A Fortune Wedding

by Kristin Hardy

  “You can sit over there.” She nodded at a vintage dinette set. It was another seventies relic with a faux woodgrain top and a quartet of swiveling vinyl chairs. A stack of mail and a dirty cereal bowl sat to one side; a sweatshirt draped over the back of one of the chairs. Or not a sweatshirt, Roberto realized, looking closer. A black hoodie.

  “Isn’t it a little warm for sweatshirts?”

  “What? Oh, that’s Josh’s,” she said dismissively, digging a Coke out of the refrigerator. “He left it last time he was here.” She cracked open the can and took a swallow. “All right, so talk. That’s what you wanted, right?”

  What he wanted was to take a good close look at the hoodie, but he supposed it would be a useless exercise. If it had been the one Josh had worn the night of the Spring Fling, he would have washed it. Assuming he’d gotten anything on it. Pure speculation, Roberto told himself. Then again…

  “You were at the Spring Fling with Josh, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Walked around, went on some rides. Ate corndogs.” Lyndsey didn’t bother to sit, but leaned against the counter.

  “How did he seem? Did he act funny?”

  “What do you mean, funny?” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You said something about Josh and the cops. What, is he in trouble? Like he had something to do with his dad getting killed?”

  “Did he?”

  “No way. Why would he have done that?”

  “Things happen. Besides, from what I hear Lloyd Fredericks was putting up a pretty stiff fight to split the two of you up.”

  “Yeah? So? It made Josh mad—it made me mad—but you don’t kill a guy over that.”

  “Someone killed him over something.”

  “Well, it wasn’t Josh,” she flared, thumping her Coke down angrily.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know Josh. Besides, I was with him.”

  “The whole night? Were you there when he fought with Lloyd?”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it. “I had to go home a little early. I had this sinus thing.”

  “When did you leave?”

  “Nine-thirty, ten. But I don’t know anything about a fight.”

  She was lying, he thought. “That’s funny, because it happened around nine. There were witnesses. People heard it.”

  A trapped look flashed over her face. “Maybe I had the time wrong. I don’t remember.”

  “If you saw anything at all, if he said anything, you need to tell me.”

  “Josh wouldn’t…you don’t…I can’t talk to you about this.” Abruptly she seemed near tears. “You have to go.”

  “If you care about Josh, you’ll tell me what you know.”

  Wordlessly, she walked to the door.

  Roberto waited a moment, then followed. At the threshold, he stopped. “Here’s one of my cards. It’s got my cell phone number on it. If you change your mind and want to talk, call me.”

  She took the card, but didn’t look at it. Instead, she watched him walk out the door and step to the edge of the porch.

  “Hey, mister.”

  Roberto turned back to her.

  Lyndsey hesitated. “Lloyd Fredericks was a bad person. Whoever killed him did us all a favor.”

  Half a loaf was better than none. It was the mantra that had helped Frannie survive. Every time life with Lloyd had become intolerable over the years, she’d looked at Josh and reminded herself that maybe she couldn’t have it all, but she had a lot. And it had gotten her through.

  But it hadn’t helped the previous evening at Red. It hadn’t helped at all. She’d been with Roberto and yet not. She’d spoken to him, but only briefly, unable to say anything she really wanted to. She’d seen him, but only in carefully rationed glances, cautious not to give herself away. And she’d stood for an excruciating few moments with her hand mere inches from his, almost vibrating with the need to touch.

  Walking out that door after only half a loaf had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done.

  Over a week had passed since they’d been truly together. She knew all the reasons they had to stay apart. She knew they had to do it to defray suspicion; she knew she had to do it for her own preservation. In the past five weeks she’d been buffeted by crises and change on all sides. She was hanging on by a thread.

  But if she had to wait any longer to see Roberto, she was going to die.

  Frannie blinked. A faint pulse of alarm shivered through her. How had this happened? How had she come to need him so much? How, when she’d done her best to keep him at a distance? She’d let him sneak under her guard, she’d let him become a part of her life. She was dependent yet again. And what in God’s name was she going to do now?

  In time with that thought, she heard his knock and suddenly it all ceased to matter. One moment she was opening the door. The next, she was in Roberto’s arms, crushed against him, his mouth sealed to hers. His hands roved over her body, taking ownership, making her shiver. She gloried in the reality of being able to touch him at last.

  Roberto made an impatient noise and swung her up in his arms. He carried her down the hall to the room they’d been in two weeks before, this time not to fix the door, but to lay her down on that bed he’d fantasized about.

  And do all the things he’d fantasized about next.

  She sat up, her legs dangling over the edge. Her fingers raced down the buttons of his shirt and unbuckled his belt. “Now,” she said, freeing him.

  And stepping up close to the high bed, flipping up her little skirt, he obeyed.

  It was hard and deep, fast and furious. There was no patience for undressing, no time for finesse, only an urgent need to come together. He felt her wrap her legs around his waist. He heard her cry out with every surge. He drove them both, recklessly, heedlessly, into that carnal haze where only pleasure had meaning. Control was precarious; the edge was too close.

  And then they were there. He felt her tense, saw her throw her head back, heard her cries crescendo. Then she was quaking about him even as she dragged him past the point of no return.

  And he knew as they lay after, hearts still racing together, that there was no point of return from her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Frannie pulled a floral box of photographs out of a cabinet and put it on the kitchen table where she and Roberto were sitting.

  “I haven’t even gotten them into an album yet,” she said apologetically. “There’s been a lot going on.”

  “You don’t say,” Roberto drawled.

  “Anyway, here they are.” She spilled them out onto the table. “What did you find out at Lyndsey’s?”

  “A whole lot and nothing at all,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “She knows something. She didn’t want to let me in at first, until I mentioned Josh. I asked her about the Spring Fling and she couldn’t keep her stories straight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She swears he couldn’t possibly have done it, but then she got all upset when I asked her about the fight with Lloyd, which she also swears she didn’t know anything about. She said she was with Josh all the time, except later she said she left early, but the time she gave me was after the fight. When I pointed that out, she told me to leave. I think she was there.” Roberto locked eyes with her. “And she had his hoodie.”

  “She’s always wearing his shirts and things. Anyway, what’s the importance of the hoodie?”

  “I thought I told you about this. The guy I saw throw away the crowbar was wearing some kind of black hoodie, just like the one I saw today.”

  “What?” She stared at him. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Relief made her lightheaded. “But Josh wasn’t wearing a hoodie at the Spring Fling. Look, I’ll show you.” She shifted through the pictures, hands shaking with barely suppressed excitement. “He was wearing a blue snap-button shirt and his black cowboy
hat.”

  “He could’ve changed, Frannie.”

  “When? Before the murder or after? If you saw him running off in a hoodie, he would have to have left his hat somewhere once he put the sweatshirt on. I can tell you for a fact that he didn’t have it. Here,” she said triumphantly, sliding a photograph across to him. “See? Western shirt and Stetson. Not a hoodie in sight. It wasn’t him.”

  “This doesn’t prove anything. He could have put his hat anywhere. He could have put the hoodie on before he met Lloyd to be less obvious, then run off in it, ditched it and come back. Anyway, where’s his hat now? Have you seen it since the Spring Fling?”

  “Of course,” she responded. “It’s here. He wore his ball cap to the game tonight.”

  She took the stairs two at a time to Josh’s bedroom, then stopped short at the sight of one of his gray hoodies thrown over the back of his desk chair. It didn’t matter, she reminded herself. It wasn’t possible that he’d murdered Lloyd, let alone murdered him and brought the blood-soaked clothing home. Roberto was imagining things.

  She stepped back into the kitchen to find him still studying the photograph.

  “Here it is.” She dropped the hat on the table triumphantly.

  Roberto didn’t look up from the picture.

  “Hello? Earth to Roberto.”

  His eyes flicked from her to the hat, then back to the photograph. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

  “Admit it, we were wrong. It’s not Josh.”

  “It’s not Josh.” He slapped the photo down on the table. “It’s me.”

  For an instant, the words simply refused to register. When they did, it snatched her breath away. Roberto, the killer? “That’s not possible,” she whispered. “You couldn’t have murdered Lloyd. You couldn’t have.”

  Roberto shook his head. “I don’t mean the murder. I mean this.” He held up the photograph. “This isn’t Josh. It’s a picture of me.”

  Relief made her weak, then angry. “Funny,” she said shortly, reaching out for the photo.

  “No,” he said. “I’m serious. Look at it.”

  It was one of the many crowd shots she’d taken that night, showing people milling about not far from the carnival. Josh was in profile, his hat pulled down low, collar high, the gaudy wash of color from the rides turning his skin rainbow. “I am looking at it. It’s Josh. I know my son.”

  But as the seconds passed, she wasn’t so sure. Did the hair look darker, or was it simply the lighting?

  “Look at the hat, Frannie,” Roberto said softly. “Look at the hatband.”

  Silver medallions, shining in the lights. But the hat she’d brought downstairs from Josh’s room had a band of tiny cobalt-blue beads, a birthday gift to Josh from Lyndsey the year before.

  “The band in that picture is made of hand-tooled conchas from a Navajo reservation.” Roberto reached over to the chair next to him and lifted up his black Stetson. The silver medallions gleamed. “I bought it about fifteen years ago out in Arizona from the guy who made it. It’s one of a kind.”

  Frannie stared at the photo. And as though it were a game of hidden pictures, she saw what she’d missed—the stronger nose, the shorter hair the broader shoulders. It was Josh, and yet not him. An older brother, maybe, or—And for an instant she felt the room tilt around her. “I must…I must be tired,” she said aloud.

  There was a buzzing in her ears. The profile in the photo looked like Josh, the way he held his shoulders looked like Josh. She glanced up at the framed picture of him on the étagère opposite the table. And suddenly it was like dominoes falling. “You stand the same way,” she said slowly. “Your eyes are set the same. You walk the same way, you—No,” she broke off, shaking her head. “No, that’s—”

  “What? Ridiculous? Is it so far off?”

  She shot to her feet, raking her hair back off her face with both hands. “It’s late and I’m getting punchy. We both are. There is no way that—”

  “What?”

  She shook her head. “It’s impossible.”

  “What? Say it,” he demanded, striding over to her.

  “It can’t be.”

  “Say it.” He caught at her shoulders, forcing her to face him. “Say it. Josh is my son.”

  “No.”

  “He’s my son, Frannie. He’s ours.”

  “No,” she cried out, slapping at his chest, and then her hands turned to fists and she was pummeling him, “No, no, no,” she repeated, tears sliding crazily down her cheeks, her voice half-hysterical.

  He folded his arms around her, trapping her against him until she quieted.

  “My whole life…” she whispered brokenly against his chest.

  And in that moment, looking down at her stricken face he understood Lloyd’s assailant because for the first time in his life, he truly wanted to hurt someone.

  And if Cindy Fortune had been there in that moment, he wouldn’t have been responsible for what he would have done.

  “Sit.” He folded Frannie into a chair and one after another, yanked open the cabinet doors. “Do you have any liquor? Whiskey?” He found the bottles and poured them both a couple of fingers of tequila. He thumped Frannie’s tumbler down before her. “Here, drink.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Drink it,” he ordered.

  He knocked back his own shot, but it didn’t do much to calm him. Instead, he paced. “You and I had sex the night after you were with Lloyd.”

  “But the results of the DNA test—”

  “I don’t give a damn about the DNA test. It’s true. You and I both know it. And I have a pretty good idea who did it.”

  “My…mother?”

  “Who else would have had reason? Not Lloyd’s family, not you. It had to be her.”

  “But how?” Frannie stood. “It’s a lab test. She couldn’t just magically change it.”

  “She wanted me out of your life and she wanted Lloyd in. And she was ready to do whatever it took, including recruiting help.”

  “So everything I’ve lived through in the last nineteen years is because of a lie?” Frannie’s voice rose. “Because of her?” She snatched up a porcelain figurine from the étagère, whirling to fling it against the wall. It burst into fragments.

  “Hey, easy.”

  “Don’t tell me easy,” she rounded on him. “She lied to me. She gave me to Lloyd like I was chattel.” She flung her hands up. “My God.”

  Roberto welcomed the bright flare of anger, something to take away that terrifying fragility. He watched as she strode back and forth.

  “This is crazy. Half of me can’t understand how I could have missed it. The other half says there’s no way it could be true or I would have figured it out years ago. Josh was blond when he was younger, explain that,” she challenged.

  “So are you. So was my grandmother. Why are you fighting this? Do you not want to believe it because you can’t accept that your mother did this to you? Or because you don’t want him to be mine?”

  “I don’t want to believe it because I can’t accept that half my life has been built on a lie.”

  “And mine, too.” He caught at her hands. “But Josh is real. I’m real. What you and I feel for each other is real. The lies that kept us apart are in the past now. What matters is right here.”

  “It’s not that easy, Roberto.”

  “Easy? You think this is easy?” he asked, spinning away in frustration. “I don’t even have words for how I feel right now. We’ve been robbed, Frannie, all of us, years taken away, just stolen. And if I think about it too long I’m going to lose it.” He strode back and forth, eyes on her. “So I’d rather focus on what I can change, and what I can do and what comes next. You tell me, what do we do now?”

  She stared at him. “What do we do now?”

  “There’s Josh. What do we say to him? How do we get the test redone? How do we deal with Cindy?”

  Even the thought of her mother generated a wave of fury so powerful it made Frannie feel vaguely
sick. “I can’t handle dealing with her right now.”

  “Josh, then. What do we tell him? How do we confirm the results? How do we become a family?”

  “A family?” What she’d always longed for and yet it seemed like an illusion, something to be snatched away the instant she began to believe in it. Happiness wasn’t a part of her life. Reality had never been so kind.

  But Roberto believed in it. “He’s our son. We belong together, we always have. Cindy did her best to keep us apart, but it didn’t work. And maybe it’s late, but there’s still time.”

  Cindy. Her stomach roiled. “You’re going too fast,” Frannie said sharply. “Stop.” There were too many changes all at once, too many emotions buffeting her. Jet fighters trying to turn too quickly broke apart under the strain, she thought, the way she felt like things were breaking apart. Everything she’d experienced for nineteen years was a lie, every nightmare moment she’d endured had occurred in a prison of her mother’s making. She’d nearly been destroyed, and now to discover that it should never have happened made her almost dizzy.

  “I love you, Frannie,” Roberto said. “I want us to be together. Didn’t you tell me how you used to imagine that Josh was mine? Now it’s real. We can make it real.”

  “It’s too fast,” she said again, circling around the table. “You don’t understand. My entire life has been turned upside down. Lloyd wasn’t just verbally abusive, Roberto. He hit me. Not often, but he made it count when he did.”

  “That bas—”

  “But I survived it,” she cut him off. “I survived it, and I lived through it day after day because I told myself that Josh needed his father, however poor a specimen he was. I told myself that it was a bed of my own making, that I’d made my choice long ago and that if anybody had to suffer for it, it would be me.

  “And now you’re telling me that it wasn’t so at all? I can’t just shrug it off, don’t you see? I can’t just say okay, good on me, and march ahead without a thought,” she said, the words tumbling out. “You want to make up for lost time? I’m just trying to keep up. Five weeks ago, Lloyd was murdered. Three weeks ago, I was still in jail.” She pressed her fingertips against her eyelids. “It’s been one thing after another and it just keeps coming. I care about you, Roberto, I truly do, but I feel like I’m in a cement mixer that just keeps turning. I’ve got to find some way to make it stop before I can figure out what to do next. The only thing that hasn’t been taken from me in the last five weeks is my son.”