Chapter Sixteen
The service was short and simple. I was surprised at the number of people who had come to pay their respects, but then saw that most of them were from the neighborhood, there for Sophia and Bruno, because no parent should ever have to bury a child. No one came up to say they knew Joe from work, or from a meeting, or from the girls’ school. My brother had been a charming, gregarious young man, but alcohol and grief had made him closed and isolated and without friends. His family mourned him. The rest of the world barely blinked.
At the house, surrounded by murmuring neighbors and second cousins, Frank suddenly became the loving brother racked with sorrow, accepting the handshakes and hugs from whoever came within touching distance. I sat with Mimi and Cara, both quiet in their dark blue dresses, looking around with red-rimmed eyes. I finally whispered that they could go back up to their room, the room that had been theirs since the death of their mother, the one room that had remained unchanged for them. They fled silently up the stairs.
My other two nieces, Heather and her younger sister, Brianne, slipped in on either side.
Heather put her arms around me. “This is just awful,” she whispered. “What are you going to do?”
I leaned against her. “I have no idea.”
“Are you going to Florida with Nana and PopPop?” Brianne asked.
I looked at her. “What?”
Heather glanced around. “Didn’t they tell you? They bought a condo in Clearwater. They’re moving as soon as they can get a buyer for the house.”
I shook my head slowly. “No idea.”
Heather rolled her eyes. “I heard Mom saying that you should buy this house so the twins can have some continuity. And you know Mom, she’s all about showing her deep concern as long as it doesn’t inconvenience her.”
I eyed my niece. “Heather, that’s not a very nice thing to say about your mother.”
Brianne snorted. “Have you met our mother?”
I choked back a laugh. “This is all news to me. They already bought a place?”
Heather nodded. “Mom convinced them the best thing to do would be to tell you once it was all a done deal: the closing down in Florida, selling this place. Then when Uncle Joey died, she decided you needed to stay here and care for the girls.”
“Oh. I see. And did she have any idea how I was going to live here? Without a job and all?”
Brianne tracked her mother on the other side of the room. “You know Mom isn’t about the details.”
“And yet, no one has said a word to me about any of this,” I said. “How interesting.”
Heather sighed. “Daddy didn’t think it was such a good idea, but you know.”
Yes, I did know. My brother Frank had long ago ceded any and all authority to his wife, Elena, making it easy for him to shuffle off blame or guilt.
Vivian made a brief appearance. She had not been at the funeral parlor for the service, nor at the cemetery. She just appeared in my mother’s kitchen, carrying a tray of chocolate chip cookies, saying how sorry she was. She did not ask about her granddaughters. I spoke to her briefly; she was going back to California, she said. To live with her sister.
We did not kiss goodbye.
Then the house was empty. Some unseen and unheard signal had swept through the mourners, and they slipped away in a slow stream of black-clothed good wishes. I stood in the dining room and watched as Elena and Mom cleared half-empty plates off the table.
“Mom?” I asked. “This move to Florida. When exactly were you going to tell me?”
Elena put down a bowl of pasta salad. “Lucy, your mother—”
“You know what, Elena? This is a conversation I’m having with Mom, not you,” I said, very quietly. “Why don’t you give us some privacy?”
Heather and Brianne had been loading the dishwasher in the kitchen, and at the sound of my words, the faint clatter stopped. Frank, sitting in the living room with Dad, rose slowly. I saw him out of the corner of my eye as he approached.
“You know, Lucy, Elena only—” he began.
“I don’t care what Elena only,” I said. “Dad,” I called, “were you in on this?”
He shuffled in, his face drawn and weary. “Please, Lucy, Elena just—”
“I’m tired of Elena. I want to know why you and Mom didn’t tell me you were planning to move. I only spoke with you every week.”
Mom glanced at Elena and gave a slight shake of her head. “Lucy, honey,” she said, “we didn’t want to give you anything else to worry about.”
“What was I worried about, Mom? I was successful, doing good work, making money. Where was the worry?”
She tried a different tack. “We didn’t want you to think you had to leave France and come all the way over to help us with anything.”
“Why would you need my help? You bought a place without my help; you would easily list the house and sell it quickly. The only thing I could possibly help you with was what to get rid of in my old bedroom.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Dad said quietly. “We haven’t listed the house, and Elena thinks you should keep it. Let the girls live someplace that feels like home to them. We would just sell to you. Elena, well, it was her idea, but your mother and I think it could work.”
I pulled out a dining room chair and sank into it, resting my elbows of the table, my chin on clenched fists. “Joey died on Tuesday. I flew over the very next day. And now it’s Friday. When did Elena tell you this great idea of hers? And why wasn’t I in on the conversation? After all, I was right here.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t have any money saved. How was I going to buy this house? I don’t have a job in this country. How was I going to live? Did you even ask the girls what they wanted? Do you think they want to live in this crumbling house, surrounded by old people and narrow streets and crappy schools?” I stared at Elena. “Well?”
She looked uncomfortable. “Joey made you the guardian, but I don’t think he thought about what might happen after you left for France. So, it was up to us to figure out what was best for Cara and Mimi.”
“No, Elena. It was not up to you. It was never up to you. It’s up to me.” I took a deep breath, my eyes never leaving her face. “You’ve been leading my brother around by his balls for years now, Elena. You make every decision for him, so I get it. I really do. But I can’t imagine why you thought my parents were going to be so easily led. Or me.”
I could feel Frank behind me, shuffling his feet. “Don’t talk to her that way, Lucy. You have no right to say anything like that.”
I stood. “Yes, I do, Frank. Because it’s the truth.” I looked at my father. “Tell me, Dad. Did you want to move?”
He shrugged. “I’m getting old, honey. I hate the cold. I hate shoveling snow. It made sense. And your mother, well, we have friends down there, from the church. She misses her bingo nights. And her card parties.”
I nodded. “That makes sense. Okay, so go to Florida. Be warm, Daddy.” I felt a hitch in my throat. “It’s just as easy to fly from France to Miami as it is to fly from France to Newark.”
“What do you mean, France?” Elena asked. “You wouldn’t take the girls all the way to France, would you?”
I sighed. I was so tired. “I need to go upstairs. I’m still feeling a little jet-lagged, and I need to sort things out.” I stood and walked away quietly, up the steps, and turned down the hallway toward my old room.
I passed the bedroom that my two brothers had shared as kids. Mimi and Cara were in there, huddled together on one of the twin beds, watching something on a small tablet. I went in and sat at the foot of the bed.
“This was a sad day, girls. How are you doing?”
Cara immediately started to cry and crept across the bed and into my arms. Mimi stared, dry-eyed. “Where are we going to live now?”
“With me,” I said, stroking Cara’s head. “You know that your aunt Elena wants me to buy this house, so we can all live here. How do you feel about that?”
Cara, her face in the crook of my neck, shook her head. “This is a sad house, Aunt Lucy.”
She was right. This was a house that people left as soon as they could and did not return unless something bad happened. Like a young mother slowly dying. Like losing a job and being threatened with prison. Being so blind drunk that days were forgotten, or going back into rehab, or waiting to find another apartment because you were evicted from the last one.
I held Cara for a few more minutes, rocking her gently, until she pulled away and edged back next to her sister. “I’m glad we’re going to live with you instead of Aunt Elena,” she whispered.
I had to smile. “Me, too. I’ll be right next door if you need me, okay? Are you hungry?”
They both shook their heads.
“Okay, then, you just go to sleep when you want to, and I’ll see you in the morning. Okay?”
I left them and continued down the hall to my own old room.
I had left my cell phone on the dresser when I left for the service and saw I had three voice messages. The first was from Julia. She had been to the service but had not come back to the house. Her message was brief, just saying she was thinking of me and to call if I needed anything.
The second was from Bing. I wanted to wait until I’d changed and gotten safe and comfortable in bed before calling him back.
The third call was a shocker.
“Hello? Is this Lucy Gianetti? This is Fred Paloma.”
I stared at the phone. Fred Paloma was the regional manager for Carlton Enterprises, one of the biggest hotel chains on the East Coast.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I heard all about Tony being taken into custody. I heard he got you off the hook. I always believed you were innocent, but, well, you know.”
I did know. If there was the tiniest sliver of scandal hanging over my head, I was a pariah.
“So, anyway, we’re looking at our Newark airport property and wanting to make a change. A big change. And we think you’re the person to do it. I don’t know about this crazy time thing—you’re in Europe, right? But call me. We could talk.”
I stared at the phone.
The Newark airport property? Close to three hundred rooms, I knew.
A big change? That usually meant renovations, new personnel, a change in services.
They thought I was the right person to do it?
I was the perfect person. And what would a job like that pay? So much money …
I stared out the window into the growing darkness. Across the highway, I could see the airport, the lights of the towers blinking, and heard the faint roar of a plane’s engines as it circled to land.
I shut the phone off and lay down and was asleep in minutes.
“Lucia,” Bing said gently. “How did everything go?”
In the morning, the sun was shining, and Frank and Elena were gone. Cara, Mimi, and I took my dad’s Subaru to the IHOP, loaded up on pancakes and bacon, then went out to their favorite park. I was huddled on a bench, watching them climb a fantasy structure of turrets and waving flags.
“It was fine,” I told him. “Awful. I mean, you know.”
“We miss you,” he said. “But I know you have a lot to square up over there.”
“You know that Joey named me the guardian. For the twins.”
There was a long silence. “Yes, and that certainly complicates things,” he said at last. “I imagine they would want to stay close to what they know. Your parents. Their other grandmother.”
“My parents are moving to Florida,” I said. “And Vivian is moving to California. And since I am apparently no longer persona non grata in the hotel world, someone reached out to me about a property.”
“There?”
“About half an hour from where I’m sitting right now.”
Silence. Then, “I imagine it’s a tempting offer?”
“I haven’t called back, but it’s a huge property. They probably want a soup-to-nuts change: rooms, services, everything.”
I could hear him let out a long breath. “Well, I could certainly understand why you’d want to take on a project like that.”
I gripped the phone tighter. Please, I thought, give me a reason to say no. Any reason, really, but tell me that you’d miss me. Tell me that you don’t want me across a wide ocean. Tell me you want me back in France. If you care even a little bit …
“I suppose I could always move back,” he said.
Wait. “What do you mean?”
“To the States. Maybe a place in Connecticut? No, you’re in Jersey, so … well, are there places in New Jersey with rolling hills? If I did move, I’d need a big barn or something as a studio. I don’t think I’d want to be in a city; it would never be the same as living here.”
“Bing, what are you talking about?” I asked him, totally confused.
“Well, I don’t think I’d want a long-distance relationship. Would you?”
Something swelled inside me, lovely and aching and unfamiliar. “No,” I croaked, then louder. “No. You’d leave Rennes? You love it there.”
“Something has changed in the past week. I love it a little less. I’d much rather be with you.”
“Oh,” I breathed.
“What did you think?” he asked, his voice rough. “Let’s face it, the sex is nice. But it’s not the reason I want to be with you, Lucia. I think I’m falling in love. And I certainly want the chance to find out if it’s real. I can’t do that if you’re all the way over there and I’m here. So, maybe you could find a little bit of countryside?”
“What about Philippe?”
“What about him?”
“He’s finally settled into the hotel. He’s not traveling all over the world anymore.”
“And it’s a good thing, because Claudine is already worried that you’re not coming back. In fact, I’ve had to convince her not to call you every day since you left. At least with him there, she won’t get too crazy.”
“If you leave, she will.”
He laughed. “Yes. That may very well be true. But she’d get over it.” He was quiet. “I don’t think I’d get over you.”
I stared at the twins, running and shouting now, chasing each other around the swings. “I haven’t even talked to him. Fred. About the job.”
“Well, let me know what he says. I know what it would mean to you, to be back in the high life, so to speak. Call me as soon as you’ve said yes. I have a lot of packing up to do.”
“Okay. I will. As soon as I decide.”
He laughed. “What do you mean, decide? They’d be idiots not to offer it to you. And you’d be perfect for the job. Goodbye, Lucia.”
“Goodbye,” I said faintly and hung up.
Bing thought he was in love with me.
I watched the girls, on the swings now.
He thought I’d be perfect for the job.
He was right, of course. Know-it-all. If they did offer me a project like that, I could grab it in my teeth and run with it.
Which meant long days and nights in an office somewhere. Would I have a suite on-site? So, Cara and Mimi would be living in a hotel? In the middle of the Newark airport? Were there swings in the Newark airport?
I remembered Julia, in the back seat of her car, driving from the airport. She said if I had a happy life, then the girls would, too. Would I have a happy life, neck deep in turning around a hotel that would require most of my time and energy for years? Maybe once, yes. But I was older now, and I had started to realize that time and energy could be spent on other things. Long walks down quiet streets. Train rides to a pirate hideaway. Meals lasting into the night with good food and laughter. Working every day surrounded by people who valued me. Looked up to me for guidance.
Loved me.
I called Claudine. “I have a question,” I said.
“The answer is yes,” she said.
I choked on a laugh. “You don’t even know what it is.”
“If it is any condition you have that will mean you’ll be coming back, the answer is yes. We need you back.”
“No, you don’t.”
“All right. I want you back.”
I took a breath. “I’m the legal guardian of my two nieces. If I come back, they’d have to come with me. Live with me. At the hotel. I know that you haven’t exactly embraced the idea of kids at your hotel. Would that be a problem?”
“I don’t like the idea of strange kids at my hotel,” she said. There was a long silence, then a sweet, clear laugh. “But twin girls? I’d finally have little girls? That I could dress up and have tea with? That I could take to dancing lessons?”
I watched as Cara hung, upside down, from her knees. “To be honest, these two like skateboards and archery.”
“I can work with that.” She was quiet. “You belong here now, Lucy. So, of course you may bring those little angels. We will all welcome them.”
I hung up the phone, feeling so many things at once I was sure I was going to burst wide open. I waved my arms and yelled. The girls came running over, panting like little puppies, sweaty and red-faced.
I wrapped my arms around the both of them and held them close. “How would you two feel about moving to France?”