And Birdie Favazza was known for helping make dreams come true.
Stella brought two more desserts to the table, placed one in front of Nell and then leaned near to Birdie’s ear, talking in a stage whisper as she set the other plate down. “I’m not joking about the Lincoln, Miz Birdie. The extra keys you gave me, like, disappeared from the kitchen hook today. You need to talk to Harold.”
Birdie nodded, a frown pulling her thin eyebrows together. “Don’t worry about them, dear,” she said. “I’m sure they’re around someplace.”
When she looked at the others, Birdie had erased the frown with a smile. “Stella keeps track of us all quite nicely. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
Birdie seemed to welcome the shadow that fell across the table just then, diverting attention.
An elegant woman appeared between Cass Halloran and Gracie.
“Good evening,” Sophia Santos said in a distinctive voice.
At the sound of her aunt’s voice, Gracie immediately pushed back her chair and started to stand up.
“Sit, please, cariña mía,” Sophia said, kissing Gracie lightly on each cheek. Although Sophia’s greeting to everyone was gracious, her accented words held a note of urgency. “Please,” she said, “continue talking. I need one moment with Gracie.” But without waiting for the chatter to pick up and cover her words, she leaned over and set one hand firmly on Gracie’s shoulder, as if Gracie might somehow flee if she let go. She spoke quietly, but in a voice that contrasted with the festivity around them.
“I have been trying to reach you, Grace,” she said. “I must speak with you. Please come to the house tomorrow morning.” Sophia spoke with the same kind of authority her husband did. Requests did not require answers. Gracie would stop by.
“Es urgente,” Sophia added.
She straightened up, pushed an imaginary stray hair into place, and apologized again for interrupting.
“Nonsense,” Birdie said. “It’s always nice to see you, Sophia.”
“The Santos and Delaney construction companies are doing a wonderful thing, helping with the community center,” Nell said.
“It is, how you say it, a ‘unique’ partnership,” Sophia Santos said, but the words lacked amusement, and her striking face remained expressionless.
“Unique is probably an understatement, Sophia,” Ben said. “Who could have imagined those two men agreeing on anything?”
“It’s all show,” Birdie said. “They’re both teddy bears beneath those tough exteriors.”
“Teddy bears . . .” Sophia repeated, trying unsuccessfully to put the image into a context that made sense in her own language.
While Birdie tried to explain, Nell looked over at the bar just as Alphonso Santos walked in from the bar’s terrace. He wiped his hands on a white handkerchief, then joined the mayor and the Sea Harbor police chief. The three men sat at a table, their faces serious, and fell into a discussion that Nell suspected revolved around the community center tonight’s party would benefit. Work had already begun, but the complications of multiple companies working on a civic project were always evident.
Nell had rarely observed Alphonso from afar this way. She felt slightly guilty, rude, perhaps. Never stare, her mother had always taught her and her sister, Caroline. But then, looking at someone across a crowded room wasn’t exactly staring.
Alphonso lifted his head and Nell was taken aback by what an utterly handsome man he was. Thick, graying hair and an imposing stature enhanced his look and emphasized the strong bones of his face, the piercing eyes. With family homes in Boston and Sea Harbor and several Massachusetts businesses contributing to his wealth, he was a powerful force on Cape Ann.
Alphonso looked up, his eyes meeting Nell’s. He acknowledged her with a nod of his head and a slight lift to the corner of his lips.
Amused? Nell wondered. Then his gaze moved beyond her, across the table to where his wife stood tall and regal next to his niece.
The trace of a smile dropped from Alphonso’s face, but Nell couldn’t quite read the look that replaced it. Perhaps it was simply the look of a man watching his wife from afar, viewing her the way strangers did, admiring the elegant beauty that turned heads.
The screech of a microphone hushed the crowd and drew attention to a small stage set up at one end of the room.
Laura Danvers, party hostess and planner, stood behind the microphone and blanketed the crowd with a smile.
“A lovely welcome to all of you,” she said, her carefully modulated voice not at all the one the knitters were used to hearing when Laura found her toddler rearranging Izzy’s cubicles of yarn in the shop.
“As you know, the money raised tonight will go to the children’s portion of the community center in our own Anja Angelina Park. It will support staff, playground equipment, computers, and video equipment, and even a nurse’s room for administering vaccinations.”
There was polite applause.
“And none of this would be possible,” she went on, “without the generosity of two Sea Harbor companies. Without their gracious donation of reduced labor and supply costs, the community center with its children’s wing would be nothing more than architectural lines on a piece of blue paper.”
Nell glanced over at Gracie. Her aunt had disappeared when the announcements began, probably to avoid the limelight. Sophia Santos was a private person, polite, gracious, but removed from the fray, as Birdie sometimes put it. Nell had known Sophia since she and Ben moved from Boston to make Sea Harbor their home. But in all that time, they had never gone beyond casual conversation. Sophia could be difficult, people said—there weren’t many shades of gray in her worldview. She had a compulsion to speak up if she thought something was unjust, unfair, or just plain wrong. But that side of her rarely came out at cocktail parties, and Nell knew her only to be pleasant, slightly mysterious, and a bit remote.
Birdie had mentioned recently that Sophia didn’t seem to have many friends—but she was showing surprising kindness to her housekeeper, Ella Sampson, driving her to Mass each day since Harold broke his ankle and was unable to do the task.
At the microphone, Laura Danvers continued in her carefully modulated voice. “Will David Joseph Delaney and Alphonso Nicholas Santos please join me for a moment to be properly thanked?”
Ben leaned toward Nell. “I hope Laura stays between the two of them or we may have July fireworks a month early.”
Nell held back her smile. Though not exactly a Hatfield and McCoy-type family feud, the relationship between the Delaneys and Santoses was far from amicable. And not one that pulled them together easily on a stage.
Across the room, she watched D. J. Delaney push back his chair. His diminutive wife, Maeve, looked at him with pride. D.J.’s eldest son, Davey, sat next to his mother. Named after his father, Davey was the spitting image of him—square face and body, built like a bull. It was Davey, Ben had told her, who was angling to take over the family business. Though he was a hothead, Ben suspected he’d be good at managing the projects.
On the other side of Maeve sat “young Joey”—as the thirty-six-year-old had been called from the day of his birth. He had his mother’s mellow brown eyes, smooth skin, and light hair.
Nell looked from Joey over to Gracie, her platinum hair brushed to a sheen and hanging softly around her shoulders. Her narrow face was calm, a pleasing smile in place, not disturbed by the Delaney and Santos’ fanfare. Gracie Santos could speak to the volatility of these families better than any of us, Nell thought. She’d been intimately involved with both, the Santoses by blood, the Delaneys by marriage.
D. J. Delaney reached the riser first. His seersucker suit was stretched tightly across his broad shoulders and his bright flowered tie was a perfect match for his ruddy complexion. If Nell hadn’t known better, she would have thought he had just run the Sea Harbor marathon.
Laura shook D.J.’s hand and stepped back to accommodate the imposing figure of Alphonso Santos. The two men nodded to each othe
r, and Laura stepped again to the microphone, praising the company owners effusively for their support of the center. Alphonso appeared as he always did—in control, the powerful businessman in a fine Italian suit. D.J. shifted from one foot to the other, eyeing a squat glass of Irish whiskey that he had handed off to a waitress before standing up beside Laura.
Although the Santoses and Delaneys had competed on every major development project on the North Shore, a little pressure from the mayor had brought the two together to provide crews and supplies at cost to make the children’s project truly a community effort.
The unlikely alliance didn’t fool anyone.
“It can’t hurt either company to please the city council and mayor,” Birdie declared when the brief thank-yous were finished and the applause died down.
Gracie put down her dessert fork and brushed her hair back over one shoulder. “Not to disparage my uncle, but I’m not sure either of those men ever did anything that didn’t hold personal gain. Some people are just like that.”
“Like what?” Joey Delaney came up beside Gracie’s chair, leaned over, and kissed her on the cheek.
Gracie smiled and offered him a chair.
“Nope. Thanks. Just came to say hello. You look great, Gracie.” A wave of dark brown hair fell across Joey’s forehead.
“So what’s up with you, Joey?” Cass asked. “Will you be working on the community center or are you still hiding behind numbers and books?”
Joey laughed. “I’ll be working my fingers to the bone, Cass; you know me.” He held up two hands, then looked embarrassed at the dark sauce smudging his fingers.
Gracie pulled her brows together, feigning disapproval.
Joey picked up her napkin and wiped off his fingers. “Sorry, ladies. See what happens without you, Gracie? I can’t get through a meal without making a mess.”
Gracie allowed a small smile. “You can take care of yourself just fine, Delaney.”
Nell watched the exchange. If divorce had to happen, Joey and Gracie were certainly a model for how to go about it. Although Gracie had filed divorce papers months before, it didn’t seem a pressing issue. And in recent weeks, Nell had seen them around town together, laughing, sharing a beer. The bitterness sometimes connected to divorce was nicely absent. She wasn’t sure of Gracie’s feelings, but Joey Delaney still seemed totally in love with Gracie.
“So how’s the fish shack coming?”
“It’s not a shack, Joey.”
Nell watched the interplay. They were certainly an attractive pair. Gracie’s delicate cheekbones, straight blond hair, and enormous blue eyes complemented Joey’s square chin and Irish smile. He was the most handsome of the Delaney boys, a tall, wellmuscled man.
Joey Delaney had loved Gracie Santos, the story was told, since the day she pushed him off his Big Wheel in third grade and broke his wrist. She decorated his cast with a red heart and signed it, “Sory Joey. Luv, Gracie.” The die was cast at that moment, Joey would say with a laugh as he told the story. And he still had the cast, shellacked and stored away, just in case anyone wanted to see it.
His wedding to Gracie had been a photographer’s bonanza, from the enormous baskets of yellow roses filling Our Lady of the Seas church to the reception in the Santoses’ lavish gardens. And the fact that the families stayed rigidly on either side of the church during the ceremony and spoke little at the festive affair that followed was covered up by the joy of the young couple and of their friends and neighbors.
They’d moved to Gloucester, away from the families, for a chance to start out on their own. But now, four years later, they were both back in Sea Harbor, each one pursuing a separate life.
“Well, whatever,” Joey said. “Let me know if you need help. I’m pretty handy with a hammer or paintbrush.” Joey touched Gracie’s shoulder, waved at the others, and wandered off toward the adjacent bar area, where a group was staring up at a flat-screen television tuned to the Sox game.
“Nice offer,” Cass said, her dark brows lifting the sentence into a question.
Gracie laughed. “He’s actually been a big help lately. He must be on some kind of medication. When we were together, I never saw him. Now he anticipates when I need him before I do. But that being said, he’s not so hot with a paintbrush. Our bedroom ended up with a wavy orange ceiling. Besides, he says his father is putting pressure on him to step up to the plate at the company. Sometimes I think Joey is the only smart Delaney brother. They need him more than ever now that—” She paused.
“Now that what?”
“Oh, you know, just the usual, I guess. Joey hasn’t said much, but the construction business is always open to criticism. You don’t use the right kind of nails or stones or insulation or whatever. Some of the mud is probably slung at the Delaneys by my own family—Alphonso and Sophia.”
“Well, I can help paint, Gracie. And I am hot with a paintbrush,” Izzy said. “I’ll drag Sam Perry along. He’s not as good as I am, but that long, lean body of his is useful for getting high spots.”
“I’ll bring the beer,” Cass offered.
“You’re great, every single one of you,” Gracie said. “And I never turn down free help.”
“The place is looking good,” Ham Brewster said. “Ben and I scoped it out the other day when we went fishing. It’s just what we need down on the pier. When do you open your doors?”
“Hopefully by Summerfest. The summer solstice.” She tipped her chin up and grinned. “It’s my thirty-sixth birthday, too—being born on the solstice is supposed to bring good fortune. The café is my birthday present from me to me.”
“The Lazy Lobster and Soup Café.” Jane Brewster laughed. “I love it. It sounds down-home, a place that should be featured in a movie, like Fried Green Tomatoes.” She leaned over and tugged playfully on her husband’s graying beard. “And speaking of down-home, I think it’s time to dance with the one who brung me—hopefully before he falls asleep.”
Ham groaned and gripped the sides of his chair, pushing himself up, feigning difficulty. In the distance the band struck up an easy swing melody and people moved toward the small dance floor.
Jane’s shoulders began to sway to the rising beat. Her loose salt-and-pepper hair moved to the rhythm and a long purple skirt swished about her legs.
Ham looped one arm around her. “Who can resist the likes of my Janie? She’s a dancin’ fool.”
Nell watched her friends walk off. Founders of the Canary Cove art colony, Jane and Ham had lived in Sea Harbor since the late sixties. Their pottery and paintings had a large following. But what Nell and Ben valued the Brewsters for even more than their artistry was their unwavering, devoted friendship. “I swear Jane gets more beautiful with every gray hair,” Nell mused.
“She’s not the only one.” Ben slipped his arm around the back of her chair and massaged her neck with his fingers.
“Hey, you two, none of that monkey business in here,” Cass said.
Gracie shushed Cass and turned to Ben and Nell. “I love that you do that,” she said. “Don’t ever stop.”
A flurry of movement and loud voices nearby interrupted Nell’s response. She turned toward the sounds.
Alphonso Santos stood near the entrance to the dining room. Although he faced the club lobby, with his back to the room, Nell could see a drink glass clenched in his hand. He seemed to be looking at an attractive middle-aged woman dressed in jeans and a white silk blouse, coming in the front door.
The woman’s face was lit with anger and her coal-black hair was a wild flurry about her face, but beneath the chaos was a face as beautiful as a Madonna’s—a long nose, firm cheekbones, and well-shaped lips. A face with perfect parts. But it was the pitch to her voice, not her beauty, that attracted the attention of those close enough to hear.
“I hate her, Alphonso,” the woman hissed. “She’s stealing from you. I wish she’d disappear from our lives forever.”
Nell looked around at the others sitting at her table. They were trying to
continue conversations, trying not to listen.
Alphonso’s answer was inaudible to the diners. He reached out to touch the woman’s shoulder.
She jerked away, taking a quick step backward and nearly tripping on the edge of an Oriental rug. Steadying herself, she looked at Alphonso again. Her voice lifted above the din of plates being cleared and cheers from the bar for a Sox home run. “She’s the one you should cut out of your life, not me.” The words were hurled across the marble lobby and traveled to the tables closest to the dining room entrance.
As if powered by her own words, the woman lifted one hand into the air. Her fingers were coiled around the neck of a beer bottle.
Ben pushed out his chair and headed for the entryway.
It was Joey Delaney and Liz Palazola, with Ben just one step behind them, who stopped the bottle from being hurled in Alphonso Santos’ face.
Joey grabbed the woman’s wrist, and Liz and Ben stepped into the fray, distracting her.
Cass bit down on her bottom lip and looked over at Gracie.
She was clenching her napkin with one hand. The other lay stiff on the white tablecloth.
Birdie reached over and covered Gracie Santos’ rigid fingers with her blue-veined hand.
Gracie’s narrow shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “You know Mom—she never misses a party.”
Chapter 3
Gracie quickly turned her back to the lobby. She wanted to disappear—to suddenly become Lewis Carroll’s Alice and slide down the rabbit hole. The others at the Endicott table ached with empathy.
When Julianne Santos’ voice and hand dropped, Alphonso indicated to Ben, Liz, and Joey that things were under control. He cupped his sister’s elbow in the palm of his hand and walked her out of the yacht club and down the wide fan of front steps.
Liz motioned for the men to follow her to the bar area, where she ordered them drinks—compliments of the house—and thanked them profusely.
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