Grady's Wedding

by Patricia McLinn

  “Public Relations, Leslie Craig.”

  “Hi, Leslie, it’s Grady.”

  He’d caught her by surprise. The message on her machine that Sunday night she’d understood. He’d been in town, didn’t know many people, probably wasn’t accustomed to an evening without a date to fill it. And the message at work the next day had been a polite follow-up. But that had been a week ago, and she certainly hadn’t expected to hear from him now.

  She’d let the silence drag on too long.

  “Grady Roberts,” he prompted, without sounding the least put out.

  She smiled. “I know. How are you?”

  “I’m fine. And I’m coming right along with that project we talked about.”

  “Project? Oh, the present?”

  “Yeah. I contacted that landscaper I mentioned and he went by the place yesterday, right after they closed on the house. He said it’s got a lot of potential. Now he’s drawing up a few general ideas for them, rough sketches, so I’ll have something to put a ribbon on when they have their moving-in party in a couple weeks. Then he’ll work with Paul and Bette so it’s just what they want.”

  “That sounds terrific. I don’t think you could have come up with a better present.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  “It was your idea, Grady.”

  Tris Donlin Dickinson’s head came up from where she was reading the news release Leslie had been going over with her and an architectural consultant to the historic preservation foundation they both worked for. Leslie met her questioning look with a faint shrug.

  “My idea that I wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t insisted I actually give it some thought.”

  “True.”

  He laughed, and she smiled at the sound.

  “Well, I hoped I could thank you—”

  “You already did and you just have again.”

  “—properly. This weekend. I’m coming in to D.C. and I hope we can get together. Dinner, and I hear there’s a great place to dance in Georgetown by the river, and—”

  “I’m sorry, but I have a visitor coming in and I’ll be tied up all weekend.”

  A short silence, before his cheerful response. “Ah, well. Guess I’ll have to wait to make my proper thank-you, then.”

  “Truly, Grady, there’s no need—”

  “Depends on whose need you’re talking about.” His voice had dropped half a tone. “Talk to you later.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Bye.”

  She held the phone through the click and the dial tone. She considered faking a more normal conclusion to the conversation, then decided against it.

  Hanging up, she turned to Tris and Dick Welsh. “Now as I was saying, the coverage I’m hoping for . . .”

  Tris’s eyebrows had nearly disappeared under the blond hair across her forehead, but she cooperated in the return to business. Temporarily.

  Twenty minutes later, the discussion had ended with a few revisions to the release and contingencies for the campaign they hoped would draw attention to a developer’s plan to claw a section out of a Civil War battlefield.

  Dick Welsh left. Tris rose, but only to close the door before resuming her seat with an air of settling in.

  “So,” she started, “that was Grady on the phone, huh?”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “Didn’t know you two were exchanging phone calls on a regular basis.”

  “We aren’t.”

  “You didn’t tell him who your weekend visitor is.”

  “Didn’t I?”

  “You know you didn’t. Trying to make him jealous?”

  “Good Lord, no!”

  The vehemence slipped out and Leslie would have tempered it if she’d had the words to speak again, but Tris relaxed.

  “It’s not that I don’t love Grady,” Tris said. “I mean, really love him, as a friend. For the person he is, not for the god I’d imagined him to be as a kid.”

  Leslie couldn’t help but smile. She’d been around to listen nearly a year ago when Tris had prepared to finally test the college crush she’d harbored for Grady for a dozen years, and she’d been there this fall after Tris realized her feelings for Grady had become friendship, while her feelings for her longtime “buddy” Michael Dickinson had deepened to love. There’d been some rough spots for Tris and Michael in adjusting to their new relationship, but that was past—as Tris’s face clearly showed at the moment.

  “I know, Tris. I know exactly what you mean.”

  “And I really just started to appreciate what a great guy Grady is in the past few months. Maybe I’m seeing him better now or maybe he’s more relaxed with me because I’m not starry-eyed around him. Whatever it is, I see the good things in him, the real good things in him, not just his looks and his charm, but his loyalty and his kind heart and his caring for—”

  "You sound like the man’s press agent,” Leslie murmured.

  Tris frowned without pausing. “—his friends. With his friends he’s terrific. But when it comes to the women he dates . . . I’ve seen him, Leslie, time and time again. I know he doesn’t mean to hurt anyone, and most times he doesn’t because he picks women who won’t be hurt because they want the same thing, but sometimes he doesn’t realize, and he’s so charming . . . It’s like he just can’t help himself and—”

  “Tris, let me set your mind at ease.”

  Leslie stopped the spate of words partly out of self-preservation; her head was spinning. Now she leaned forward and put a hand on her friend’s arm, speaking with the assurance of a thirty-seven-year-old who knew she was well past foibles of the heart.

  “I would not succumb to Grady Roberts’s famed charms, even if he were intent on trying them on me, which he most certainly is not. Is not, you hear? It’s very simple. Business kept Grady in town the weekend before you and Michael came back. He wanted to get a present for Paul and Bette’s housewarming. He asked me to help. I did. He called to thank me.” She straightened and smiled. “As simple as that.”

  Tris still wore a faint frown.

  “Grady called to simply say thank-you?” She sounded skeptical.

  "Yes."

  “Are you sure—”

  “I’m sure.”

  Perhaps she spoke a little sharply because Tris cut a look at her that reminded Leslie that Tris, while younger and perhaps a bit less battered by life’s disappointments, was not stupid.

  “I’m just concerned about you. Leslie.”

  “Bless your heart.” She meant it—she valued Tris’s friendship and caring, but she also used the expression that Tris got such a kick out of on purpose to lighten the mood.

  Tris’s frown lifted, and Leslie adroitly shifted the conversation as she continued dryly, “But if you were truly concerned about me, you would volunteer to help entertain my little cousin April this weekend.”

  Tris snorted. “Concerned, I said. Not stupid. I still remember that trip to the zoo two years ago.”

  They exchanged a look of survivors remembering a shared horror. But Leslie felt obliged to defend her relative.

  “She’s two years older now. Surely she’s grown out of the stage of trying to infuriate the gorillas by pelting them with peanuts.”

  “She’s probably just two years stronger,” was Tris’s uncomforting prediction. “Now she’d probably make them so mad they really would shake the bars loose.”

  * * * *

  By late Saturday afternoon, Leslie wasn’t sure if April Gareaux was stronger, but the thirteen-year-old certainly was more sullen.

  Friday evening she’d taken the girl for dinner on a boat that cruised the Potomac. Admittedly, Leslie had been a bit distracted by the earlier delivery of a half-dozen red roses with a card simply signed “Grady.” Thank heavens Tris had been out of the office.

  Saturday morning, Leslie took April to the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum; the you-are-in-the-cockpit movie left most of the audience gasping and April yawning. They ducked into the National Archives building fo
r a peak at the original Constitution and the genuine John Hancock signature on the Declaration of Independence. For lunch, Leslie took her to the food court in the Old Post Office Pavilion so there would be enough choices for a thirteen-year-old palate.

  April moved like an automaton at half power.

  Riding the subway north, with the afternoon stretching before them, Leslie decided to play what she considered her ace in the hole—a trip to an upscale mall where the District of Columbia met Maryland.

  “Okay,” was all April said to the suggestion.

  Leslie figured it was a pose. From what she heard from parents and advertisers, every girl that age lived for mall delights.

  Not April Gareaux.

  By the time they returned to her apartment, twenty-four hours of single-word answers, uninterested looks and disdainful shrugs had Leslie so worn out she didn’t even have the energy to suggest they go out for dinner.

  “How about if I order in pizza and we see what the TV has to offer?”

  “Okay.”

  That was one of the two answers she’d gotten all day, the other being “Yech.” At least her dinner plans elicited the more positive choice, even if it followed a martyred sigh. She chewed on a piece of chocolate licorice as she dialed the pizza number and watched April flop on the sofa with remote control in one hand and the TV listings in the other, showing probably more enthusiasm than for any other activity.

  The chocolate licorice provided a surefire barometer to Leslie’s low spirits. Her father had introduced her to the treat when she was nine. Chocolate licorice had been her father’s cure for the tragedy of a broken arm that had restricted her the last two precious weeks of that summer, and she still followed it.

  She straightened her shoulders and finished off a second stick of licorice.

  Maybe April Gareaux thought she’d worn down her older relative, scored some sort of victory. Leslie was made of sterner stuff.

  She poured them each a soft drink, slipped off her shoes and sat next to April.

  “Yes, it’ll be good to take it easy tonight, because tomorrow we’re getting up bright and early for church, then we’ll change and take the train up to Baltimore for a baseball game. I have tickets and—”

  April groaned, Leslie persevered.

  “—great seats and the weather’s supposed to be perfect. We can cheer and yell and stuff ourselves on hot dogs. You’ll love it.”

  “I’ll hate it. I don’t know why I had to come here again, anyhow,” April grumbled. The most words she’d said at one time since her arrival.

  Leslie had always loved kids. Whenever the numerous Craig relatives and connections had gathered—as they often did at Grandma Beatrice’s sprawling estate outside Charlottesville, Virginia—she’d entertained and cared for those younger than herself.

  Since leaving Charlottesville for Washington ten years ago, she’d bypassed most family gatherings. But that didn’t stop Grandma Beatrice from involving her in family business. Including what she saw as the sad state of her great-granddaughter April’s upbringing.

  “Your Cousin Melly is making a botch of raising that girl, Leslie,” Grandma Beatrice had said.

  “I’m sure it’s not easy for Melly, with Jeff dying like that—”

  Grandma Beatrice’s disapproving sound—much too genteel to be called a snort—had stopped Leslie’s excuses cold.

  “He wouldn’t have died like that if the two of them hadn’t been trying to climb some fool cliff,” her grandmother retorted. “If you’re a reasonable human being and you want to go somewhere, you take a road, and if there’s no road there’s a darn good reason. Bunch of nonsense. And Melly’s gotten worse, not better. Only thinks of herself and her latest adventure, never the child, and now the child’s growing up a brat.”

  Beatrice Waverly Craig would have torn her own tongue out by its Southern roots before saying such a thing to anyone outside the family, but with Leslie she had always been bluntly honest. Sometimes painfully so.

  “You’ve always loved children, Leslie, and you have nowhere to direct that love. Well, this is a child who takes some effort to love. See what you can do.”

  “But in a weekend how can I—”

  “A weekend might be the most that should be asked of anyone, Leslie.”

  Now, looking at April’s drooping mouth and pugnacious chin, Leslie thought a weekend might be more than should be asked. She also thought April deserved an answer.

  “You’re visiting me again because I’ve always enjoyed kids, and our family thought we’d have a good time together.”

  “Well, I’m not.” Leslie took that to mean April wasn’t having a good time, though April might have been declaring she wasn’t a kid, or perhaps that she wasn’t a member of the family. “And if you enjoy kids so much why don’t you have some of your own to drag around to all these stupid places instead of picking on me?”

  From long practice, Leslie stifled a wince, grateful when the downstairs buzzer gave her time to regain her equilibrium. After buzzing in the pizza delivery man, she opened her eyes wide at her cousin’s daughter and said, with her most exaggerated drawl, “Why, darling, April, it’s exactly because I don’t have any of my own that I turn to you. Because I do so looooove torturing young girls.”

  April’s mouth twitched, and Leslie hoped a smile might follow. But April, after all, was a Craig.

  “Very funny.” She snarled, and her face slipped into accustomed unhappy lines as she again faced the TV.

  The doorbell cut short Leslie’s mental debate whether to push April toward a real conversation. She dipped into her purse for her wallet to pay for the pizza and opened the door.

  * * * *

  It should be arriving just about now.

  Grady grinned to himself.

  The roses had been standard, as classic as a Tracy-Hepburn movie. And he’d send more next week—he wondered if he could have garden roses delivered like the ones they’d seen at the Smithsonian. But some situations, some women, called for something different, and this had never failed.

  The only question had been timing. He didn’t want to be too obvious, but he also wanted Leslie to feel his presence this weekend. Friday would have been overanxious; Sunday might have been too late. Yeah, this would work.

  He might need lessons in housewarming gifts, but nobody could question Grady Roberts’s success in wooing women.

  * * * *

  Leslie stared at the man outside her apartment door.

  Instead of the familiar red, white and blue shirt of the pizza delivery, there stood a man in a neat tan uniform, a man who looked closer to retirement than puberty. Instead of a flat box showing grease spots and oozing tempting smells, he held a large wicker basket with its contents hidden by tinted cellophane and its handle decorated with a silken yellow bow.

  “Leslie Craig?”

  “Yes.”

  “Delivery from Not Just Another Gourmet.”

  She gawked at him. She’d shopped there, but the prices were so high she saved it for special occasions. And delivery? With what they charged? Never. “For me?”

  “Yes, ma’am. If you’ll sign here.”

  Dully, she followed his order, fished out a tip and took the basket.

  “That’s not pizza,” April accused when Leslie sat beside her with the basket on her lap.

  “No.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  April shot her a disgusted look and started peeling back the cellophane. “Well, look.”

  The retreating cellophane first revealed the long thin neck of a bottle of wine—a very good bottle of wine. Then an assortment of foreign cheeses, two tins of pate, four kinds of crackers, a minibowl of strawberries and another of raspberries.

  April had the flap of a small envelope opened before Leslie took it away.

  “Yech.” April vibrated disapproval as she rooted through the basket’s contents. Leslie wished she could have appreciated that April was more
interested than she’d been all of her visit. “Who’d send junk like this? What’s the card say?”

  Leslie had a suspicion, a fear, really. She drew the card from the envelope and read: You wouldn’t come to dinner with me, so I’ve sent an appetizer to you. Enjoy. Grady.

  “Well?” April demanded.

  “It’s from a friend.”

  “I know, a man,” April said wisely. “Mom gets stuff like this from men, too. But only when they really want to get in her pants.”

  “April!”

  “Well, it’s true. That’s when men send the yuckiest things. I like it better when they send candy. But the ones who send this sort of junk are usually the ones she gets all wound up about and goes off with. For a while.” She pulled out a white bakery box and sniffed diligently. “Well, at least he sent dessert. Chocolate. So who’s this guy who wants to get in your pants?”

  “He does not want—” She stopped. She would not debate this with a child. It was ludicrous. She wrapped herself in Grandma Beatrice’s dignity and looked down her nose. “That is an extremely unseemly topic of conversation for a young lady. Especially for a Craig, who should—”

  The doorbell rang again. With the basket and its contents spread out on her lap, Leslie looked at April. “That must be the pizza. Could you . . .”

  April gave a martyred sigh, but took Leslie’s wallet and conducted the swap of money for pizza. Leslie repacked the basket so she could get plates and napkins.

  April ignored the plate and silently plowed through the pizza without removing her eyes from the TV screen.

  Leslie ate more slowly, but just as silently, pushing aside thoughts of Grady by mulling over what April had revealed.

  Melly had always craved excitement and variety, never settling to anything or—to be honest—anyone. Even Jeff. For better or worse, that marriage probably had lasted because he shared her love of adventure and her very fluid definition of fidelity. Neither Melly nor Jeff had been subtle about such things. Leslie wondered how much April had picked up in her first six years of life, and since her father’s death seven years ago.

  With Jeff gone, Melly rushed from adventure to adventure, from man to man. At first she’d taken her daughter with her, but more and more in recent years Melly had left April with varied relatives.