way. “From the Sugarloaf?”
“Absolutely.”
“Can we eat it?” Crystal asked eagerly. “Or do we have to wait until Dad gets home?”
“I don’t see your father’s name on it,” Ali said. “Just don’t eat it all.” She waved at Cassie, Dave’s younger daughter, who had appeared beyond her older sister’s shoulder and was hovering in the background.
“Do you want to come in for a while?” Crystal asked.
“No, thanks,” Ali said. “I appreciate the invitation, but I need to get home, and you and Cassie should probably go to bed.”
“I know, I know,” Crystal grumbled. “It’s a school night.”
A few months earlier, Crystal had been in full-bloom adolescent rebellion. The idea that she was concerned about getting to bed at a decent hour on a school night struck Ali as remarkable progress.
“Right,” Ali said. “A school night.”
She was happy to leave it at that.
Back home on Andante Drive, Ali was sitting with Sam purring in her lap, and still thinking about her mother’s performance, when Christopher arrived home. He looked unhappy.
“Nice party,” Ali said.
Chris gave his mother a disparaging look. “Thanks,” he said. “But Athena’s all bent out of shape about it.”
“She is? How come?”
“Because Grandma managed to turn it into a circus,” Chris said.
She did, Ali thought. And I was right to be worried.
“It was supposed to be this casual, fun time with our friends,” Chris continued. “By the time Grandma finished her baking spree, it turned into something else entirely. Athena didn’t make a fuss about it at the time, but she’s worried that Grandma will try to hijack our wedding into some kind of huge event. That’s not us, Mom. It’s not what Athena and I want.”
“What do you want?” Ali asked.
“Something small,” he said. “Something private and nice.”
Ali had suspected as much. “Here’s the deal,” she explained. “Back when Mom and Dad got married, times were tough, and they couldn’t afford much of a wedding. There were the two of them, Aunt Evie and her then- boyfriend, and a justice of the peace. That was it-the five of them. I’m afraid Mom has been trying to make up for that deficit ever since. It’s a total blind spot for her. I doubt she even realizes she’s doing it. When your father and I got married, she tried to pull the same stunt with us. If I’d let her have her way, our wedding would have been an out-of-control extravaganza.”
“But you stopped it?”
Ali nodded.
“How?”
“By putting my foot down and taking control,” Ali told him. “You and Athena will have to do the same thing. Tell your grandmother no and mean it.”
“But how can you stop something when you don’t even see it coming?” Chris asked. “By the time we got to the gym tonight, the food was already there. Mountains of it.”
Ali understood far better than Chris that food was the coin of her mother’s realm. That was how Edie dealt with the vicissitudes of life, with both the good and the bad, the triumphs and the tragedies. Arriving babies or returning soldiers were greeted with cakes and cookies and immense bread puddings. Hospital stays called for soups or casseroles. Rounds of chemo meant plenty of mashed potatoes and bowls filled with red Jell-O. Deaths and funerals brought back the soup/casserole theme.
“Try turning it into a chess game,” Ali advised her son. “You win at chess by anticipating what your opponent is going to do several moves in advance. You’ll need to learn to anticipate what your grandmother is going to do as well, then you’ll have to come up with suitable countermeasures.”
“Easier said than done,” Chris grumbled.
“Don’t be so grumpy about it,” Ali said. “After all, that’s what you get for being the apple of your grandmother’s eye. You and Athena will have to sit Mom and Dad down and have a serious talk with them, but in order to make it stick, you’ll have to present a united front, diplomatic but absolutely firm. By the way, Athena was exceedingly diplomatic tonight,” she added. “She came in with her bags of groceries, but as soon as she saw what Mom had brought, she deep-sixed the grocery bags. I never heard her say a cross word.”
“There were plenty of cross words for me,” Chris complained. “As far as Athena was concerned, the whole engagement-party extravaganza was my fault.”
“Dealing with difficult relatives is one of the hazards of getting married,” Ali said. “And your grandmother isn’t the only one who’ll pull that kind of stunt. It turns out I’m putting together a little extravaganza of my own.”
Chris rolled his eyes. “What kind?”
“Thanksgiving.”
“Don’t tell me you’re cooking.”
“Be nice,” she told him. “But don’t worry. Leland will be supervising the cooking, if not doing most of it himself. So this is my official notice that you and Athena are invited, as long as you don’t have any other plans.”
“Okay,” Chris said. “Sounds good. We’ll be there.”
“Wrong,” Ali said with a laugh. “We’re talking Rules of Engagement 101 here, Chris. Don’t fall into the old trap of making unilateral holiday decisions. If you want to be happily engaged and end up happily married, you won’t accept any invitations without first consulting your significant other.”
“You mean I should ask Athena and then let you know?”
“Exactly,” Ali said. “If you know what’s good for you.”
“If she’s even speaking to me,” Chris added gloomily. He went off to bed then, leaving Ali absently petting Sam and reflecting on the conversation.
Where do I get off dishing out marital advice to anyone? she wondered. When it comes to being married, my own track record isn’t much to write home about. For instance, when she had told Chris he needed to put his foot down about his grandmother hijacking the wedding plans, it had been a case of “do as I say” rather than “do as I do.” Or did. Back when she and Chris’s father had been in a similar situation, Ali hadn’t exactly confronted the problem head-on. Instead, once the wedding arrangements had threatened to careen out of control, she and Dean had taken the path of least resistance and eloped to Vegas. No fuss; no muss. Edie had been furious, but despite the instant wedding, Ali and Dean had been a match made in heaven-right up until his death from cancer a few short years later.
Ali’s much later wedding to Paul Grayson had been far more to Edie’s liking. It had been a splashy Beverly Hills social event even in a milieu where outsize weddings were the order of the day. Edie and Bob Larson, a little out of their depth, had sat proudly in front-row seats when Paul, dressed in an impeccable tux, had stood in front of several hundred other invited guests and had solemnly vowed to love, honor, and obey.
In spite of all the lavish arrangements, Ali had learned, to her regret, that it had all been for show. Paul hadn’t meant a word of what he’d said, and he’d made a mockery of his wedding vows. In the dark of the night, sitting there alone with her aging, scruffy cat, Ali couldn’t help feeling a small chill tingle her spine as she realized Morgan
