Undertaking Irene

by Pamela Burford

  I would have called him and given him what for, but his number was blocked from caller ID—his default setting, no doubt. By contrast, and as has already been established, he knew everything about me, so there you had it. I could either get dolled up and show up for this… Was it a date? Would have been nice to know. Or I could sit home and stew in my outrage, watching Family Feud and muttering darkly to SB about the male of the species.

  I chose the slinky green halter dress I’d worn to Ted Seabrook’s funeral, the dress Martin had said I looked “totally hot” in.

  You know what? You can just keep it to yourself. I don’t want to hear it.

  And now that I was running late for this… this whatever it was that felt an awful lot like a date, here was Dominic Faso, the man I’d spent my entire adult life obsessing about, the man I’d recently decided I was finally over, standing in my living room asking me to marry him.

  “You don’t look happy,” Dom said. “I thought you’d be happy.”

  “I don’t know what I am. This is…” I groped for words.

  “Sudden?” There was that mischievous smile again, the smile that used to melt my innards like Jell-O on a griddle. “Long overdue is more like it.” He parked himself on the sofa and beckoned me to join him.

  I stood my ground. “Um… seriously, Dom, it’s not that I’m not, you know, blown away by all this, but I have to be somewhere.”

  Only then did he appear to notice that I wasn’t in jeans and a tee. “Where are you off to?” When I didn’t answer right away, he said, “You have a date.” His tone was neutral, but I knew this man. He didn’t feel neutral at all about my seeing another man, particularly after he’d just opened his heart to me.

  I relented and sat next to him. “Things have changed, Dom. I’m not the same person I was.”

  “I know that, I—”

  I interrupted him with a raised palm. “I don’t think you do. I don’t think I can reverse direction and…” I shook my head, at a loss for words.

  He took my hand. His felt as big and warm and reassuring as it always had. He stared at me until I returned his gaze. “I want to have a family with you, Janey. I want the kids we should have had a long time ago.”

  I swallowed hard. I wasn’t going to say it.

  “I know,” he said. “I didn’t want them back then. I wasn’t ready.”

  And yet, not being ready hadn’t kept him from becoming a daddy a mere year after we’d split. His second wife, Svetlana, was eleven years older than he. A successful M.D. with a nagging biological clock and a commanding personality, she’d given birth to Karina and Ivan in quick succession. A few months after their divorce, he got Meryl pregnant with Jonathan and married her.

  At the time I’d wondered if that’s what I should have done when we were still married: been more assertive, put my foot down and insisted on children, despite his strenuous objection. And if that didn’t work, maybe conveniently forget to use birth control. Ready or not, he’d been overjoyed with the arrival of each child. Dom was the epitome of the proud, doting papa.

  But I couldn’t turn back the clock, and I meant what I’d told him. I’d moved on. It might have taken a ridiculously long time, but his Janey was no longer the heartsick divorcee dreaming about a reconciliation with the one true love of her life.

  I tried, at that moment, to ignore the ticking of my own biological clock, which had long since gone from nagging to deafening. Good Lord, how I wanted a baby. I’d wanted a baby two decades ago, and the passage of time had done nothing to dampen that overpowering, instinctual need. I’d never allowed myself to remarry for the simple reason that whenever I’d fantasized about being a mommy, only one man had played the role of daddy.

  That man now sat next to me, eager to fulfill that fantasy. And here I was saying no.

  I closed my eyes and took a steadying breath, willing myself to be strong, willing myself to remember that Dominic Faso, while a tender and devoted husband, never remained tender and devoted for long. Could I endure another divorce and single motherhood while Dom moved on to the next wife? My storybook plan to grow old with this man had been flawed from the start. As much as he loved being married, he’d never gotten the whole till-death-do-we-part thing down.

  As if reading my mind, he said, “I’ve changed too.”

  Not in the way I need. In truth, my doubts went beyond his reliability as a life partner. At that point in our lives, and after everything I’d been through, I no longer felt the gut-deep certainty that Dominic Faso was my soul mate. I didn’t say it, I simply shook my head.

  He squeezed my hand harder. “You need time to think about it.”

  “My mind’s made up, Dom.”

  He turned to face me fully and spoke with startling vehemence. “I respect your decision, but I don’t accept it. I’m not going to give up, Janey. Somehow I’m going to prove to you that we belong together.”

  ______

  The farther east you travel on Long Island, the more rural and spread out it becomes. An hour’s drive from Crystal Harbor brought me to the Island’s wine country, a strip along the North Fork that’s home to numerous vineyards. Maybe Martin had an afternoon of wine tasting planned, going from winery to winery sampling the Island’s best vintages. It would have been gentlemanly for him to pick me up, perhaps in that tasty red Mercedes he’d given his mom.

  Wait, did I just use gentlemanly with reference to Martin McAuliffe? I must have gotten walloped on the head in that tunnel and not realized it.

  That thought opened the door to a memory I would pay dearly to expunge from my brain: Jonah Diamond lying under that massive timber with his head smashed in. One could argue that he’d deserved his fate, but I didn’t deserve to have that image burned into my retinas when I stared at my bedroom ceiling each night.

  I wondered how long it would take poor Rachel to recover from the shock and put her life back together. Losing her husband in such a bizarre and grisly fashion had been bad enough, but the revelation of what he’d done to keep his philandering under wraps—murder, attempted murder, and kidnapping—had magnified the tragedy and turned it into headline news and juicy fodder for the town gossip mill. She’d taken their kids and moved into her parents’ home in Greenwich, Connecticut. The elegant Crystal Harbor mini-mansion she’d shared with Jonah was now on the market.

  I’d half expected Nina and Mal to move away too, but they were staying put—and married. After everything that had happened, I could only assume he was sticking with her for the sake of the kids, the two daughters they already had plus the baby she was expecting next winter. Jonah’s baby. I’d always thought Mal was a certifiable saint for putting up with Nina. By all accounts, he truly loved her. Knowing that he intended to raise this newest addition as his own put a fresh gloss on his halo as far as I was concerned.

  Several days after we rescued Nina from the tunnel, her car was found in a chop shop in New Jersey. It seemed Jonah had driven it from the Historical Society, where she’d parked it, to a sketchy part of Newark and removed the plates.

  And speaking of cars, Patrick finally took possession of the three luxury vehicles Irene had left him. My enormous garage now housed nothing but my eleven-year-old Civic. Maybe I could make the case that I needed to spend some of SB’s maintenance funds on a newer, safer vehicle to transport him to the vet and the dog park. I’d have to run that one past Sten.

  Patrick also emptied Irene’s safe-deposit box, which contained family mementoes she’d held on to since childhood, including airmail letters from her grandparents in Ireland, a girlish pink diary with a busted lock, a yellowed scrapbook with pictures of movie stars she’d cut out of magazines, and most poignantly, a black-and-white, scallop-edged snapshot of thirteen-year-old Irene Hardy and her best friend in the world, Colette O’Grady, sitting on the front stoop of their apartment building in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. They sat cheek to cheek, arms around each other’s skinny waists. Inseparable.

  Patrick showed me the keepsakes the day
he and I planted Irene. Okay, “planted” sounds kind of cold, so let me explain. For someone who possessed a limitless imagination when it came to disposing of other people’s cremated remains, Irene had been conspicuously closemouthed regarding what to do with her own. She’d left no written or verbal instructions. Sten had presented her ashes to her son, Patrick, who’d promptly sought my advice since I was the one “with the experience.”

  Which is how we’d ended up digging a hole in my backyard last week, depositing her ashes in the hole, and planting a pink dogwood sapling on top of them. Her favorite tree.

  Later, over beer and burgers at Murray’s Pub, I brought up the subject of the mermaid brooch. I told him about its significance to the McAuliffes and why Martin felt so strongly about keeping it in the family. I was betting Patrick could identify with Martin’s motives if not his means. After all, hadn’t Patrick been willing to take the rap for Irene’s murder, sacrificing a $16 million inheritance into the bargain, to protect his daughter from prosecution? The man knew a little something about family loyalty.

  “Don’t you worry about all that,” Patrick said. “Me and Marty already worked it out.”

  This was not what I was expecting to hear. “Martin got in touch with you?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said around a mouthful of French fries. “He’s not that bad a guy, you get to know him. What do I need that old brooch for? The design’s from the McAuliffe coat of arms, for cripes sake. Mom never shoulda got her hands on it in the first place.”

  As I wondered which mom he meant, he added, “Irene neither. I got Sten to help me sign it over to Marty, all legal. He can do whatever he wants with the thing.”

  I’d bought him a piece of cheesecake to celebrate. I’d had the fruit cup. And half of his cheesecake.

  The ornate sign for Zuccaro Cellars now loomed ahead. I turned off Sound Avenue and followed a tree-lined drive to the winery’s parking area, which was practically filled—unusual for this early in the season. I spied Stevie’s red Mercedes, which meant the padre had indeed borrowed her car but couldn’t be bothered swinging by my place to pick me up. Gee, maybe he’d even invited his mom along on this thing that felt less like a date with each passing second.

  Suddenly I wished I’d stayed home. Or at least worn something less totally hot.

  Neat rows of grapevines stretched into the distance, a balm for the eyes and spirit, reminding me why I love this part of the Island. A large white event tent occupied a clearing in the vineyard. I parked, slipped out of my ballet flats and into a pair of wretchedly uncomfortable but oh-so-awesome four-inch heels, and click-clicked my way across the parking lot to the charming, Tuscan-style stone building. I was about to go inside when I spied a pretty, hand-painted wooden sign on a post. It bore the names McAuliffe and Kovac, separated by a pair of wedding rings. An arrow pointed to the rear of the property.

  My stomach did a sickening flip. I recalled Martin’s conversation with Stevie about meeting with the caterer. Lexie wanted him there, she’d said. A mental picture of the padre exchanging I do’s with this Lexie had popped into my brain and I’d ordered my dumb self to stop leaping to conclusions. Now it looked like that particular conclusion had been worth leaping to, after all.

  His wedding. Martin had invited me to his wedding and he hadn’t even had the decency to send an invitation. I’d heard of A-list guests and B-list guests. I decided I didn’t want to know how far down the alphabet you had to be to receive a last-minute text.

  As I followed a stone path around the building, an enormous expanse of emerald lawn came into view, extending a couple of hundred yards to the edge of the vineyard. About eighty people milled about amid rows of white chairs that faced the vines. The chairs were bisected by an aisle which ended in a graceful grapevine arch decorated with clusters of purple, pink, and white flowers. Matching flowers filled tall galvanized bucket vases flanking the aisle.

  You’d be hard-pressed to find a prettier spot to get married.

  The guests were being urged to take their seats. I hurried across the lawn and slid into an empty chair on the aisle, then turned with the others to view the processional.

  Stevie exited the building arm in arm with a gray-haired woman who appeared several years older but could very well have been the same age. They beamed as they strolled up the aisle to their seats in the front row. The other woman wore your typical dumpy mother-of-the-bride frock, while Stevie showed off her figure in a 1960s-style coral-colored cocktail dress. They were followed by two middle-aged couples. As I watched them settle in their seats up front, I realized I must be the only person there who had no idea who these people were.

  The woman next to me murmured, “Isn’t he handsome?”

  I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see the padre coming down the aisle. Instead it was a tall man in his late twenties with an auburn ponytail, accompanied by a fortyish woman wearing a conservative blue jacket dress and carrying a folder. The two took up position under the grapevine arch. The woman was clearly the officiant—not a priest, obviously, but a minister or justice of the peace.

  Three bridesmaids came next, wearing charmingly mismatched pastel dresses and escorted by suit-clad groomsmen. The attendants lined up on either side of the arch as the maid of honor and best man joined them. The flower girl, who looked to be about three years old, seemed to have trouble with the concept of strewing petals from the basket she carried. Halfway down the aisle, she dumped the petals in a heap and sprinted for the comforting arms of a relative. Everyone got a chuckle out of that.

  The front-row guests stood, prompting the rest of us to follow suit. We turned to welcome the bride, now beginning the traditional trek down the aisle with her dad.

  My heart somersaulted and I had to grab the chairback to remain on my feet. The bride was in her mid-twenties with dark blond hair and striking pale blue eyes. Her father’s eyes.

  I’d failed to note the family resemblance when I’d seen her picture on Martin’s phone as I’d tried to call 911 in the tunnel. To be fair, I’d been somewhat distracted at the time. But now, as I watched him proudly walk this lovely young lady down the aisle, there could be no doubt.

  She whispered something and he grinned, giving her fingers a loving squeeze where they curled over his elbow. For those few magical moments as he escorted his daughter to her waiting bridegroom, there was nothing the least bit mysterious or dangerous about Martin Kade McAuliffe.

  He spied me and gave a little wink. He wore an impeccably tailored dark charcoal suit. His daughter’s gown was a flowing sheath of pale yellow silk. Sunlight glinted off something colorful pinned to her bodice. When I saw what it was, I stifled a gasp.

  The last time I’d seen the mermaid brooch, it had been pinned on a dead woman lying in her coffin. The artful arrangement of platinum, diamonds, and precious stones looked far better on this vibrant young bride than it had on Colette O’Rourke. And now that I knew it had been inspired by the McAuliffe coat of arms, the effect was… perfect.

  I swear the mermaid winked at me, too.

  ______

  Martin swirled the ice in his glass of Jameson’s as we strolled between rows of grapevines, each vine bearing clusters of tiny green buds. “They say the scent of these flowers is an aphrodisiac.”

  “Is that so.” I smirked even as I wondered whether it could be true. More likely, the yummy hum of awareness I felt was the result of my third glass of champagne. Or the romantic setting. Or how ruthlessly sexy Martin looked in semiformal attire.

  “Would I lie?” he said.

  “You don’t really expect me to answer that.”

  “Haven’t you noticed that Ben and my mom can’t keep their hands off each other? It’s this.” He inhaled deeply, drawing the delicate, earthy perfume of the vines into his lungs.

  “Or it might be the fact that he’s her date to this shindig.” I recalled Martin informing Ben Ralston, during our meeting at his office that fateful day, that Stevie thought he was cute and urging him t
o go for it. I liked them both and was glad to see that one or the other of them had made a move.

  The sun had recently set, painting the western sky salmon and gold. We were some distance from the big white tent where the wedding guests lingered over dessert, but the music carried on the breeze, a lovely classical piece being played by the string quartet Martin had hired. Earlier I’d slipped away to my car and changed back into the ballet flats. I mean, four-inch heels in a vineyard? Please.

  “Ben’s the reason you’re here today.” Martin sipped his drink.

  “Do I want to hear this?” I was still steamed about the text.

  “Lexie and Dillon wanted to keep the guest list under control, and her mom and I were fine with that,” he said. “It’s their day and we figured they should invite their own friends, not ours.”

  I’d met Lexie’s mother during the reception. Erin and Martin had been seventeen when Lexie was born, more like high school friends with benefits than sweethearts. Martin had worked hard to support his daughter and be a real father to her, even after Erin got married a few years later and gave Lexie two siblings. The one thing he’d insisted was that she share his last name.

  “So how did Ben get me invited?” I asked.

  “By telling Lexie and Stevie what went on in that tunnel.”

  I stopped walking. So did he. I said, “They didn’t know?”

  He shrugged. “They had a wedding to plan. They didn’t need all the grisly details.”

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You told Ben all about it, but not your mother and daughter.”

  “Ben found out from Bonnie.” He flung his half-melted ice into the vines. “He was there this morning when the women were getting ready, and I guess he thought they already knew about it.”

  “I still don’t get it,” I said. “Why would that make Lexie invite me? She never even met me.”

  His pale eyes appeared to glow in the fading light of dusk. “She insisted on meeting the woman who saved her dad’s bacon. Twice.”