“So you just lettin’ her go? Man,” he said, wagging his head, “talk about dumb.”
“Hollis. Stop. It’s complicated.”
“No, it’s not. You love the woman, you do whatchu gotta do to keep her, you hear what I’m sayin’? You been through a whole lotta crap this last little while, Mr. V., doncha think it’s time you grab a little happiness for yourself?”
“It doesn’t work that way. And who says I love her?”
“That look on your face right now, for one thing. What? You think it’s too soon? That people might talk smack about you because you’re not honorin’ your wife or something?”
“It had occurred to me.”
“Hell, Mr. V.—it’s not like you cheatin’ on the woman. She dead. She not comin’ back. And you know how you were always on us to grab opportunities, to not let ’em slip through our fingers? Seems to me maybe you should take your own advice.” He got up, handing Tony the empty glass. “I gotta go, signing up today for some classes today at the community college.” He extended one hand for Tony to slap and grab, then sauntered off around the side of the house.
While Tony was irritably musing about how straightforward everything seemed when you were eighteen, Claire appeared at the back door. Frowning. Although her cold was better today, her outlook on life was not. Tony couldn’t say as he blamed her.
“Mailman says you gotta sign for something.”
With a weary sigh, Tony got up, handed her the empty glass and dragged himself through the house to the front door, frowning at the large brown envelope the carrier held hostage until Tony signed the little green card and handed it back. He’d barely shut the front door before he ripped it open, scanning the very legal-looking papers with the notary’s seal on the bottom. And the handwritten letter accompanying them.
“Holy crap,” he whispered when the important parts sank in, the relief that rushed over him so strong it knocked the wind right out of him. He dropped to the bench to read the affidavit a second time, savoring every word. By the third read-through the words on the page began to dance around the thousands of other words in his head—Lili’s and Claire’s and Hollis’s and Lou’s, all those words from all those people who either had a stake in or opinion about what Tony should or shouldn’t do with his life…and when he should or shouldn’t do it. And through all those thousands of words, he only heard—
“Dad? What is it?”
Not those.
But when he looked up and saw Claire standing in the living room archway, Josie in her arms, and another wave of relief surged through him as he grinned at his baby—his baby, who nobody could ever take away from him, not now, not ever—a thought slammed him right between the eyes:
That he could no more let Lili, and what they had together, go without a fight than he could Josie, or Claire, or Daph.
That this wasn’t an either/or thing. That—and here was the kicker—this wasn’t really only about his happiness.
“We have to talk, sweetheart,” he said, patting the bench beside him.
“Yeah. I know,” she said, startling him, before saying to Josie, “How about you watch one of your movies?” before carting her away, saying to Tony over her shoulder, “I’ll be right back.”
Wait. What?
Sorry, Mom, I know you hated us watching too much TV, but this is an emergency, Claire thought as she set JoJo in front of the flat screen television with one of her Elmo DVDs. Although between her stuffy nose and all the stuff about Mom—she and Dad had talked for like hours last night—she hadn’t slept much. But weirdly, when she woke up? Her head felt completely clear. About some things, anyway. Like about how, even though Claire still didn’t understand why Mom had done what she had, and it hurt, that couldn’t ruin the good memories, or change how Claire felt about her. Not if she didn’t let it.
And that—if she was being really, really truthful—the only times she hadn’t felt like total crap the past few weeks had been when Lili’d been around.
And she was guessing if you asked Dad? He’d say he felt pretty much the same way.
Claire walked back out to the entryway, her arms crossed over her new hoodie. Dad smiled. “A little warm for that, isn’t it?”
“I’m fine,” she said, shrugging. “So. What was in the envelope?”
“Excellent news,” Dad said, smiling bigger than she’d seen in a long, long time. “We don’t have to worry about giving Josie up.” He waved the papers. “Ever.”
Claire felt her eyes go all buggy. “Really?”
“Really. But…” He leaned forward, looking right into her eyes. “When I realized how good I felt about knowing I was never gonna lose Josie,” he said in this real quiet voice, “I realized something else. And I know you might not like it, and God knows your grandparents are gonna have a fit but—”
“But you don’t want Lili to leave.”
She’d never seen that look on Dad’s face before, like he was so shocked he didn’t know what to say. Then he held out one arm, waving Claire over to sit on his lap. “It’s killin’ me, the thought of her leaving,” he said, all soft and stuff, then touched his forehead to hers. “Just like it would’ve killed me to lose Josie. Like it would to lose any of you guys. I love her, baby,” he said, giving her a squeeze. “Not more than you or your sisters, not more than Mom, but…just as much.”
Okay, just say it— “I don’t want Lili to leave, either.”
Dad looked at her really hard. “Not exactly the vibes you were giving off yesterday.”
“I know, I…” Claire pinched her mouth together, then pushed out, “When I saw Lili standing there in the towel, it really freaked me out…” She looked up at Dad. “I got scared.”
Dad hugged her shoulder. “Yeah. I know. But now you’ve changed your mind?”
Claire frowned so hard it hurt. “It’s more…I think I figured out which were the good thoughts and which one’s weren’t. And I decided to go with the good thoughts.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Dad said.
After a moment, she said, “Does Lili love you, too?”
“I think so.”
“So…if you asked her to marry you and stuff, she’d say yes?”
Dad got a funny look on his face. “That, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? If you love each other—”
“Loving somebody doesn’t mean everything automatically falls neatly into place,” Dad said, then let out a big breath. “Or that you can’t get hurt down the road.”
“You mean…like what happened with Mom?”
He nodded, then said, “But Lili and Mom are very different people, with different ways of looking at things, so…”
When Dad didn’t finish his sentence, Claire figured that meant he didn’t want to say anything bad about Mom, but she got it, anyway—that he didn’t think Lili would ever do what Mom did. Claire didn’t know why, but somehow she didn’t think she would, either. Because Lili and Dad together felt way different than Mom and Dad had. It wasn’t a happy thought, but it was an honest one.
Looking down at her hands on top of Dad’s, Claire said, “One day, before Mom got sick, I found her crying. She wouldn’t tell me why. But she said…” Claire felt her jaw wobble. “She said not to tell you, it would only make you unhappy.” Her eyes burning, she looked at Dad. “Do you think she was crying because of what she did?”
Dad pulled her into his arms and laid his cheek on her head. “Maybe. I think she felt really, really bad about it.”
Claire leaned into him, liking how he smelled, like soap and the stuff he used after he shaved. It made her feel safe. Sort of. Because then she sighed and said, “It’s so scary, letting yourself love somebody.”
She felt Dad’s quiet laugh in her hair. “Ain’t that the truth?”
Sitting up, she pushed her glasses up on her nose. “If…if Lili…” She frowned, not even sure what she was asking. “This would mean a lot of changes, huh?”
“Oh, yeah,�
�� Dad said. “Lots.” He bent his head slightly to look into her eyes. “Could you deal with that?”
Claire thought for a moment, then shrugged. “It’s sure worth a shot.”
Dad laughed, then held her tight again for a long time, not saying a word.
Of course, Tony’s first impulse—with Daphne’s shrieked encouragement—was to go straight over to Lili’s and make a complete idiot of himself. But it seemed only right that he make an idiot of himself with Lou and Susan first. So he shooed the girls upstairs, hauled in a breath, and hit number “1” on the old speed dial.
“Tony,” Susan said when she answered, “what—”
“Could you put Lou on, too? I got something to tell you. A couple of somethings, actually.”
Took a few seconds to get the whole conference call thing worked out, but once everybody was connected Tony told them about Josie, including a lot of stuff he hadn’t told Claire—that Cole had apparently come clean to his wife and set up a money market account in Josie’s name. That while he’d be willing to get to know her someday, if Josie wished it, he saw no reason to disrupt anyone’s lives more than they’d already been. That he left it up to Tony, whenever he felt the time was right to tell Josie the truth.
When the relieved congrats died down, he said, “And now for the hard part.”
“What hard part, dear—?”
“Suze, for godssake, let the boy talk. What is it, Tone?”
Deep breath. “You know, we have so little control over what happens in our lives, no idea when somebody’s gonna come into it that…” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Okay, cut to the chase—I’m sorry, you guys, but I can’t just let Lili walk out of my life. I thought I could, I thought it was the right thing to do, but…it isn’t. At all.”
Silence. Finally, Lou spoke.
“But…Claire…?”
“Totally on board. They all are.” Tony paused. “The girls love Lili. As much as I do. And when I see what she’s done for Claire…I know it’s…what’s that word?”
“Precipitous?” Susan put in.
“Yeah. That. And I don’t even know if this is a definite thing, if she’s ready for this. For us. But I’ve spent far too much time recently feeling bad about stuff that wasn’t my fault. And Lili’s the only person with the guts to not let me get away with that crap. How can I walk away from somebody like that? So I gotta find out, if there’s a chance. Not just for me, for the girls, too.”
“Oh, Tony,” Susan started, but Lou said, “Are you even listening to the boy, Susie?”
“But—”
“Here’s a news flash, sweetheart,” Lou said gently, “this isn’t about us. But, Tone—are you absolutely sure?”
God knows Tony couldn’t tell them the seed for what he felt now had lain dormant for nearly fifteen years. And if Marissa hadn’t died, if they’d been able to fix their marriage, it would have never blossomed. He knew that as well as he knew his own name. But not going after something because of what might have been made no sense whatsoever.
“You know I loved Rissa with everything I had in me,” he said quietly. “I feel exactly the same way about Lili. And believe me, I’m thinking straighter than I ever have in my life. This isn’t a rebound, Lou, or about me being lonely or whatever. It’s….” He heard Lili’s voice in his head. “It’s real.”
He heard muffled conversation for a few minutes before Lou came back on the line. “Then I suppose we got no choice but to trust you’re gonna make the right decision.”
“Thanks,” Tony said, trying not to tear up. “I really do love you guys—”
“Oh, for God’s sake—get the hell off the phone and go get the girl!”
Grinning, Tony went back inside. “Anyone up for goin’ over to Aunt Magda’s?” he called out, and assorted little girls thundered down the stairs.
“Please tell me we’re not walking,” Claire said, shoving Josie’s sandals onto her feet.
“Like I’m gonna take twenty minutes to get there instead of a minute and a half? No way.”
But when Magda answered her front door shortly afterwards, jumping back in slight alarm when Daph, Claire and Tony all yelled “Is Lili here?” she pressed a hand to her chest and let out a small, distressed cry.
“No, she’s not—Benny took her to ze airport an hour ago!”
“What time does her plane leave?” Claire said, worried.
“Magda said two-thirty.”
“But it’s already—”
“I know what time it is, baby,” Tony said, veering around cars on I-91 like he was playing Grand Theft Auto. Keeping one eye on the road with all those stupid cars in his way, dammit, he spared her a quick smile. “It’s okay, we’re gonna make it.”
“You swear?”
“On my life,” he said through gritted teeth, zooming down the road leading to airport parking. “Okay, here’s the plan—we park, I get the baby, Daph takes Claire’s hand, Claire takes mine, then nobody lets go of anybody until I say so. Got it?”
“Got it,” both girls chimed beside and behind him, Josie echoing her own a soft “Got it,” a second later.
Then they were running through the terminal like a possessed, lopsided bug, Daphne and Josie laughing, Claire panting, until Tony came to a screeching halt in front of an Arrival/Departure screen, whipping the other two around him.
“Has her plane left yet?”
“No,” Tony said, heart in throat. “But it’s boarding. Come on!”
And they were off again, only to come to another screeching halt in front of the squat, tough-looking security gal checking boarding passes.
She held out her hand, bored.
“We’re not passengers, we’re trying to reach someone about to leave on the British Airways flight to Amster—”
“Then you can’t go past this point, sorry.” Looking around them, she motioned for the next passenger.
“You don’t understand, her cell’s apparently dead, I don’t have any way of getting hold of her and this is important—”
“No, you don’t understand that I cannot let you through without a ticket or special permission from the airlines.” She checked the man’s printout and waved him through to screening. “British Airways’ counter is right over there. Next! Keep it moving—”
“The plane’s freaking boarding, lady! If I don’t get to her—”
“And if you don’t stop impeding these people with actual tickets trying to make their flights, I’ma hafta take action, mister…what?” she said with an irritated huff when Claire tugged on her sleeve.
“I’m sorry my Dad’s acting crazy, but see, our mom died last year? And none of us thought we’d ever want somebody else to be our mother? Or in Dad’s case, his wife? Only then Lili—she’s the lady we’re trying to keep from getting on her plane?—came to visit and, well, we all fell in love with her.” She shrugged as Tony watched, stunned. “Especially our Dad. And if we don’t get to her before she gets on the plane, she’ll go back to Hungary and we’ll never see her again.”
The woman’s eyes shot to Tony’s. “You put the child up to this?”
“No. Swear to God—”
“Daddy!” Daph shrieked, blasting his eardrums. “Look! Way down there!”
Everybody—and he meant everybody, passengers, security personnel, the works—turned to look where Daphne pointed. And there, trudging up from the gates, dragging a suitcase the size of Rhode Island behind her, her hair a bedraggled mess and her glasses crooked, was Lili.
His Lili.
Okay, he hoped his Lili. Nothing in writing yet.
“That her?” the security lady said, and Tony’s heart burst in his chest.
“Yeah,” he said as the kids started screaming “Lili! Lili!” at the tops of their lungs and Lili’s head popped up, her flummoxed expression almost immediately giving way to that huge, sun-coming-out smile he’d grown to love more than life itself, and she startled hustling toward them faster as all the other security peeps started in
on old Ironsides, bugging her to let the kids go, at least, for heaven’s sake, what did she think they were gonna do?
So she did, and Claire and Daph streaked through the arches and down the concourse, flying to a kneeling Lili’s arms. She kissed them both, over and over and over, calling them her darlings and her babies, all her in her wonderful, wonderful accent, before her eyes—watery behind her glasses—touched Tony’s.
“I suppose you want to go on, too,” Ironsides muttered.
“It’s okay,” Tony said, feeling hugely magnanimous. Grinning so hard his face hurt. “I can wait.”
He didn’t have to wait long. Because moments later the woman he loved was in his arms, hugging him, hugging Josie, who kept going “Goop hug, goop hug!” and then Lili said, “I was sitting there waiting for the plane to load, and I suddenly thought, Why on earth am I going back to Hungary, there’s nothing for me there, I can do my work anywhere and my damn brothers can close up my mother’s apartment, and if…” Smiling at the girls, she cupped first Claire’s, then Daphne’s heads. “If you’re not ready, I’m perfectly okay with just hanging out together for a while—so we can get to know each other better, yes?—and see where that takes us.” She looked at Tony, her eyes soft. “That goes for you, too.”
His heart swelled. “You would take that risk?”
“After what I just went through to get my luggage off the plane? I’ll probably never be able to fly British Airways again. Of course I haven’t exactly thought any of this through, such as how I’m going to stay here without a visa—”
Tony kissed her. And grinned. “You won’t be needing any of that.”
“Mmm, yes, I will—”
“Not if we’re married, you won’t.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You can’t be serious,” she said. Eventually.
Tony lowered his gaze to the girls. “Are we serious?”
“Uh-huh,” they both said, nodding like a pair of bobble-head dolls. Except then Claire sighed and said, “Da-ad.”
Tony frowned at her. By this time, a nice little crowd had gathered. “What?”
“Aren’t you forgetting, like, the most important part?”
From Friends to Forever Page 19