Blue Smoke

by Nora Roberts

  she grabbed the phone to take an order for delivery. They talked, often for hours. She loved listening to him talk about his writing, how he wanted to tell stories about small towns, like the one where he grew up in Ohio. Stories about people, and what they did to and for each other.

  And he listened. He seemed equally interested when she told him that she wanted to study and train, to understand fire and why.

  Now she didn’t just have a date for Bella’s wedding. She was bringing her boyfriend.

  She was still grinning over the idea when she swung into the prep area for the first time. Her mother was taking vegetables out of one of the big, stainless steel refrigerators. Pete, now the father of three, stood at the prep counter cutting dough from holding bowls to weigh for pizza crust.

  “Hey, college girl! Give us a smooch.”

  Reena threw her arms around his neck, gave him a noisy kiss dead on the lips.

  “When’d you get back?”

  “Fifteen minutes ago. Walked in the door, they put me to work.”

  “Slave drivers.”

  “You don’t get that dough weighed, I’m getting the whip. Now let go of my girl before I tell your wife.” Bianca threw open her arms. Reena went into them.

  “How do you stay so beautiful?” Reena asked her.

  “It’s the steam in the kitchen. Keeps the pores clean. Oh, baby girl, let me look at you.”

  “You saw me two weeks ago at Bella’s Bridal Shower of the Century.”

  “Two weeks, two days.” Bianca pulled back. Her smile faltered for a moment, and something came and went in her eyes.

  “What? What?”

  “Nothing.” But Bianca pressed a kiss to her brow, like a benediction. “I’ve got all my children home again. Pete, go switch with Catarina. She’ll take over for you in here. We want to be girls.”

  “More wedding talk. I’m already getting a headache.” Waving his hands, Pete scooted out.

  “Am I in trouble?” Only half joking, Reena got a bottle of water out of the cooler. “Did the crack I made about the bridesmaid dress making me look like an anemic scallion get back to Bella?”

  “No, and you’ll look beautiful, even if the dress is . . . unfortunate.”

  “Oooh, diplomacy.”

  “Diplomacy is my last tool of survival in this wedding business. Otherwise, I’d have snapped Bella’s neck like a twig by now.” She lifted a hand, shook her head. “She can’t help it. She’s excited, terrified, wildly in love, and she wants Vince to be proud of her—all while impressing his parents, looking like a movie star and trying to furnish a big new house.”

  “Sounds like she’s in her element.”

  “True enough. Your dad needs dough for two large and a medium,” she added, and watched as Reena competently cut and weighed. “You don’t forget how.”

  “I was born weighing dough.”

  She put the extra dough back in the cooler, took out what her father needed. Then joined her mother at the work counter to pitch in with salad.

  “Two house for table six. I’ll take the Greek for station three. This wedding is the biggest dream of her life.” Bianca continued as they chopped. “I want her to have exactly what she wants. I want all my children to have exactly what they want.”

  She loaded a tray, moved it to the pick-up area. “Order up,” she called out, then moved back to fill another.

  “You’ve been with a boy.”

  The water felt like a hard little ball when Reena managed to swallow. “What?”

  “You think I can’t look at you and see?” Bianca kept her voice low, gauging her husband’s proximity and the noise element that would cover her words. “That I couldn’t see with each of my children? You were the last.”

  “Xander’s been with a boy?”

  To Reena’s relief, Bianca laughed. “So far he prefers girls. Do I know the boy?”

  “No. It just . . . We started seeing each other a while ago, and it just happened. Just last week. I wanted it to happen, Mama. I’m sorry if you’re disappointed, but—”

  “Did I say that? Did I ask you about your conscience, or your choice? You were careful?”

  “Yes. Mama.” Reena put the knife down, turned to wrap her arms around her mother’s waist. “We were careful. I like him so much. You will, too.”

  “How do I know if I’ll like him when you don’t bring him home to meet your family? When you don’t tell me anything about him.”

  “He’s a lit major. He’s going to be a writer. He keeps a sloppy apartment and has the sweetest smile. His name is Josh Bolton, and he grew up in Ohio.”

  “What about his family?”

  “He doesn’t talk much about them. His parents are divorced, and he’s an only child.”

  “He’s not Catholic then?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t ask. He’s gentle, and he’s very smart, and he listens when I talk.”

  “All important things.” Bianca turned, took Reena’s face in her hands. “You’ll bring him to meet the family.”

  “He’s going to come to Bella’s wedding.”

  “Brave, too.” Bianca raised her eyebrows. “Well, if he lives through that, he may be worth keeping awhile.”

  When the lunch crowd thinned out, Reena sat—at her father’s insistence—with an enormous plate of spaghetti. With Pete taking over for him, he started making the rounds. She’d seen him do it all her life, and knew her grandfather had done the same before him.

  With a glass of wine, a bottle of water, a cup of coffee—depending on the time of day—he would go by each booth or table, have a word, sometimes a full conversation. If it was a regular, he would sometimes sit down for a few minutes. Talk ranged from sports, food, politics to neighborhood news, births, deaths. The subject didn’t matter, she knew.

  It was the intimacy.

  Today it was water, and when he sat across from her he took a long pull. “It’s good?” He nodded at her plate.

  “The best.”

  “Then put more of it in your stomach.”

  “How’s Mr. Alegrio’s bursitis?”

  “Acting up. He says it’s going to rain. His grandson got a promotion, and his roses look good this year.” Gib grinned. “What did he have for his meal?”

  “The special, with minestrone and the house salad, a glass of Peroni, a bottle of sparkling water, bread sticks and a cannoli.”

  “You always remember. It’s our loss you’re taking those criminal justice courses, the chemistry, instead of restaurant management.”

  “I’ll always have time to help out here, Dad. Always.”

  “I’m proud of you. Proud you know what you want and you’re working for it.”

  “Somebody raised me that way. How’s the father of the bride?”

  “I’m not thinking about it yet.” He shook his head, drank more water. “I’m not thinking about the moment when she comes toward me in her dress. When I walk her down the aisle and give her to Vince. Blubber like a baby if I do. It’s easy to tuck that away while we’re dealing with the insanity of preparing for that moment.”

  He glanced over, smiled. “Somebody else must’ve heard you were home. Hey, John.”

  “Gib.”

  With a cry of pleasure, Reena scooted up, flung her arms around John Minger. “I missed you! Haven’t seen you since Christmas. Sit down. Be right back.”

  She dashed off, got another setup. When she plopped down again, she scooped up half the spaghetti and put it on the second plate. “You’re eating some of this. Dad thinks I starve myself at college.”

  “What can I get you to drink, John?”

  “Anything soft’s good. Thanks.”

  “I’ll have it brought right out. Gotta get back to work.”

  “Tell me everything,” Reena demanded. “How are you, your kids, the grandkids, life in general?”

  “Doing good, keeping busy.”

  He looked good, Reena thought. A little heavier under the eyes, and his hair was nearly st
one gray now. But it suited him. The fire had made him part of the family. No, more than the fire, she corrected. What he had done since. Pitching in to work, answering the endless questions she’d posed.

  “Any interesting cases?”

  “They’re all interesting. You still up for ride-alongs?”

  “You call, I’m there.”

  His face softened with a smile. “Had one start in a kid’s bedroom. Eight-year-old boy. Nobody home at the time it engaged. No accelerants, no matches, no lighter. No sign of forced entry or incendiary components.”

  “Electrical?”

  “Nope.”

  She began to eat again as she considered. “Chemistry set? Kids that age often like playing with chemistry sets.”

  “Not this one. Told me he’s going to be a detective.”

  “What time of day did it start?”

  “Around two in the afternoon. Kid’s in school, parents at work. No previous incidents.” He twirled spaghetti, closed his eyes in appreciation of the taste. “Not fair to quiz you when you can’t see the site, or pictures.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute, I’m not giving up yet.” Puzzles, she’d always thought, were made to be solved. “Point of origin?”

  “Kid’s desk. Plywood desk.”

  “Bet he had a lot of fuel on it. Construction paper, glue, the desk itself, school papers and binders maybe, toys. Near the window?”

  “Right under it.”

  “So he’s got curtains, probably, they catch, keep it going. Two in the afternoon.” Now she closed her eyes, tried to see it. She thought of Xander’s desk when he’d been that age. The careless jumble of boy toys, comic books, school papers.

  “What way did the window face?”

  “You’re a pistol, Reena. South.”

  “Sun should be coming in strong that time of day, unless the curtains were closed. Kid isn’t going to close his curtains. What was the weather that day?”

  “Clear, sunny, warm.”

  “Kid wants to be a detective, probably has a magnifying glass.”

  “Bull’s-eye. Yeah, you’re a pistol. Glass is sitting right on the desk, canted up on a book, over a bunch of papers. Sun beats through, heats the glass, fires the papers. Wood desk, cloth curtains.”

  “Poor kid.”

  “Could’ve been worse. Delivery guy saw the smoke, called nine-one-one. They were able to contain it in the bedroom.”

  “I’ve missed being able to talk shop. I know, I know, I’m just a student, and most of the courses I’m hungry for I can’t take until my junior year when I transfer to the Shady Grove campus. But it feels like talking shop.”

  “Something else I need to talk to you about.” He set down his fork, looked in her eyes. “Pastorelli’s out.”

  “He—” She drew herself in, glanced around to see if any of her family could overhear. “When?”

  “Last week. I just got word.”

  “It had to happen,” Reena said dully. “He’d have been out before this if he hadn’t gotten extra time for punching a guard.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to give you any trouble, or even come back around here. He’s got no ties to the neighborhood anymore. His wife’s in New York still, with her aunt. I checked. The kid’s already done a stint up there for assault.”

  “I remember when they took him away.” She looked out the window, across the street. There were pots of geraniums on the steps of what had been the Pastorelli house, and the curtains were open.

  “Which?”

  “Both. I remember how they brought Mr. Pastorelli out, in handcuffs, and how his wife buried her face in a yellow dish towel, and one of her shoes was untied. I remember Joey running after the car, screaming. I was standing with my father. I think watching that together strengthened something we already had between us. I think that’s why he let me go with him when they took Joey. After he killed that poor dog.”

  “He was closing a chapter for you, one that started when the little bastard attacked you. No reason to think it’s not still closed, but you and your family need to know he’s out.”

  “I’ll tell them. Later, John, later, when we’re all at home.”

  “Good enough.”

  She looked out the window again, and the frown vanished. “It’s Xander. I’ll be right back.” She scooted out of the booth, hurried to the door, then raced across the street and launched herself at her brother.

  Being home was like being a child again in so many ways. The scents and sounds of the house were so much what they’d always been. The furniture polish her mother always used, the cooking smells that seemed as much a part of the kitchen as the old butcher-block table. The music that pumped out of Xander’s room, whether he was in there or not. The watery tinkle from the toilet in the powder room that ran unless its handle was jiggled.

  It was rare for an hour to go by without the phone ringing, and since the weather was fine, the windows were open to the shoosh of street traffic, and the voices of pedestrians who stopped to chat.

  She could’ve been ten again, sitting cross-legged on her sister’s bed while Bella reigned at the little vanity, primping for an evening out.

  “There’s just so much to do.” Bella blended tones of eyeshadow with the skill of an artist. “I don’t know how I’ll get everything done before the wedding. Vince says I worry too much, but it has to be perfect.”

  “It will be. Your dress is gorgeous.”

  “I knew exactly what I wanted.” She shook back glamorous clouds of blond hair. “After all, I’ve been planning for this my whole life. Remember when we used to play bride, with those old lace curtains?”

  “And you were always the bride.” But Reena smiled when she said it.

  “Now, it’s not make-believe anymore. I know Dad was freaked about how much the dress cost, but the bride’s the showpiece on her wedding day, after all. And I can’t be the showpiece in some knockoff. I want Vince dazzled when he sees me in it. Oh, wait until you see what he gave me for my something old.”

  “I thought you were wearing Nuni’s pearls.”

  “No. They’re sweet, but they’re old-fashioned. Besides, they’re not real pearls.” She opened the drawer of the vanity, took out a small box. She brought it over, sat on the side of the bed. “He bought them for me at an estate jeweler.”

  Inside were earrings, sparkling drops of diamonds and filigree so delicate they might have been spun by magic spiders.

  “God, Bella, are those real diamonds?”

  “Of course.” The square-cut solitaire on her finger flashed as she gestured. “Vince wouldn’t buy me paste. He’s got class. His whole family has class.”

  “And ours doesn’t?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” But Bella spoke absently as she held up one of the earrings so it could catch the light. “Vince’s mother flies to New York and Milan to shop. They have a household staff of twelve. You should see his parents’ house, Reena. It’s a mansion. They have full-time groundskeepers. His mother’s so sweet to me—I’m calling her Joanne now. She’s taking me to her salon on the morning of the wedding, for the works.”

  “I thought we—you and Mama and Fran and I—were going to Maria’s.”

  “Catarina.” Bella smiled gently, patted Reena’s hand before she rose to put the earrings back in the drawer. “Maria’s doesn’t make the cut for me now. I’m going to be the wife of an important man. I’m going to have a different lifestyle now, different obligations. To meet them I have to have the right haircut, the right wardrobe, the right everything.”

  “Who says what’s right?”

  “You just know.” She fluffed at her hair. “Vince has a cousin, he’s really cute. I thought you might like for him to be your