by Lucy Score
Doctor Dreamy pulled her headset off. “Yeah. I can do that.”
“She’ll probably cuss you out,” Aldo warned her. “Don’t take it personally.”
She gave him a smile. “I’ll cuss her out right back.”
“Thanks…” He drifted off as the stretcher was wheeled away from the helicopter.
23
“Thanks for getting back to me, Sheriff,” Gloria said into the phone. “I had some questions from people about security during the festival.” It was embarrassingly great to talk to law enforcement about something besides her ex-boyfriend.
Sheriff Bodett waded through her questions and provided answers that she dutifully scrawled down in her notebook. She needed to learn to type faster, Gloria decided. It would save her a lot of transcription time. She eyed the stacks of paper taking up her mother’s kitchen counter. Time and paper and kitchen real estate.
“Thanks again. I appreciate your time,” Gloria said, wrapping it up. “And if there’s anything you need from me, don’t hesitate to call.” She was getting a dozen calls a day about the festival that was still weeks away. It wasn’t exactly a social life, but she’d take it.
“Anytime, Gloria,” Sheriff Bodett said. She could hear him slurping up his soup lunch. “You’re doing a fine job.”
Gloria felt herself go pink at the praise. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.”
They disconnected, and as Gloria dug into her emails, her phone rang again. It took her almost twenty minutes with the town manager’s assistant to fix the issue with the parade permit. She spent another five minutes dodging pointed questions about what she’d been doing at Aldo Moretta’s house this week from Georgia Rae, the mouth of Benevolence, who’d actually shown up on the doorstep with gossip muffins.
Closing the door on Georgia Rae’s retreating figure, Gloria decided she’d earned a little break, on her day off no less, and flopped down at the counter with her mother’s laptop.
Gloria opened up the photo gallery of the one-bedroom apartment again and clicked through. It was small but cute. And she still couldn’t quite afford it. She was saving every penny for a security deposit and first and last month’s rent. In a few weeks, a few paychecks, she’d be ready to find her own place.
She’d do a little dreaming on Craigslist and Pinterest, of course, for decor ideas. Visualizing couldn’t hurt, could it?
Gloria rolled her shoulders and stretched. The kitchen still smelled like the cookies she’d baked earlier that morning. Baking had turned out to be surprisingly therapeutic. Every time she had a nightmare or someone gave her the “poor little” look or she started to panic about letting an entire town down, she erased it with sugar cookies and fruit cobblers.
She slipped a cookie off the tray and nibbled.
The doorbell rang, and she reluctantly closed her mother’s laptop.
“Harper! This is a nice surprise,” Gloria greeted the disheveled blonde on her front step. She leaned down to rough up Lola’s massive head. The pit bull was a charcoal-gray wrecking ball of muscle and love. Her tongue lolled out and swiped over Gloria’s entire face.
Max, the little three-legged something or other pranced, in and out of her knees until she picked him up. “Yes, I see you, too, Max! Can you come in or are you just passing by?” she asked.
Harper pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head, and Gloria felt her heart trip up. Harper’s gray eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. “I actually have some news about Aldo,” she said, her voice tight.
Gloria felt the breath leave her body. No. Not Aldo.
“He’s hurt, Gloria,” Harper said, the words tumbling out of her. “He came through surgery, and the doctors are hopeful. They had to take part of his leg.”
Gloria closed her eyes as her vision swam. He was alive. That’s what mattered most. Aldo was alive. Max wriggled in her grasp and whimpered. She nuzzled him to her face.
“Aldo…” She couldn’t get anything else out. Her throat was closing up around a lump that might never go away.
Harper grabbed her arm. “He’s going to be okay. Luke emailed me this morning and said the surgery team’s only concern right now is infection.” She paused. “He hasn’t woken up yet.”
Her friend’s voice broke a little bit. Worry and fear in her eyes.
“But he will,” Gloria said with a certainty she didn’t know the origin of. But she was clinging to it. He would wake up, and he would come home.
“Yeah. He will,” Harper agreed. Tears filled her friend’s eyes.
“I emailed him Friday night after you gave me his address,” Gloria confessed on a shaky breath.
Harper bit her lip. “Then he’ll have something to read when he wakes up,” she decided. “So, speaking of Aldo, would you mind giving me and my two stinky mutts a ride to Mrs. Moretta’s house? I left my car there last night, and I wanted to check in on her.”
Mrs. Moretta? Meet Aldo Moretta’s mother? Gloria glanced down at her cutoffs and flour-spattered pink t-shirt. “Umm.”
Harper’s face brightened. “Are you nervous about meeting his mother?” she gasped in delight.
“It’s Mrs. Moretta!” Gloria tried to defend herself. “She’s terrifying. Who wouldn’t be nervous about meeting her?”
Harper grinned.
Crap. Fine. Whatever.
“Oh, screw it!” The woman would take her as she was or not at all, Gloria decided. “Just let me brush my hair and bag up some of the cookies I baked this morning.”
24
Mrs. Moretta was even more terrifying in person. Gloria’s potential future boyfriend’s mother was a loud, opinionated grump.
She threw open the door before they had even crossed the porch. “He’s awake, and he asked if everyone else was okay and then said he wanted a cheeseburger,” Mrs. Moretta announced. “And now I have to pack to meet him ‘somewhere’ in the near future, which is a pain in my ass. I didn’t ask my son to blow himself up. Who’s gonna water my plants and get my mail and steam iron the draperies? Draperies don’t just do that themselves.”
“I’d be happy to help while you’re gone,” Gloria stupidly volunteered.
She really needed to stop doing that.
Mrs. Moretta harrumphed. “Who the hell are you?’
“Mrs. Moretta, this is my friend Gloria.” Harper made the introductions.
“Ohhh. So you’re the girl my son has his eye on,” she said with a fierce frown, giving Gloria a withering once-over.
Gloria did her best not to wilt under the woman’s stare.
“Sorry,” Harper hissed under her breath. “It slipped out. There was wine and tears.”
“You think I’m deaf just ‘cause I’m old?”
Mrs. Moretta couldn’t have been more than fifty-five. But she sure had the crotchety thing going for her.
“Well, come in then,” Mrs. Moretta demanded, shuffling away from the door. She was round and soft in the body and hard and sharp in the tongue.
She snatched the offered bag out of Gloria’s hands. “I thought you might like some cookies,” Gloria began.
But Mrs. Moretta had already opened the bag and shoved a hand inside. “You’re probably as hungover as I am,” she said to Harper, offering her the bag.
“I wouldn’t say no to a coffee as big as my face,” Harper told her, helping herself to a cookie.
Harper had explained the emotional, boxed wine sit-in she, Claire, and Mrs. Moretta had shared last night. Hence the movie-star sunglasses Harper was rocking.
The dogs wandered into the kitchen and laid down on the cool tile.
“You make coffee,” Mrs. Moretta pointed at Harper. “And you can help me pack.”
“Me?” Gloria asked.
“How else am I supposed to tell if you’re good enough for my son!” Mrs. Moretta shook her head like she was tired of explaining things to idiots and mounted the steps to the second floor.
“Good luck,” Harper sang under her breath.
Numbly, Gloria plodde
d up the stairs to her doom.
Mrs. Moretta’s bedroom had been hosed down in baby pink. The walls, the bedspread, the pillows, the carpet. There was a huge flat screen TV hung on one wall and a white dresser with pink roses on the other. The dresser drawers and closet doors were flung open, and clothing was everywhere except for in the open suitcase on the foot of the bed. What looked like a floral muumuu was draped over the pink armchair in the corner.
“What do you pack for an open-ended hospital trip?” Mrs. Moretta demanded.
“Um. Underwear?” Gloria guessed.
“Never wear it!” The woman sounded like a foghorn proudly proclaiming her commando status.
She should have brought the cookies up with her. And wine. She could use some right about now. A gallon of it.
“Okay.” Gloria took a deep breath and forced herself to focus on the task at hand rather than the absurdity. “Let’s start with comfortable clothing. You don’t want to be sitting in a hospital room in stilettos and leather pants.”
Mrs. Moretta guffawed. “So you’re funny then?”
Gloria gave a little shrug and pulled a cardigan sweater with a dozen cats embroidered on it. “I guess so. Let’s do some layers in case the hospital is cold.”
“Do you plan to have babies with my son?” Mrs. Moretta demanded when Gloria folded up a pink t-shirt with rhinestones inexplicably covering only the breast region.
“Babies aren’t really on my radar right now,” Gloria said slowly. And one kiss wasn’t exactly a marriage proposal. One mind-melting, bone-warming, remember-for-a-lifetime kiss. But still.
Mrs. Moretta hurled a mud-brown turtleneck sweater at her.
“Huh,” she harrumphed. “Well, I suppose in your situation—being new to relationships that aren’t complete shitstorms and all—it’s smart to take it slow.”
Was that a compliment? Gloria couldn’t tell. She folded the turtleneck and stuffed it in the suitcase.
“How about marriage?” Mrs. Moretta demanded. “You’re not one of those broads who thinks she’s too good to wear a ring, are you? Because I won’t like that.” She shook a metal clothes hanger at Gloria.
“No, I like marriage. At least the idea of it. It would have to be a very special man.”
“You mean to deal with all your baggage?” Mrs. Moretta shouted.
“That, and he’d have to be special for me to deal with his baggage.”
Still wielding the clothes hanger, Mrs. Moretta frowned for a moment. “That’s smart. So you’re funny and smart. And your cookies are okay. As long as you’re not some kind of crazy bridezilla or an alcoholic asshole or some horny one-night stand kinda gal, you have my blessing to date my Aldo.”
Gloria gave up all pretense of being calm and collected. She flopped down on the pink satin bedspread, nearly sliding back off. “What makes you think Aldo would even be interested?” she asked. He’d shown some very definite interest before he left, but what if he came home different? What if everything was different?
“That weird, perky, sunshine and puppy dogs, little blonde downstairs says so,” Mrs. Moretta announced as if Harper Wilde held the keys to all the secrets of the universe. Maybe she did. Gloria could hope, couldn’t she?
“How is he?” Gloria blurted out. She’d had nothing but fourth-hand information. She needed something.
“I spoke to some combat surgeon. The mouth on that woman,” Mrs. Moretta whistled. It sounded more like a compliment than a complaint. “She said he was more concerned with the rest of his guys and gals than he was himself. And he made her promise to call me.” The woman’s eyes watered up in the first show of real emotion. “I can’t wait to talk to that stupid son of a bitch and find out how he got himself blown up.”
Mrs. Moretta hiccupped. Gloria wanted to reach out, offer a comforting hand squeeze, but felt like Mrs. Moretta wasn’t the affectionate type.
A pair of purple corduroy pants hit her in the face.
“Let’s hurry it up,” Mrs. Moretta sniffled. “They might want me to fly to Germany or Guam. I’ll need you to water the plants, feed the birds, clean the curtains, do a little light weeding out front and in the garden. Oh, and maybe run the vacuum upstairs and down. The dusting polish is in the closet. You could start when I leave, or maybe you should come by to help out now since I’m so bereaved.”
25
To: Aldo Moretta
From: Gloria Parker
Subject: Just hi!
Hi Aldo!
I bumped into Harper at Remo’s last night, and she gave me your email address. I thought I’d say hi. Okay, I’m lying. I don’t feel right starting off our email relationship with a lie.
I went to Remo’s with the sole purpose of forcing Harper to give me your email address. I hope you don’t mind. I know you didn’t want to have some long-distance thing going. But I missed you. Is that okay? I mean, I know it’s weird to miss someone that I don’t know well…
Anyway, if it’s not okay, ignore this whole thing and pretend it’s a spam message from an erectile dysfunction supplement company…wait, that’s weird. Don’t do that. Good news! I’m as awkward in email as I am in person! #consistency.
Your plants are doing well, and wildlife has yet to break into your house and claim it as their own. In other town news, I’m organizing this year’s Fourth of July after Merle broke his hip. I’m not sure if it was my people-leasing OCD or a genuine desire to shut Georgia Rae up about the parking space she’s complained about for the last seven years.
I feel…good. Work is fun and challenging, and I think exactly what I need. You’ll be happy to hear that I haven’t broken down and sobbed on any near strangers lately, though I might be holding out for you to come back.
I hope all is well with you. I don’t know if it’s okay to ask questions like where are you, what are you doing, do you miss home?
Good luck. Be safe. I’m thinking about you.
Love,
Gloria
He re-read the email for the 4,000th time. The email he’d never replied to. He’d gotten it two weeks after it was sent. After “the incident,” three surgeries, a touch-and-go infection, and his first torturous rounds of physical therapy that left him weak and gasping.
“Put that thing away before you crash this plane,” his mother bellowed from his elbow in her first-class seat. A retired couple on their way home from a three-week stay in Europe had given up their seats after spotting Aldo in uniform and on crutches. He’d refused the wheelchair.
He couldn’t say why that pissed him off. But most things since arriving in Germany half a limb short had. As far as he could tell, the bastards that had tried to kill the better part of his team—and nearly succeeded with him—had planted their hatred inside him. It thrived in the pit of his stomach, a bright red rage curled around dark, wispy tendrils of something even worse. Fear.
“You don’t need to scream at the whole plane,” Aldo snapped back at his mother. They’d spent the last ten days together, and they were headed stateside for a short stint at Walter Reed and then home. And if he didn’t get some alone time soon, one or both of them was going to end up dead.
“What? You think you deserve the wiffy just because you’re a wounded soldier?”
Ina was both proud of his sacrifice and inconvenienced by it. She managed to roll compliment and jab into the same sentence while butchering the word Wi-Fi.
Aldo shut his laptop, stuffed it back in his bag, and stretched his legs out. Leg. Leg and prosthesis. Mentally, he was no more prepared to have one leg than when Dr. Dreamy had given him the heads up.
He was nothing without his athletic prowess, his strength, his speed. War had taken it all from him. It had robbed him of his sleep, his body, his confidence. He felt like a shadowy monster returning to a place that might not even feel like home again.
“Are you sleeping?” Ina jabbed him hard in the ribs with her elbow, the only part of her body that was pointy. “What movie should I watch?”
“Jesus Chr
ist, Ma.”
Walter Reed was more of a formality, and Aldo found himself home within days. “Home” was his mother’s house for the next few weeks. He was determined to whittle that timeline down to days. She had a spare room—practically a closet, and just as jammed full as one—and bathroom on the first floor, and he “required supervision.”
Stubbornness had him insisting on carrying his duffle slung over his shoulder as he crutched his way impatiently up the porch steps.
Through his exhaustion, his constant roiling anger, he didn’t notice the red, white, and blue hanging baskets on the porch. Inside, he blocked out his mother’s incessant yammering about drapes and birdfeeders and hopped back through the kitchen and off the sun porch to the room he was sure he’d need to shovel pounds of shit out of before he could even enter.
He was wrong. The room was neat as a pin. The twin bed made with fresh linens instead of buried under every single issue of Cosmo that his mother had collected since 1974. Gone were the baskets of yard sale find Beanie Babies and porcelain bird figurines. Pawing through the neatly stacked clothing on the skinny table, he discovered several of his favorite t-shirts and shorts.
His iPad, chargers, and underwear all made the move.
His mother, bless her hollering heart, apparently had gone to great lengths to make his transition an easy one. Aldo felt a vague sense of guilt for doing nothing but griping at her for the past few weeks.
Conscience heavy, he crutched back into the kitchen and found his mother cutting into a pie.
“Ma, if that pie was here when you left, you could get food poisoning. I told you before not to eat moldy food.”
“Leave me alone. This is welcome home pie,” she grunted, shoveling a slab onto one of her tiny rose leaf tea plates. For a ham-fisted banshee, his mother sure appreciated fine, dainty things.
She shoved a card into his hands and watched him owlishly as she hefted the first bite to her mouth.