“What a drag.”
“Maybe you expected Grandma to ask John Fogerty to perform?”
“Kid’s a snob,” John said to me, ruffling Nate’s longish hair. “Thinks I’m stuck in an outdated and musically crude era.”
“No, my tastes are just more eclectic than yours.” Nate smiled shyly at me and extended the package. “This is for you and Hy from all three of us.”
“Thank you! Should I open it now?”
They exchanged glances. “Uh, I don’t think so,” John said. “Not in this crowd.”
“Ah-hah! Well, I’ll put it with the others and open it later.”
A table was set up nearby, and it was already loaded with presents. A nice thought on the part of those who had brought them, but I couldn’t help but entertain the image of more stuff riding up and down the coast highway in the trunk of my MG. People who get married in their forties, particularly people with three houses between them, really shouldn’t qualify for wedding gifts.
“I’ll take it over there for you,” Nate told me, “and then I’m gonna find some food. I’m starving.”
John snagged a glass of wine off a passing waiter’s tray, said, “Where’re Ma and Melvin?”
“Circulating. I think she gave this party more for them than for Hy and me.”
“No, I think she gave it to impress someone.”
“Who?”
“Your birth mother. From conversations we’ve had, I gather Ma’s intimidated by Saskia Blackhawk-or at least the idea of her. Lawyer, champion of her people’s rights, has argued before the Supreme Court. You know.”
“Saskia is a very down-to-earth person, and she doesn’t care about social trappings.”
“That may very well be. But you know Ma.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I do. And I’m sure Saskia and my half sister Robin will like her and handle the situation beautifully.”
“What about Darcy?”
Darcy, my half brother. I smiled. “I don’t know how he’ll feel about Ma, but I know he’s going to hit it off with Matt.”
“Matt doesn’t get along with anybody these days.”
“Neither does Darcy.”
My Aunt Susan and Uncle Jim McCone, down from Jackson in the Gold Country, were the next family members to arrive, followed by Charlene and Vic and my nieces Jamie, Molly, and Lisa. Charlene looked wonderful-slender, her blonde hair streaked by the sun, her skin glowing. Obviously this second marriage was agreeing with her. But her eyes clouded for a moment as she held my hands.
“What?” I asked.
“Oh, I was just thinking of Pa. How happy he would’ve been. And Joey-I wish he could be here.”
Our other, sadly troubled brother had died a suicide last spring. “Me too, but you know he wouldn’t’ve come. He avoided family parties for years.” I didn’t mention that Charlene and Ricky’s youngest son wasn’t attending either. His parents’ much-publicized divorce had been hard on Brian, and he was currently at a camp for troubled teens in Arizona.
“True.” She squeezed my hands, then released them. “Vic and I have a gift for you guys, but we didn’t think it appropriate to bring it inside.” She smiled at her tall, distinguished-looking husband, and he grinned wickedly.
“Oh?” I asked. “What?”
“Later, Shar. Later.”
Charlene, Vic, John, Molly, and Lisa went off to say hello to Ma and Melvin. Eighteen-year-old Jamie stayed behind. “How’s Derek?” she asked. She’d developed a major crush on Derek Ford at a party she’d attended at my house last month.
“He’s fine.”
“Does he ever ask about me?”
Jamie was the most sensitive of Ricky’s four daughters; I wasn’t about to tell her that last weekend Derek had brought her older sister, Chris, an undergrad at UC Berkeley, to the party at Touchstone. “He says hello.”
“Oh! Tell him I say hello, too.” Her big smile immediately made me regret the lie, but I told myself it was a harmless one. Derek dated a new woman every week, and Chris was not known for sustaining long-term relationships. Even so, when Jamie didn’t ask any more questions and headed off to find Ma and Melvin, I felt a certain relief.
Moments later Hy appeared at my elbow. “How’re you holding up?” he asked.
“Better, now that there’s family here. All these people… well, they’re very nice, but I didn’t picture this big a gathering.”
“Big gatherings don’t usually intimidate you. Are you still upset about that shooting incident?”
“More concerned that somebody in the Paso Robles area seems intent on derailing my investigation.” We’d gone over the incident in detail when I’d arrived in San Diego that morning, and Hy’s professional instincts confirmed mine: the shot had been intended to warn me off.
“To tell the truth,” I said, “I’m glad to be going back home tomorrow. I picked up a bunch of Laurel’s papers and her postcard collection from her sister before I flew down this morning, and I want to study them before proceeding.”
I paused, thinking back on my last conversation with Anna Yardley. “You know, when I picked up the stuff I mentioned that I’d met with Sally Timmerman, Laurel’s best friend. The sister, Anna Yardley, said she was surprised I’d bothered, since Laurel and Sally had fought over something and weren’t speaking the year before Laurel disappeared. But Sally was called to the Greenwood house by the chief of police after Roy reported Laurel missing, and she never mentioned anything about a falling-out to me. I’m going to call her and do a little probing.”
Hy nodded. “Good idea. And I can understand why you’re preoccupied with the case, but that’s not all that’s bothering you.”
I’d never been able to hide anything from him. “Okay. Saskia’s plane landed an hour ago. She, Robin, and Darcy should be here any minute.”
“The great maternal face-off.”
“Well, I doubt it’ll come to that. But it’ll be awkward. Why Ma felt compelled to invite them, and why they accepted… I don’t get it. Did you know Ma actually called Elwood and invited him?”
“I’d’ve loved to be party to that conversation.”
“Yeah, I can just hear it: ‘I’m giving a little wedding reception for our daughter on Sunday. Can you attend it?’ ‘Daughter. Yes. Sharon and I are working on coming to terms with our relationship.’ ‘But would you like to come to the reception?’ ‘Ask me again after I’ve had time to assemble my thoughts.’ ‘Do you think you can assemble them by Sunday afternoon?’ ‘I don’t know. The mind works in strange ways.’”
Hy laughed. “I guess Elwood didn’t assemble in time.”
“No, thank God, and-”
The doorbell rang. I stiffened.
No one seemed to have heard it.
It rang again.
Hy nudged me toward the entryway. “Showtime, McCone,” he whispered dramatically.
Opening the door to Robin and Saskia was, at once, like catching a glimpse of my past and future selves. Robin, with her high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes, looked much as I had in my twenties, except that she’d recently cropped her black hair, while all my life I’d worn mine on the longish side. In the lines that bracketed Saskia’s full lips and the furrows on her forehead, I could envision how I would look when I reached my sixties. We three shared the same oval facial shape, tilt of nose, medium height, and slender body type; our eyebrows were slightly mismatched, one set a fraction of an inch higher than the other. No one could have missed the fact that we were related, even though Robin and I had different fathers.
As she stepped into the entryway, Saskia smiled at me and placed her hands on my shoulders. Looking into my eyes she said, “I’m so happy for you.” Then she turned to Hy and hugged him.
