Love Around the Corner

by Amanda Weaver

  “Anybody home?” Jess hollered from the entryway.

  “Kitchen!” Gemma hollered back.

  “Of course,” Jess said, when she appeared in the doorway. “Two floors and five bedrooms, but this family lives in the kitchen. Hey, Teresa. How was Uncle Richie’s?”

  “Great, thanks. Grab a plate. Gemma made dinner and it’s fantastic.”

  “I need wine first.” Jess swiped her long dark hair out of her face and dropped her messenger bag on the sideboard. She splashed a healthy pour of wine into a glass before moving to the stove to serve her plate.

  “Hang on, Jess.” Gemma scrambled out of her seat to grab some fresh chopped rosemary from the cutting board and sprinkled it over Jess’s plate. “It makes all the difference.”

  Jess sniffed at it. “If you say so. You know I trust you.” She dropped heavily into the chair next to Gemma.

  “Long day, babe?”

  “An eventful one. You’ll never guess what happened.”

  “The government has been taken over by shape-shifting aliens and Alex is about to break the story.”

  “No, although you’re right about the government. This is juicier. Dan has proposed to Mariel.”

  “What?”

  “Dan?” Teresa interjected. “That’s Dan, your boyfriend’s dad?”

  “And owner of half the world’s media outlets,” Gemma added.

  “And Mariel, your boss?” Teresa pressed.

  Mariel was much more than Jess’s boss. When their mother had first gotten sick, their insurance company abruptly dropped her coverage over some bullshit technicality. Poor Dad had to deal with his wife’s terminal illness and a mountain of medical debt, too. Even at ten years old, Jess had been an idealist, out to right the world’s wrongs. She wrote an impassioned letter to Mariel Kemper, her favorite investigative journalist...because Jess had been the kind of kid who had a favorite journalist. Mariel had taken that letter to heart and ended up writing a multi-part story on the company’s shady dealings. She’d won a Pulitzer and the Romanos won a settlement from the insurance company. Mariel was the editor at Jess’s paper now, but she’d been in the Romano circle long before that.

  “Yep.” Jess took a hefty swig of her wine. “He popped the question when he whisked her off to his estate in St. Croix this weekend.”

  Gemma shook her head. Dan falling in love. Who’d have guessed? “So the greatest womanizer the world has ever seen has been tamed. What did she say?”

  “She’s thinking about it.”

  “Ouch,” Teresa said. “I’m guessing Dan wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Mariel’s no dummy,” Gemma said. “She knows Dan’s rep just like the rest of the world does. He wasn’t exactly subtle. I don’t blame her for being cautious.”

  “I know it’s hard to believe, but he hasn’t so much as glanced at another woman since he and Mariel got together. I think he really loves her.”

  “She’s too good for Dan,” Gemma said.

  “She’s brilliant, for sure,” Jess said. “But Dan has his good points, too.”

  “I don’t believe it. Are you finally warming up to Daddy Drake?”

  Jess waggled her left hand, the diamond of her engagement ring flashing in the light from overhead. “He’s going to be family. I have to. But seriously, Dan’s not all bad. He’s a lot to take. And he can be an arrogant ass sometimes. But he’s really generous with the people he loves.”

  “He tried to give you a whole townhouse in Manhattan as an engagement present.”

  “His heart was in the right place,” Jess said staunchly. “He just didn’t understand how Alex and I would feel about it. It’s fine now.”

  “Why didn’t you take the house, Jess?” Teresa asked. “That’s a hell of a gift.”

  “It’s just not right for me. I wouldn’t feel comfortable in a place like that. Alex and I wanted to live someplace a little more modest.”

  Her baby sister would stand by her principles to the death. Gemma didn’t always understand her, but she was proud of her confidence, her passion. It was going to serve her well when she married the son of one of the richest men in America. That world could devour some people, but Gemma wasn’t worried about Jess. She’d hold her own just fine.

  “So do you think Mariel will say yes?”

  Jess sighed, her gaze turning a little dreamy. “Yeah, I think she will, eventually. Dan drives her crazy, but you can’t help who you fall in love with.”

  No, that was for damned sure. Jess had hated Alex Drake before tumbling headlong into love with him. And Livie—brilliant Livie—had to go fall in love with some irresponsible hacker felon who was about as wrong for her as a guy could be. And then there was Gemma, so besotted at sixteen that she didn’t see Brendan Flaherty’s ability to devastate her until it was too late.

  How much pain could she have saved herself years ago if she’d been able to avoid falling in love with him? But the years since had made her smarter. That was never happening to her again.

  On the counter, her phone vibrated with an incoming call from her father.

  “Hey, Dad. Need me to come in and help out?” Football season was over so Mondays were usually dead, but it was possible he could have gotten a little rush of customers.

  Her father exhaled heavily. “I don’t need you behind the bar, but you’d better come over, Gem. It’s Mr. Mosco. The ambulance is loading him up now.”

  Gemma glanced at Jess, who was already on her feet, sensing bad news in the air. “We’ll be right there.”

  Chapter Nine

  “I can’t believe he’s gone,” Jess said, looking sadly around Mr. Mosco’s tiny, cluttered apartment over the bar. “He’s lived here as long as I can remember.”

  John Romano rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Nearly as long as I can remember, too. Victor moved in when I was still in high school. Damned shame.”

  Teresa stepped up behind him and ran her hand over his shoulder. “He seemed like a nice man.”

  “He was the sweetest,” Jess said.

  Gemma ran her fingers across the spines of a row of brightly colored binders. They contained Mr. Mosco’s collection of Broadway Playbills, one from every show he’d ever seen. The bookshelf was entirely full. Sometimes when she’d bring him up some food, he’d tell her about his favorites, name-dropping all the original casts he’d seen perform live. Gemma rarely recognized the names, but she listened anyway, because those memories had been precious to him.

  “Do you know how to contact his family?” Teresa asked.

  “They, ah, didn’t approve of him,” Dad said.

  “Homophobic assholes,” Jess muttered.

  “That’s terrible,” Teresa said, turning in a slow circle, taking in the room where Mr. Mosco had lived the majority of his adult life. She fingered the fringe of an embroidered shawl draped over a side table. “Poor man.”

  “Guess I’ll put a notice in the paper,” Dad said. “See if any of them want to come claim his stuff. I remember he had a lot of friends coming and going back when he was younger, but then with AIDS and everything...” He lifted a hand and let it fall. “I think all his friends from the old days are gone now.”

  Gemma’s eyes roved over the room, crowded with a lifetime’s worth of possessions—a giant framed poster from Singin’ in the Rain, another shelf packed with DVDs, a collection of blown-glass figurines entirely covering the surface of two tables, stacks and stacks of gossip magazines. An overstuffed, sagging floral armchair, still bearing the imprint of Mr. Mosco’s form, faced the television set. A folding TV table stood before it, holding the remote, a copy of TV Guide, Mr. Mosco’s pill box, and an empty plate, scattered with the remains of the last meal she’d brought up to him.

  All these years, Mr. Mosco had always seemed so happy, so cheerful, always ready with a smile or a snarky quip whenever she
saw him. He’d lost everyone—his family, his friends—and still stayed so upbeat. For a moment, Gemma imagined it, not having her family at her back, losing all her friends one by one, and she felt cold.

  “If his family haven’t reached out to him in all these years, I can’t see why they’d bother now,” Jess said. “After all, it’s not like he was secretly sitting on millions of dollars.”

  “He was broke,” Dad said. “Getting by on social security. I’d be surprised if there’s enough in his account to pay to bury him.”

  “We’ll put a collection jar on the bar to pay for his funeral,” Gemma said. “He shouldn’t end up buried in some unmarked grave out on Hart’s Island.” The least they could do was to make sure poor Mr. Mosco had a dignified exit from this world. And maybe he had no family or friends, but he had them, the Romanos.

  “That’s a great idea, Gemma,” Teresa said.

  “And we’ll make up the rest ourselves if we need to,” her father added.

  “We should be the ones to pack up his stuff,” Jess said, with a decisive nod of her head. “We cared more about Mr. Mosco than any of his stupid family. It’s right that we’re the ones to do it.”

  Dad smiled fondly at Jess. “You’re right, honey. It should be us. It’s the right thing to do.” He cast a look around the room. “It’s gonna take some time to get this place ready to rent again.”

  “Hey, if we ask market rate maybe we’ll finally make enough to cover the property taxes,” Gemma pointed out.

  Dad had steadfastly refused to raise Mr. Mosco’s rent for a decade, at least, even as the neighborhood skyrocketed in popularity. Gemma completely agreed with his decision, but she had to admit, it would be nice if this building could start paying for itself. God knows, the bar barely did these days.

  “It’s going to take more than movers to get this place ready for a new tenant.” Jess crouched to examine a wall outlet, overloaded with splitters and extension cords. “These outlets are still two-prong. You can’t plug a single modern appliance in up here. Dad, when was the last time we had an electrician in?”

  Their father looked momentarily flustered. “Hell if I know. We’ve got the certificate of occupancy, but since the tenant and the business haven’t changed, I never had to update anything.”

  Gemma groaned. “We haven’t had this unit inspected since the eighties? Electricity, plumbing, insulation... I bet we have to redo everything.”

  “If it’s still got the insulation my grandfather used, then it’s old newspapers.”

  “What?” Gemma turned to gape at him. “Newspapers? Like, actual newspapers? In the walls?”

  Dad shrugged. “That’s what they used in the old days.”

  “Jesus, this place is a firetrap,” Jess said. “It’s a miracle it hasn’t already burned down.”

  Gemma picked her way through the living room, winding around the closely packed furniture, noting each overloaded outlet and snaking extension cord with growing trepidation. Mr. Mosco kept the wood floors mostly covered with bright, threadbare area rugs, but she could feel the uneven boards of the floors—original to the building—poking through. So much work to do.

  She peered through the front windows at the people streaming by on the sidewalk one floor below, trying her best not to scan the crowd for a glimpse of Brendan Flaherty. Now that she knew he was back in the neighborhood, her eyes couldn’t help looking for him everywhere she went. She hadn’t so much as caught a glimpse of him since that night he came into the bar. Maybe that was it, the one and only time she would cross paths with him, despite his proximity. Good. Let him stay gone. Again.

  Jess came to join her at the window, running a thumbnail through the chipped paint of the frame. “These windows look original. Which is quaint and all, but I can feel a draft coming in.”

  “New windows would cost a fortune.” Gemma glanced over her shoulder at her father. He was standing in the middle of the room, looking around himself. She knew that expression on his face so well. She’d seen it ever since her mother died—the face of an overwhelmed man, doing his best to hold his family together all on his own. No matter how hard he worked, there always seemed to be something new popping up to bring that expression back. Taxes, payroll, the liquor supplier’s bill, taps that needed to be replaced, plumbing that needed repairs, a dying furnace, two daughters to put through college, and now this. As hard as Gemma tried, she’d never been able to banish that expression of worry once and for all. It seemed she never would.

  Property taxes were due May first, which meant they needed a new tenant in this place as soon as possible, preferably paying market rate. But that couldn’t happen if they couldn’t come up with the money to get it ready to rent in the first place. And that was looking highly doubtful at the moment.

  Chapter Ten

  The next day, Gemma was still fretting over what to do about Mr. Mosco’s apartment and absently drying a rack of pint glasses when the front door shrieked open. She really had to get on those hinges.

  “Hey, Kendra. What are you doing here? Aren’t you working today?”

  She shrugged as she crossed the bar. “Carlos is out of the country until next Tuesday.”

  Three years ago, in a typical Kendra-like display of bravado, charisma, and bluster, she’d talked her way into a gig as a personal assistant to a financial guru, despite having zero qualifications for the job. Somehow, she’d turned out to be brilliant at it, and she now had her boss convinced he couldn’t breathe from one minute to the next without Kendra there to organize it for him. Gemma didn’t know how she did it.

  As long as his life ran smoothly, Carlos Hernandez was willing to give Kendra free rein to manage her days as she saw fit, which often included taking two-hour lunches to hit sample sales, get her roots done, or come harass her hardworking cousin in Brooklyn.

  “So you decided to spend all your free time at Romano’s? Aww, thanks, Kendra.”

  “I came to see if you’d heard the news.”

  “What news?”

  “DiPaola’s is closing.”

  Gemma’s hands stilled as she looked up at Kendra. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “Mom heard it from Cecilia DiPaola herself this morning. They’re closing up and selling the building.”

  Gemma set the glass down carefully, bracing her hands on the bar. DiPaola’s Bakery was their next-door neighbor and had been in business almost as long as Romano’s. They were one of the stalwart holdouts from the old days. DiPaola’s Bakery, Vinelli’s Meats, Russo’s Pizza, Sal’s Restaurant, Romano’s Bar...they were almost all that was left of the old Italian neighborhood. The DiPaolas were like family.

  “I have to talk to Maria.” Gemma ducked under the pass-through and hurried across the bar.

  “What...now?” Kendra hustled after her, her high heels clacking on the tile floor.

  “What is she thinking?”

  “She’s thinking people don’t buy bread at a bakery every day anymore and they can’t afford to stay in business. It happens, Gemma.”

  Gemma hung the Back in Five Minutes sign on the front door and locked it behind Kendra. “Not to the DiPaolas.”

  Because if it happened to the DiPaolas, it might happen to the Vinellis next, and after that...well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  Outside, DiPaola’s looked like it always had...like it had since the fifties. The fading green fabric awning was extended, keeping the sun off the three-tiered wedding cake that had sat on display in the front window for the past five years...having replaced an earlier identical display cake. Baskets flanked the wedding cake, holding today’s loaves of Italian and semolina bread, wrapped in the distinctive white, green and red DiPaola bread sleeves.

  The bell over the door tinkled as Gemma pushed it open. The warm, yeasty smell of the morning baking, which was still done in the ovens in the basement, lingered in the air. Mrs. Burke fro
m around the corner was paying Maria DiPaolo for her small bag of rolls, carefully counting out nickels from her change purse as Maria smiled patiently at her. There was no sign of the apocalypse about to descend.

  Gemma hovered near the front door with Kendra while she waited for Mrs. Burke to be finished.

  “What exactly are you expecting to accomplish?” Kendra hissed.

  “I just want to know what happened.”

  “Probably nothing. The same shit that’s been happening for decades, just a little bit less of it each month until they end up in the red.”

  Mrs. Burke, who had to be ninety if she was a day, finally made her way to the front door.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Burke.”

  “You girls,” Mrs. Burke said with a hazy smile. “You’re growing up so fast!”

  To Mrs. Burke, they were always teenagers. Every time she saw either one of them, she was surprised all over again at the passage of the years.

  Kendra smirked and elbowed Gemma. “We sure are, Mrs. Burke.” But she still held the door open for Mrs. Burke, because that’s what you did for old people, even if you were a sarcastic smart-ass like Kendra.

  Maria DiPaola planted one hand on her ample hip and leaned against the counter. “You heard.”

  Gemma closed the distance across the shop. “I heard, but Maria, I don’t understand. What happened?”

  Maria threw up her hands and glanced around the shop. “Nothing. Everything. Every year we make less and running this place costs more.” She brushed a tuft of fuzzy black curls that had escaped her ponytail off her forehead. Maria was in her early forties, but Gemma had always thought of her as a contemporary—another fourth-generation kid coming up in the family business. She’d looked up to Maria, expecting to see her eventually take over one hundred percent once her parents retired, just like Gemma expected to take over from her dad someday.

  “I didn’t realize it was so bad.”