by Nancy Martin
I opened the box with trembling fingers. The Rusty Sabre had been the setting of many a Blackbird family turning point. My sisters and I had wept over our dead husbands here. We had discussed Libby’s election to the presidency of the Erotic Yoga Society and Emma’s opportunity to train with the Olympic Grand Prix team. I’d broken the news to them of my decision to sell a couple of ancestral acres of Blackbird Farm to a stranger named Michael Abruzzo. We had engaged in petty squabbles and made monumental decisions here.
I could barely get my eyes to focus as I read the directions on the box.
I took the test.
Within a few minutes, I returned to the table. Libby and Emma turned their faces to me. Even Max looked up with anticipation.
“Well?” Emma demanded, holding her son awkwardly.
“Oh, Nora,” Libby said, seeing my tears.
I wobbled into my chair and took a deep breath.
“It’s positive. We’re having a baby.”
Emma cheered. Libby squealed and leaped to her feet. She did a little fertility dance, then hurried around the table to hug me. Max burst into wails of jealousy. I saw stars and felt the universe at long last tilting in my direction.
The waiter brought champagne.
“I took the liberty of ordering it,” Libby explained as the waiter filled glasses. “Either way, we were going to need it. You can have a sip, Nora. Go ahead. If you can go tearing around the farmers’ market without endangering your unborn child, you can certainly withstand a sip of champagne.”
We toasted the newest member of the family, and I ate an enormous, satisfying lunch—even stealing a couple of French fries from Emma’s plate—and didn’t care what my waistline was going to look like at tomorrow night’s gala. We babbled and made plans and talked about my due date and whether or not it’s best to find out the sex of a baby before it’s born or at the moment of delivery. And I don’t know when I’d been happier. Sharing the moment with my sisters was the right thing to do.
I’d have another kind of moment with Michael later.
Over dessert—one apple crumble with ice cream that we shared—Libby had taken possession of Noah again, but she turned to Emma. “Who was on the phone when we arrived?”
Emma took time to finish her champagne before answering. “Hart.”
Libby and I put down our forks, suddenly all ears.
“Well?”
She avoided our attentive gazes. “Things are still up in the air with him.”
“What does that mean?” Libby demanded.
“Penny’s family staged an intervention. She agreed to treatment for the pill thing. So he’s taking her to a rehab place this weekend. He has to stay a couple of days, too. It’s part of the program.”
Libby held Noah protectively close. “What about their child?”
Emma took a deep breath. “Look, you guys, I can’t handle this. Hart says Noah can go into foster care where he’ll be well—”
“No!” I cried. “Can’t someone in Penny’s family take him?”
Emma shook her head. “Not an option. This weekend, they have plans to go to Paris.”
Libby said a rude word.
I reached and grasped my sister’s hand. “You can do this, Em. You can take care of him.”
She shook her head firmly. “I can’t. What’s more? I don’t want to. I gave him up for a lot of reasons, and I’m not going to change my mind.”
“But—”
“I mean it, Nora. I’m not turning into Nanny McPhee with the wave of a magic wand. I’ll provide his milk. But that’s as far as I’m willing to go. Help me out here, will you?”
Emma asked for help . . . well, never. She had a stubborn set to her face, but there was something trembling underneath that expression.
Into the tense silence that followed, Libby said, “I’ll look after him this weekend. I have a sitter coming tomorrow night for the Farm-to-Table dinner, and she’s excellent—completely capable and trustworthy. The rest of the weekend, I’ll be in charge. We’ll have fun, won’t we, Noah?” She held up the baby and smiled into his sleeping face.
Max let out a squawk of objection.
Emma was frowning at the baby. “He finally fell asleep.”
“He’s had a busy day,” Libby said.
“Thing is,” Emma said, “he normally sleeps all the time. Really, I don’t know when I’ve seen him awake since he was born.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“Well, Penny takes all those pills. Do you suppose she . . . slips Noah something, too? To keep him quiet?”
Libby and I recoiled with horror.
“Maybe I’m imagining it,” Emma said quickly. “It’s just weird seeing him so awake.”
Libby vowed to take good care of him over the weekend. Then she dropped me at Blackbird Farm and gave me a joyous kiss. Emma even gave me a hug and congratulated me before taking off in her truck.
I noted the arrival of new members of the wiseguy patrol. The one on the porch—an older gentleman in a tracksuit very much like Libby’s, minus the T-shirt—even tipped his invisible hat and gave me a smile that revealed two gold-capped teeth. I shook his hand and introduced myself.
“Yeah,” he said. “The boss said to make sure you’re okay, Mrs. Boss.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He grinned even wider. “I’m Road Kill. But you can call me Rocco.”
“I will,” I said. “Thank you, Rocco.”
“There was a kid here earlier, driving a rental. He tried to get through the guys. Almost ran over Jimbo.”
“My God, is anyone hurt?”
“Naw, kid hit the fence instead, bashed up his car but good.”
Porky, I thought. “Did you speak with him?”
Rocco wagged his head. “He jammed the car into reverse, almost hit the mailbox and peeled out of here fast. Don’t know what his problem was. He comes back, though, we’ll take care of him.”
“Call for the police,” I advised.
“Yeah, maybe.” Rocco flashed his gold teeth again.
It was some comfort knowing that the terms of Michael’s parole included no association with any convicted criminal. I could trust that the crew was made up of relatively upstanding citizens. Sort of. I went upstairs. Feeling safe and wonderfully pregnant, I fell across the bed and dropped into the deepest, most peaceful sleep I had ever experienced.
I woke up at six when the phone rang.
Cannoli told me with regret that the police would be keeping Michael overnight.
Resigned to spending the night alone, I made myself a slice of peanut butter toast for dinner and went back upstairs to bed. I thought I might be able to read for a few hours—my book club would meet in a week, and I hadn’t made a dent in the book yet—but my pillow called again.
In the middle of the night, I woke when the phone rang. I rolled over and fumbled for it on the bedside table. “Michael?”
A male voice said, “I need to talk to Zephyr.”
“What? Who is this?” I couldn’t quite drag myself into full wakefulness. I groped for the switch on the lamp.
“Put Zephyr on the phone. I know she’s there, yo.”
“Porky?”
“I have to talk to her,” he insisted, adding a few curses.
“I’m sorry, but she’s not here. She left yesterday. I don’t know where she went. The police are looking for her.”
“You’re lying.”
“She left with one of—she left, that’s all.” I snapped the lamp on and flinched from the light. “Porky, I know you’re upset. First your father, and now Zephyr is—well, not what we thought she was, but—”
“Where did she go? I have to find her! I can help her.” I thought I heard him sniffle. “We can be together.”
<
br /> The panic in his voice put a terrible thought in my head. “Porky, you didn’t—? When your father gave you money, that was to help with your business, right?”
He made a noise that might have been a sob. “He was supposed to give me more. A lot more.”
“He shortchanged you?”
“He promised. Said he’d give me a couple mil if I went away. But he cheated me.” Miserably, he pleaded, “I need to talk to Zephyr and make her understand it’s enough for both of us. I’ll give her all of it, if that’s what it takes.”
“I’m sorry. She’s not here.”
He began to rant in a strangled yell, but he snapped off his phone before I could make out his words.
I lay back in the bed, staring up at the ceiling. What did it mean? Swain had given his son a substantial amount of walking money. I had seen the half-million-dollar check myself. Porky had hoped to run away with Zephyr, I guessed. But . . . had Porky killed his father when Swain “shortchanged” him?
I got out of bed and went into the bathroom for a drink of water. I stood on the rug, my feet freezing, and looked at my shadowy face in the mirror. My reflection frowned back at me while I tried to imagine the relationship between Porky and Zephyr. She seemed curiously distant with people—unemotional and bland. Beautifully bland, but still bland. By comparison, Porky had temper in spades. Had one of them killed Swain with a pitchfork?
I thought about LinZee in the drunk tank. What had she said? Don’t piss off a pregnant woman? Had Zephyr’s pregnancy put her mentally over the edge?
I got a pair of socks from a drawer and went back to bed to put them on. I turned off the light, fervently wishing Michael were at home to talk to. He could imagine what went on in dark hearts much more clearly than I could.
I had slept too long earlier in the evening, so I lay awake for a long time. I found myself picturing Swain Starr lying dead in the pigpen, his chest punctured by someone enraged enough to stab him over and over. Who had been strong enough? Angry enough? Tommy? Marybeth? Zephyr? Porky?
My sleepy mind began to turn over the various combinations of fathers and sons I knew, and Michael’s upbringing swam into focus. He had said there was violence in his home, and although I felt safe with him now, I knew he was still capable of it. And what might drive him to kill his own father?
With sudden clarity, I figured it out. He’d do it to protect me. Or his children, when the time came. Had Porky needed to protect someone he loved? Zephyr, maybe?
Finally, I became aware of a weird flickering light outside. I sat up in bed. “What in the world—?”
I grabbed my dressing gown and slippers, then hurried down the stairs. The whole house seemed to glow and throb from a light source outside. With my heart pounding, I ran across the dining room, through the butler’s pantry, across the kitchen floor to the back door. My hands fumbled with the locks, my breath coming in gasps. “Please, no,” I begged.
I yanked open the back door and ran out onto the porch. What I saw was the barn. On fire.
I shrieked.
Michael’s crew was all there—some of them running, one using the garden hose, another one, blessedly, holding Mr. Twinkles by his halter. The horse danced around on the grass, throwing his weight against his captor and dragging the man like a rag doll. The fire illuminated the animal, turning him into a magical beast on my lawn. I saw flames licking around the door of the barn, flickering brightly.
A fire truck came around the curve in the drive and blasted its horn. Everyone scattered to make room for the truck.
One of Michael’s men—the one with the gold teeth—came to me and slung his jacket around my shoulders. “Go back inside, Mrs. Boss. We got this under control.”
“What happened?”
“That kid came back. The kid who was around earlier. Said you were hiding somebody here. We chased him off, but he musta come back somehow.”
“Why would he do this?”
“I dunno, but he was plenty upset.”
Then I was too dizzy to stand. The man with the gold teeth sat me down on the porch steps and brought me a long coat from inside the house. I wrapped myself in it, hugging my arms and watching the firemen work. They had brought a tanker truck, and they sluiced water through the open barn door to fight back the licking flames, then advanced inside to wash all the hay and woodwork.
Ricci arrived in his police cruiser with red lights flashing. He came over to the porch, and I felt my faculties return sufficiently to explain how I’d been awakened by a phone call and that perhaps Porky had come back and set fire to the barn. Ricci radioed for backup, and when his counterpart arrived, they drew their weapons and went inside to search the house.
Road Kill came over and sat with me, awkwardly patting me on the shoulder. Together, we watched the firemen put out the fire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“No,” I told Emma when she arrived the next morning. “The police didn’t find Porky in the house.”
Emma kicked the porch railing with frustration. “They checked everywhere, right? Even the cellar? He’s not hiding somewhere in this mausoleum?”
“The police made a thorough search,” I said. “Ricci told me he thought he was permanently lost in the attic. He thinks there’s a cannon up there. Do you know anything about that?”
She shook her head, and we stood on the porch, looking at the mess left by the firemen. The barn still stood, but the front door was a gaping black hole, and the interior would need shoring up before the structure could be used again. Emma said, “It’s lucky the whole barn didn’t burn down to the foundation.”
“I know. The original timbers are so old, they could have burned like tinder.” I was still in shock, looking at what remained. The task of repairing it all felt very daunting. I sat down on the top step. “I’m sorry, Em. Mr. Twinkles—”
“He’s okay. I checked. He’ll be fine in the pasture. The ponies are good, too. They’re indestructible. But the barn. Is your insurance paid up?”
“Yes, barely.” My damaged barn felt like some kind of karmic response to Emma setting the fire at Starr’s Landing.
Standing on the step below me, she put a steadying hand on my shoulder. “This will turn out okay.”
I hoped she was right. I put my chin in my hands and stared at the rubble of junk the firemen had dragged outside before dousing it with water—old barrels, an antique travel trunk used for hauling tack, bales of straw. I presumed what was left inside—hay and feed and more—had been ruined by smoke and would need to be disposed of. But that work was beyond me at the moment. I said, “The police think Porky came from Sheffield Road and lit a match to the straw. He’s crazy to find Zephyr. Maybe he thought a fire would draw her outside.”
“Well, he didn’t find her.” Emma shook her head. “Mick’s really gonna get worked up when he sees this. Those wiseguys are probably in fear for their lives for letting this happen with you at home.”
“They’re all embarrassed that Porky got past them. And worried about what Michael will do when he gets back. The good news is this humiliation has made them doubly determined to find Ralphie. Except for the skeleton crew here, every good fella in three states is in Philadelphia right now, combing the streets for Michael’s pig. I should be doing something, too.”
She swung on me, shaking her head firmly. “You’re in a delicate condition, Sis. You have a tendency to miscarry, and that would be—look, just let the police handle the investigation from now on.”
I eyed her. “I certainly can’t tell them what I know, can I? Or you’ll go to jail for arson, and God knows what will happen to Rawlins.”
“Rawlins is in the clear. There’s no evidence that can be used against him. The cops turned him loose.”
But I had reached another conclusion.
“Em,” I said quietly. “What if our nephew is the father of
Zephyr’s baby?”
My little sister sat down hard on the porch steps. “Holy leaky condom! You think that’s possible?”
“I have a bad feeling that it might be.”
“Just a month ago Rawlins was picking his nose and playing that game with the hobbits! Now he’s all grown-up and banging a supermodel?”
I had reviewed every memory of Starr’s Landing of the afternoon the party took place. I could still see Rawlins in his blue jacket, holding a drink and trying to look grown-up. He’d been watching Zephyr, I realized now. It was Zephyr who had invited him to the party. He could have been the one in the car with Zephyr when they abandoned it. She probably took the pregnancy test and showed him the results. Whatever happened after that included leaving the car behind and perhaps the two of them going separate ways—Zephyr to a hotel in Philadelphia.
But might Rawlins have gone straight back to Starr’s Landing to confront Zephyr’s husband? Had things gone horribly wrong?
Emma listened to my theory with growing horror. “No. No, that’s not possible. The kid wouldn’t hurt anybody. He couldn’t have killed Swain Starr.”
“I don’t want this to be true any more than you do,” I said. “I’m trying to make sense of what we know. There are a lot of missing pieces. But something’s not right, Em. That’s why we have to keep a few things from the police just a little longer.”
She considered it all and finally blew a gusty sigh. “I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it. But if Libby hears she might be a grandmother, she’s gonna blow like Vesuvius. I don’t want to be around when the molten rock starts flying.”
“That’s the best reason to keep her in the dark as long as possible,” I said, trying not to imagine the meltdown Libby was going to have. “So you’ll stay here tonight? Until I get back or Michael gets home? Checkpoint Charlie has been doubled. There’s a crew watching Sheffield Road now, too. But I’d be relieved to know you were here keeping an eye on things.”
Emma agreed. She pumped more milk while I dressed for the Farm-to-Table gala.