Josie crawled off Tony’s lap and over to her sister to pat Claire’s shoulder. “Don’t be sad, C’are,” she said, practically twisting herself upside down to see Claire’s face. “It’s okay.” With a wobbly smile, Claire pulled Josie into her lap, resting her cheek on top of her sister’s head.
Tony forced air into his lungs—somehow he was gonna have to find a way to get that DNA test done soon, before he lost his mind altogether. But it wasn’t like he could take everybody with him to the testing place, or leave the girls with somebody and take JoJo without it looking weird—
“Dad? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, honey. Just got a lot on my mind.”
“Like what?”
“Like…I was just thinking about…how nobody likes change. But it happens anyway. And even when it seems like our own world has come to a grinding halt…” He reached over to push her hair away from her face. “The rest of the world keeps chugging along. The longer we sit around, cryin’ in our beer about how we wish things were the same…” He shook his head. “The more we get left behind.”
Her eyes lowered, Claire picked at a loose thread in the bedspread’s quilting. “I know that,” she said quietly, then lifted watery eyes to his. “It’s just…it’s like every time I turn around, something else is different. And I feel like I can’t keep up.”
“Yeah,” Tony said, thinking about the last few days, about Marissa’s bombshell and Lili’s reappearance and the five million mixed-up thoughts zooming around and around his brain like one of those insane motorcyclists in the cage at the circus. “I know what you mean.”
When Josie crawled off her big sister’s lap, and then the bed, to pull one of Claire’s old books off her shelf, Claire reached for a bedraggled Clifford the Big Red Dog Tony had brought home for her before she was born.
He half smiled. “Bet you don’t remember how you useta say his whole name, every time, when you were little.”
“I still do,” Claire said, her own lips tilting slightly.
“So you still have Clifford,” he said, “And we’re still living in the same house. And school’s the same, so you’ve got all your friends, right?”
“Yeah,” she said, hugging the dog. “And…I’ve still got you and Daph and Ed and JoJo…” She looked up at him. “I guess lots of stuff’s still the same, huh?”
“So, see? There ya go.”
The shabby toy returned to its place of honor in the center of her pillows, Claire leaned against Tony as Josie “read” One Fish, Two Fish at their feet. “Feel better?” he said softly into her tickly hair.
She nodded, then leaned back, her expression dead serious. “Just promise me something.”
“And what’s that?”
“Please don’t get married again.”
“Not planning on it,” Tony said, even as the feel of Lili’s lips grazing his cheek scooted through his brain.
And kept on going.
Chapter Six
“Hot damn,” Lili heard behind her when Hollis came in through the back door the following Saturday afternoon. “You got some serious cleaning mojo! Hey, Mr. V.!” he yelled down the hall. “Come see what this woman did to your kitchen!”
“For heaven’s sake, Hollis,” Lili said, peeling off her rubber gloves. “It’s not that big a deal.” Although she had to admit surveying her handiwork definitely gave her a warm, bubbly feeling inside. Something she’d tried, in vain, to explain that morning to her aunt, who eventually tossed up her hands and clack-clacked away on her spindly heeled mules, muttering in Hungarian.
Hollis snorted. “I usedta think my mother was the Queen of Clean, but this puts her to shame. Although you did not hear that from me—”
“Holy cow.”
Tony’s words provoked another sort of warm, bubbly feeling entirely. The kind that came from sharing chores with a man who had no clue how good he looked in a sleeveless sweatshirt. One whose smile took some coaxing these days to come out of hiding, but, oh, was it worth the effort. Tony walked past her to the stove, all bulging shoulders and hard calves, to run a finger along the metal strip edging the cooktop. “How did you do that?”
Lili shrugged, pleased at the oblique compliment. “What can I say, dirt quakes in my presence.”
The smile came out and Lili lost her breath. “Obviously. Damn, you’re amazing,” he said, and their gazes locked, and her heart sort of seized up, until Hollis cleared his throat, breaking the spell.
“I should go,” she said, grabbing her cleaning bucket, and Tony said, “Actually, why don’t you both stay for dinner, since it’s so late? Marissa’s parents should be back with the kids in about an hour, I could do burgers on the grill or something.”
“Sorry, man,” Hollis said, “but Mom’s got people coming around, I gotta stop by the store and pick up some stuff. So later, yo. Tell Daph to keep an eye on the cukes.” Grinning, he let himself out the back door, and Tony turned to Lili.
“So that leaves you.”
“No, it doesn’t. For many reasons. Not the least of which is that I’ve been vanquishing grease harking back to the mid-nineties all day—”
“Hey!”
“—so I’m sweaty and my hair’s a wreck and I smell funny. Hardly fit to meet your in-laws.”
“So go get cleaned up. Like I said, you’ve got an hour.”
Rolling her eyes, she started for the door. “And how come the kids are coming back tonight, anyway? I thought their grandparents kept them through Sunday.”
“They got plans for tomorrow or something, I didn’t get all the details.” He gently clasped her shoulder, making her turn. Making her fall into those earnest eyes. “I’d really like you to come for dinner.”
“To…what? Run interference?”
“Hardly. I can handle my in-laws, believe me. But I’d like them to meet you. What?” he said at her headshake. “We’re all family, right?”
“I’m not sure they’d see it that way. And what if they get the wrong idea?”
Comprehension flitted across his features before, sighing, he crossed his arms over his chest. “You know, I spend my entire life bendin’ over backward to make everybody happy. And that’s fine, that’s my job. But every once in a while, I like to do something for me. Like watch a movie nobody else wants to see. Eat a whole bucket of hot wings by myself.” Lili laughed, and Tony smiled, although it wasn’t nearly enough to dispel the cloud darkening his eyes. “It’s the little things that keep you sane, you know? And right now, what I want is for you to let me feed you. To say thanks for demolishing twenty years’ worth of grease from that stove. Is that too much to ask?”
You have no idea, she thought, even as she said, “Of course not. Except…this isn’t really about thanking me for cleaning, is it?”
His nostrils flared when he sucked in a breath. “Problem with manual labor, it gives you far too much time to think. Especially when you’ve got a lot to think about.” He paused. “Okay, maybe I could use the moral support.”
“Now was that so hard to admit?” she said, smiling.
The look he gave her sent her scooting out the door.
A half hour later—showered, dressed and mentally bolstered—Lili let herself in through the partially open front door, following the throbbing rock music to the den at the back of the house, where Tony sat in an old leather recliner with a beer in his hand and the dog at his feet. The dog leaped up—Ohmigod, you’re back!—his greeting much more enthusiastic than Tony’s, who barely grumbled a “Down, you stupid mutt” as he stared at the empty fireplace.
Divested of crazed dog, Lili perched on an ottoman near the hearth. “Let me guess,” she shouted over the noise. “You’ve been thinking again.”
“One of the hazards of havin’ a brain.” Tony aimed the remote at the CD player to lower the volume before looking at her, his expression misleadingly blank. He, too, had scrubbed up, now wearing jeans and a clean T-shirt spouting some witticism, his bare feet shoved into a pair of well-worn moccasins. His gaze flicke
d over her before a small smile curved his lips. “You flyin’ blind tonight?”
“Contacts. I don’t wear them much. They bug.”
“S’ okay, you look good in glasses.” He hoisted the beer can in her direction. “I like your hair like that. The dress, too. Nice color.”
Lili reached up to touch her hair, quickly piled on top of her head. The dress, though, was nothing special, just some bland, bomb-proof jersey number that traveled well. In a blue that made her eyes brighter.
“Thanks,” she said as Tony tilted the beer can to his mouth, muttering, “I’m a jerk,” after he swallowed.
“Oh, dear,” she said, making him frown at her. “Are you drunk?”
Chuckling, he shook his head. “From one beer? No.”
“Then why do you think you’re a jerk?”
The smile died as he stared at the hearth. “Because I’m taking advantage of your good nature.”
Lili poked his ankle with her toe, getting another frown for her efforts. Tough. “I’m not a pushover, Tony. I make my own choices. If I really hadn’t wanted to accept your invitation, I wouldn’t have.”
Another nod preceded his collapsing back into the chair. “Good to know. Still. I don’t wanna come across as some sonuvabitch user.”
“Not possible.” Grabbing his hand, Lily dragged him to his feet. “Especially since you promised me food.”
But when she tried to let go, he held fast. “This is just like before, isn’t it? You not letting me wallow.”
“I don’t let anybody wallow. Wallowing only gets you stuck in the mud. Look, I hurt for you, for what’s happened. And I’m angry for you, too. But I’d like to think I can be there for people without—what’s that you Yanks call it? Enabling them?”
His gaze rested in hers for a moment before he headed toward the kitchen, not speaking until he’d yanked a package of frozen hamburger patties out of the freezer compartment and thunked them onto the counter. Then he leaned heavily on the edge, shaking his head. “I’ve been thinkin’ about what you said, about how sometimes things just don’t make sense, but…” He pulled out a knife five times larger than he needed to pry apart the patties. “It just won’t let go, Lil. That all the signs were right there in front of me, and I totally missed ’em.”
“And I repeat—that wasn’t your fault.”
“It is—” he whacked the first two burgers apart “—if you’ve got your head so far up your ass—” and the next ones “—you think as long as nobody’s actually fighting?” He jabbed the knife between the last two patties so hard one went skittering across the counter. “It’s all good.”
Still brandishing the knife, Tony shut his eyes, breathing hard. Lili gently pried the potential weapon from his hands, setting it far out of reach before wrapping her arms around this strong, macho man who was hurting so badly and had no earthly clue what to do about it. Not surprisingly, he shrugged her off.
“I’m fine, I’m…” He retrieved the errant patty and dumped it back on the plate with its friends. “I loved her, Lili. And I had no clue. None.” His tortured gaze cut to hers. “And what I really can’t figure out is if she didn’t see fit to tell me at the time what was goin’ on, why the hell did she bother tellin’ me at all? And why so long after her death?”
“I don’t know,” Lili said, even though she knew he didn’t really expect an answer. And it had still only been a matter of days since Marissa’s bombshell; the endless whys had plagued her mother for literally years—an experience that, if nothing else, had taught Lili patience.
Which was partly why she hadn’t pressed Tony about the DNA test. After all, there was no guarantee the result would be in his favor; she couldn’t imagine how terrifying that prospect might be. In his shoes, she’d probably be dragging her heels, too.
“But while you’re trying to figure it all out,” she said, picking up the platter of frozen burgers, “at least you’re not going through it alone.”
His eyes grazed hers. “For as long as you’re here, anyway. Right?”
“Right,” she said over the sudden, sharp ache in her chest when he smiled.
A breeze cooler than Tony might’ve expected wicked the moisture from his skin, carried the grill’s charred-beef-scented smoke into neighboring yards. He flipped the burgers, annoyed that it was a perfect summer evening, thick with the roar of lawnmowers and whine of weed whackers, with kids’ clear, high shouts as they splashed in above-ground pools or kicked a soccer ball in the street. The kind of evening where you’d sit out and smell the sweet, rich scents of honeysuckle and newly cut grass as you watched giggling kids chasing fireflies….
He rubbed a wrist across his own eyes, stinging from a sudden barbecue backdraft. Or so he told himself, his thoughts knotted up inside his head like a Twister game gone bad. Like it wasn’t bad enough that the night reminded him of a hundred others, of him and Rissa sitting on that porch, feeling the breeze and smelling the honeysuckle running riot along the back fence and laughing at the kids. Then he had to invite Lili over, on top of it? To what? Hold his hand?
Yeah, chalk that one up to a brain fart of epic proportions.
He started slightly when she nudged his arm, handing him an thermal tumbler of something with ice in it. “Lemonade,” she said, sitting on the arm of an Adirondack chair Rissa had bought at some end of season sale. “I found a can of concentrate in the freezer.”
“Thanks,” Tony mumbled, taking a sip, shuddering from the tartness. Not looking at her. Lili’d made herself scarce, once he’d put the burgers on. God only knew what she’d been up to.
She cleared her throat. “When do you expect the girls?”
“Any minute…actually,” he said at the sound of a car pulling up out front, “I think that’s them now.” He looked into those steady blue eyes, even bigger without her glasses. “You ready for this?”
“As I’ll ever be,” she said, standing and smoothing her hand over her dress just as
Daph barreled out the back door to wrap her arms around Tony’s hips. “Burgers! Yes!!!” she chirped, as one by one, everybody else drifted out. Or, in Susan’s case, floated, in a soft, crinkly skirt that brushed her ankles and a neat white top pulled in at the waist with one of those silver Native American belts. And lumbering behind came Lou, his father-in-law, in a designer golf shirt that was too bright, flashing a genuine Rolex that was too big, even on Lou’s beefy wrist.
Catching sight of Lili, Josie inexplicably ran toward her—jeez, she’d only seen Lili once, twice at the most—hands raised. Lili eagerly obliged, swinging his little girl into her arms and hugging her with a gentle fierceness that stabbed Tony right in the gut.
As expected, his in-laws’ expressions weren’t a whole lot different from Claire’s, the child giving Tony a “What the hell?” look that might’ve been funny on somebody else’s kid. Although he had to hand it to Susan, the woman was a master at hiding what she was really thinking—she didn’t need no stinkin’ Botox to keep her face frozen when it suited her purpose.
“Go wash your hands, guys,” he said in a low voice, smiling for Rissa’s parents after the kids ran, shuffled or toddled off. “Susan, Lou,” Tony said, pissed that they were jumping to conclusions, even more pissed that maybe they weren’t jumping all that far. “This is Lili Szabo, Magda’s niece from Hungary. She’s staying with Magda and Benny for a few weeks. Lili—Lou and Susan Pellegrino. Marissa’s parents.”
Without missing a beat, Lili stepped forward to pull an obviously startled Susan into a hug. “It’s so lovely to meet you,” she said, letting go to include Lou in her gaze. “Although I’m so sorry to hear about your daughter. My deepest sympathies.”
Marissa’s mother pressed one hand to her chest, the white-tipped fingernails shiny and square and as perfectly even as her teeth, bared in a smile so stiff it had to hurt. “Thank you, Lili, that’s very sweet. And it’s nice to meet you, too.” To be fair, Tony had seen plenty of genuine smiles from the old gal over the years. This wasn’t o
ne of them. “Claire was telling us all about you.” Her gaze swung to Tony’s. “That you two knew each other from before?”
“A long time ago,” Lili said smoothly. “We weren’t much more than children. I wasn’t, at any rate. Um…the hamburgers are nearly finished—why don’t you stay for dinner with us and the girls?”
The smile still in place, Susan’s eyes smoothly slid to Tony’s, underneath short blond hair that swear to God hadn’t budged since his and Rissa’s wedding. “Is the meat freshly ground? And lean?” She glanced in Claire’s direction, then lowered her voice. “Because some of us are watching our weight, you know.”
Tony let the prickle of irritation play on through before he said, “I suppose it was freshly ground before they froze it. Lean I don’t know about. But they’re skinny, does that count?”
Judging from the flicker in those bland gray eyes, she got the message. “Of course it does, sweetheart. And I know how hard it must be on you, trying to make sure every meal’s nutritious—”
“Tony made a salad, too,” Lili said, taking the woman by the arm and steering her back toward the kitchen, and Tony wondered what “he’d” made it out of, exactly, since it’d been a while since he’d hit up the produce aisle. Yeah, they had tomatoes and cukes out the wazoo, but the leafy green stuff might be kinda iffy. As he transferred the charred excuses for hamburgers to a paper plate, Lou came up beside him, blessing the world at large with his cologne. Even so, Tony’d always liked his father-in-law, the son of a factory worker who—the Rolex notwithstanding—was still just an average Joe from the old neighborhood who’d done good.
“Those look great,” he now said, and Tony laughed.
“You gotta be kiddin’ me? You own one of the best restaurants in Boston, and you’re salivatin’ over a bunch of burnt, pre-pressed burgers?”
The older man shrugged, his hands in his khakis pockets. “Reminds me of when I was a kid. Bad burgers, rubbery hot dogs, hot off the grill—now that was summer. These days it’s salmon and chicken breasts and grilled vegetables. That’s not summer, it’s hell.”
From Friends to Forever Page 8