“When?”
“August? Mid-August.”
“I’ve got a few jobs lined up, but I guess I can rearrange them.”
“As long as I can get my hands on a bike. I’ll have to do a little shopping. Let’s have lunch tomorrow and we’ll talk.”
“At your shop?”
“No. Let’s go out.” George told the authorities about Nate’s dream of the two brothers taking a cross-country road trip and of their talks at Joel’s over the years. So that’s where they want it to happen. He’s sure the bar is being scoped out as they speak. George takes a long breath. This is it. His next words will frame his brother and end any semblance of a relationship. Nate will hate him. Their family will be finished. He thinks of Amy and Grace and realizes that he has no family. “Meet me at Joel’s about one.”
* * *
“Maybe it’s true?”
Amy looks back over her shoulder, her arms raised to the top of the portable archway. Clouds of tulle spill from her hands as she wraps it on the frame.
“No, listen,” Celia says as she opens another folding chair and sets it in line with the others in Wedding Wishes’ showroom. “George saw what was going down in the parking lot. And I’m just saying, what if he really did put himself on that truck just for the child’s sake? It sounds like something he might do, don’t you think?”
Amy finishes wrapping the tulle around the arch and reaches for the string of twinkling lights, entwining them in the fabric. “Do you think it’s true? That someone could commit a crime for honorable reasons?”
Celia shrugs and opens the last chair. “Anything’s possible, I guess. You know what they say, truth is stranger than fiction.”
“No kidding. And you swear you and Ben won’t tell anyone about George, right? I need to trust you guys on this.”
“You’ve got my word, don’t worry. And Ben’s word is good as gold.”
“So you promise?”
“Promise.”
“Okay.” Amy steps back from the archway. “Hit that light switch, Cee.”
Celia flicks the wall switch and the lights sparkle. “Oh, beautiful. They look like tiny stars floating in clouds.”
“Perfect,” Amy says, seeing her bridal shop magically illuminated so that the brides picture themselves in the celestial wonder. Twinkling lights are strung around the display window and checkout counter and along the top of the gown racks. “I’ve just got to line up the gowns for the models so they wear them in the right order.” She moves to the wall rack and pulls off a tea-length dress.
“Who’s doing the modeling?” Celia takes the dress from her and hangs it on the empty rolling rack near the dressing area. A silver room divider separates the fashion show dressing area from the viewers’ chairs.
“A few girls from the high school and, if you can believe it, I talked Sara Beth into modeling too.”
“No way! Oh she’ll have lots of fun, definitely. She’s game for anything antique.”
“She already dibbed wearing the Jackie Onassis dress. Except that one’s not for sale.”
“No surprise there. It looks amazing in your window with Jackie’s photo.”
“I’m showing seven decades of gowns tomorrow, imagine?” She hands Celia a peplum gown of shadow organza, the fabric airy and soft. “This one’s the oldest, from 1944.”
“Can you picture the first bride’s story? It was probably war time, maybe she married a soldier.”
“That’s what I love about these, their story. I wanted to pair that one with my grandmother’s veil, which now I can’t find. I thought I brought it in last week but it must be at home. Hang that one first on the rack; they’ll be wearing them in order of the decades.”
Celia slides over the other gown and sets the organza first.
“This one’s always been a favorite of mine.” Amy hands her another, satin with a fitted bodice overlaid in lace and pearl ribbons. “It’s mid-seventies. So it goes fourth in line.”
Celia takes the gown and drapes it over her arm. “Amy,” she says softly.
The shop is quiet, with just the rustle of gowns sounding as Amy brushes through them lined on the wall. “Celia, don’t,” she finally says. “I can’t talk about it anymore and I’ve got to get this done.”
“But it’s only one thing. Because honestly? I’ll bet George never took his eyes off Grace that day.” She pauses and Amy stops looking at the dresses, closing her eyes against her tears. She knows, oh she knows darn well that Celia won’t finish her thought until she turns and looks at her. Silently, she does. “I really can’t believe that he wasn’t helping you,” Celia says then. “You just never knew it.”
Amy takes a long breath. It’s so hard to admit something, when it feels like admitting it is an affront. When something is right, but you want it to be right a different way, a way when George stopped the day from happening. “So what do you think I should do?”
“Listen. It boils down to two things. Either you’re going to pack your bags and uproot your home and work and move your whole life to New Hampshire and be done with the situation here.”
“Or?” Amy asks.
Celia lifts the satin and lace gown and holds it up to Amy, draping it along the front of her body. “Or you’re going to marry him.”
Thirty-three
GEORGE GOES IN TO WORK early on Friday, like he does every morning, opens up the shop, pulls a black apron over his head, ties up two roasts, checks on the weekend’s special orders and waits on several customers. Tom Riley tells him about the Yankees game he and his family went to the Sunday before while George weighs two pounds of chicken cutlets.
“Great seats,” Tom says. “Left field, main box. In the shade, so it was good.”
Does he know how lucky, how God-awful lucky he is? George glances up from the scale at the middle-aged man talking about spending a Sunday at the stadium. It is all George wants, that kind of luck, that kind of life.
“It was hot in the Bronx,” Tom is saying. “But you know, a couple ice cold beers, hot dog on the side and the day was perfect. There’s nothing like it, you know what I mean, George?”
Lillian March mentions that her car needs tires. “What do you think I should buy?” she asks as George wraps a prepared meatloaf.
“I don’t know, Lil. Depends on how long you’re going to hold on to your car.”
“A year or two, that’s about it.”
“Well put on decent tires, you want to be safe.” Amy’s SUV is a couple years old. Has she checked her tires recently? Is the tread good? The tire pressure right? He wants to check her tires, that’s all he wants. That’s it. He can hardly believe how he aches to be able to do only that for her. Inspect the tires, walk around her vehicle, crouch down and run his open hand over the tread, hold a pressure gauge to the valve stem, maybe check the oil, too. “You can probably pick up something good on sale to get you by.”
The Houghs are throwing a Jack and Jill wedding shower for their daughter beneath a tent in their backyard, and they want to barbecue afterward. A barbecue beneath a tent, that’s as intense as their lives are right now. George wants only to be blessed with that type of fortune, to sit at a picnic table and have a cheeseburger. They order the hamburger and sausage patties, chicken and side salads for the shower the following weekend. George can’t imagine the following weekend. He is about to be wired to help convict his brother. It’s getting closer to lunchtime and his hands tremble while writing down their order. It gets so bad he has to set the pencil down and wipe his damp palms on his apron.
“When’s the wedding?” George asks without looking up.
“Second week in August. Jennifer’s teaching over at the middle school and has to be back for September.”
September seems worlds away. Another lifetime when all this—the heist, his affair with Amy, his last thread of family—when it will all be a dream he’ll try to remember. What will he do then? Will the Marches, the Houghs and Rileys still frequent his butcher shop if they
learn what he has done? Will they trust him to provide their meals, respect him still?
By the time Dean takes over at the shop and he settles in at Joel’s, it doesn’t much matter. This is the most difficult day yet, being wired to cull the damning words out of his brother. But Nate is dangerous, and brother or not, George has to stop him.
So for now, he acts normal. That’s the irony of all this. The normalcy of two brothers meeting for lunch and a beer, talking up a bike trip. No one will look twice. It is normalcy that started it all in a bank parking lot two months ago when Nate insisted—hosiery over their heads, a two-year-old hostage in the back of the armored truck—that they resume their normal lives, that blending in provided the best cover. Nate became expert at keeping up that ordinary front, and now George manipulates normalcy’s cover to hang him.
He orders a pitcher of beer. Let them try to stop him. He’s wired and ready to relay Nate’s incriminating words to an undercover van parked close by. Let them say he needs to be stone straight for this to stick. He pours a tall glass and takes a slow drink, looking around the bar. Even he doesn’t know who is who—who came in off the street for a sandwich and who flew in to help take down his brother. They all look alike: regular guys working for the town, a family lawyer with an office down the street, federal law enforcement agents, a couple guys from the hardware store, a local electrician. On a hot summer afternoon, the character lines delineating identity blur. They all sweat the same.
He wipes his brow and sits back for a long moment. It is a moment when he wonders if undercover eyes are on him; a moment when law enforcement officials sit in that van tuned to hear his every word; when special agents wait, armed to stop any resistance as his brother is restrained; when Miranda rights swim through the officials’ minds, ready to be recited to the man behind Addison’s most notorious crime; when a press conference is only a phone call away. A moment when Amy and her daughter are still at risk.
He turns in his seat and is surprised to see Hayes standing in the open doorway. Bright sunshine glares outside behind him, but the bar is dark and cool. And everyone knows something’s up; anyone who matters watches Hayes walk over to George.
“Change of plans.” Hayes stands at the end of the table and fills Nate’s glass with beer. He takes a quick swallow. “We’ve got a problem, George. Got to move the venue. Let’s go.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sorry to say there’s been an accident. From what I hear, it’s a bad wreck.”
“What?”
“Apparently your brother was on his way here. He was at the train tracks and witnesses say he hesitated, like he was weighing the odds. Then he gunned it. I guess he swerved at the last second, right before the impact, but he miscalculated.”
“Shit, a train hit him?” George stands then and they hurry to the door. “Are you serious?”
“I’m sorry, George. They’re doing everything they can for him as we speak.”
“Was he on his bike?”
Hayes pulls his keys from his pocket. “No. His car.”
George stops on the sidewalk—in the sunshine, traffic driving past, a pedestrian’s cell phone ringing—and takes a deep breath. “Wait. But he’s alive?”
“So far.” Hayes looks back at him. “Let’s move it, George.”
“Was someone following him?”
“He’s been tailed since you talked. All night, all morning, every minute.”
“You think he was on to us?”
“Don’t know.”
* * *
The way Nate’s body is carefully laid out, you’d never guess the maiming a freight train inflicts at a railroad crossing. George stands just inside the hospital room and watches his brother. Aggressive life support fought a losing battle with internal hemorrhaging.
There is a chair near the bed, a place for a family member to sit and wait, to whisper strength to the patient. George sits with his brother’s body. He doesn’t doubt the possibility that Nate sensed a tail. He would notice anything out of the ordinary in the normal, regimented life he had returned to. That was his radar, the way he read his opponents’ hands. And if he suspected something was amiss, he’d never let George know. Nate never once showed his cards, all his life.
So maybe Nate won. Maybe he was on to George and refused to lose. There would be no handcuffs, no shoves into cruisers or leg shackles in his game. This way, he’d never been stopped. He escaped the guilty verdict.
George inches his chair closer. Death erases the years on Nate’s face. It looks as though Nate saw his life pass before him in those imminent seconds. When everything was a breath away—the train’s screaming halt, Nate’s own wrenching swerve, tons of metal meeting and launching his car, the earth cradling his pain—the process began. Nate’s mind recanted the years, reeling him back in time. When he’d died, Nate had somehow time travelled to his younger days, baseball cards clipped on the spokes, the wind in his hair. This is what George sees on Nate’s face: his mind’s age at death.
It is too soon to forgive or understand. Maybe both will never happen. All he knows is this: In his own way, Nate is finally free. George takes his brother’s limp hand in his, clasps it, then stands and walks out of the room.
* * *
The initial news story is small. A local man perished in a car-train collision. The roads were dry, the weather clear. It looked like a case of driver error, an unfortunate decision. If you drive that strip of road, crash remnants are visible: patches of the pavement burned, the grass torn up, the curb smashed.
So Amy thinks that while models wearing tulle and lace walked an illuminated aisle in Wedding Wishes, and while brides-to-be sat close to a friend or mother murmuring to each other and picturing themselves in cascading white gowns, their hair put up beneath pretty veils, at that very moment, Nate’s life came to an end.
She reads his obituary and thinks about him on Monday, the morning of his funeral. Will there be flowers there, beautiful arrangements bidding him farewell? The thought moves her to lift George’s single rose from the vase, its pink color fading now, the petals beginning to curl. She snaps the stem in her hand while reading the obituary saying the service will begin at nine o’clock in the funeral home, not in a church. But still, he’ll have a service. The man who orchestrated an armed robbery and Grace’s kidnapping will be honorably laid to rest. George must have planned the memorial. Death freed his brother from all charges: no one knew, there were no deathbed confessions, no final statements. He died free and it upsets Amy to know this.
She stays home that morning, organizing the small inventory in her gown room, hanging two recently acquired ones out on the clothesline. One dress is cut lace over sheer silk with a V-neck, the other chiffon. They hang still in the heavy July heat and she thinks it fitting that there is no breeze making them waltz today.
By midafternoon, hours after Nate’s funeral is done, she closes up Wedding Wishes for the next few days. Changing a gown on a window mannequin, setting out vintage necklaces with autumn-colored stones for upcoming weddings and shifting summer gowns to the back room, all are mere motions giving her time to think. To consider staying or going. Digging in for the long haul in Addison, or moving all she has here to a new storefront somewhere up north. Though she plans to leave tomorrow for New Hampshire to get Grace, a surprising number of requests for gowns have come in since her fashion show. Their stay up north will be cut short.
And all the while, Celia never stops calling. She uses the weather, the news, a magazine recipe, any reason to pick up the phone. If Sara Beth hadn’t taken her to the antique show on The Green yesterday, Celia would have. Since Amy told her about George’s identity, Celia has become her bodyguard, soul-guard and emotion-guard.
After dinner, she turns on her laptop in the living room to search for a client’s request. Journeying virtually to circa 1970 for a vintage gown with a quilted waistband and waterfall frill skirt is as good a way as any to deny the present. A neighbor the next s
treet over wants that gown for her late-September beach wedding.
Oh, she’s become expert at denying the present. At denying everything about this summer. Everything about one person. Grace and Wedding Wishes and Celia and antiques on The Green and New Hampshire and fashion shows, well, well they’re all a bluff, aren’t they? Because sudden tears fill her eyes when one email cuts right through it all. The way it takes her breath, the way the sight of his name alone brings those tears, there’s no denying the truth that it is George she has been denying with everything else.
Dear Amy,
I didn’t think you’d take a phone call from me, and I only hope that wherever you are, you’ll read this instead. It’s only fair that you know what I’m about to tell you before the news hits. Because what’s most important to know is that you’re safe now. You and Grace are safe. You can rest easy. The men involved in Grace’s kidnapping have been taken into police custody.
I won’t go on too long, but want to tell you that I’ve worked closely with my attorney to accomplish this. I’m sure you’ve seen the reports of Nate’s death. He died during his takedown and when that happened, we lost our connection to the others involved. We had no recourse but to go forward with a funeral, among other things, anticipating they’d show up there.
Rest assured it’s done. You don’t have to worry about them. I did what I could to right any pain, any wrong inflicted on your life, and on Grace’s. If nothing else, I’m hoping that a sense of peace comes with this knowledge for you, a peace you so immensely deserve.
If you ever find it in your heart to talk to me, to know my thoughts, I’ll be where I always have been, in the familiar places, at work, at home. I’ll be here.
George
* * *
The news broke quickly and the next morning, Celia knocks at Amy’s back door at six-thirty, newspaper in hand.
“I know already,” Amy tells her through the screen, cupping a white coffee mug close.
True Blend Page 32