“Well, I know he knew my great-granddad a long time,” said Marianne. “All the men who came home stuck together, I think. They’d seen things the rest of the town didn’t understand. Guess that made for strong bonds. It’s probably part of why my grandfather hired Joe.”
“Your dad had the VA for that, right? Which is why we bring them our leftovers?”
“That’s right. Although there weren’t nearly as many after Vietnam as there were after World War II,” Marianne sighed. “Maybe if there’d been more vets around when Dad came back, things might have been different.” She carefully gathered the pile of crackly paper, tucking it into a folder. “I wonder if this means anything to the assessor anymore. I know Crow Creek’s been gone for a century, and the cliffs got mined out years ago and flattened. It used to be where that condo development is now, on that hill.”
Zeke handed her the photo and a manila envelope secured with a piece of string. “What’s this?”
“I don’t know,” said Marianne. “Let me see.” Zeke handed her the folder. It had some heft, and the scattering of dust along the flap made her think it hadn’t been opened in a while. She unwound the twine carefully, folding the flap back.
It was filled with pages and photos, all scattered and disarrayed. She pulled out a photo first and gave a little gasp. Her mother and her father stared out from the white frame, standing in front of the old cast-iron stove in the bakery–a shot she’d never seen before. Her father’s hand rested on her mother’s belly and both smiled. Her mother’s bright grin was directed at the camera, but her father’s was smaller, sweeter, and only directed at his wife. They looked so young. She’d never seen his face look so open in a picture as an adult; happy and without the shadow the war and her mother’s death would bring to his face. And her mother looked beautiful, glowing. Marianne ached, remembering what little she could of her. She swallowed hard and set the photo aside carefully. She’d frame it, maybe hang it in the bakery. She thought her dad would have liked that.
Beneath that was a stack of graph paper stapled in the corner and folded haphazardly in half. She picked the sheets up and pressed them flat. “Last Will and Testament of Daniel Windmere,” read Zeke from over her shoulder. “Wait. That’s your dad.”
Marianne stared at the document. “This can’t be.”
“Why not?”
“My dad didn’t leave a will. His property all went to probate and to me eventually, but the process was a whole ordeal because there wasn’t a will.”
“I mean, this might say otherwise.” Zeke reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, are you okay, boss?”
Marianne relaxed her grip on the paper, her eyes tracing the familiar lines of her father’s signature. “Dated 1969,” she read at the bottom. “November. He was only back from Vietnam a year when this was written.” She shook her head. “This was when my mom was sick.” She smoothed it out, lifting the first page gently. “I was almost ten.”
““What does it say?” asked Zeke. “Do you want to read it?”
“I don’t know,” said Marianne. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Do you want me to read it to you?”
Marianne looked up. Zeke’s brows were drawn together, concern evident in his round face. He’d grown up so much in the couple of years since he’d transitioned, and the changes weren’t from the T. He’d metamorphosed from a kid she gave a job to as a favor to Joe into someone she trusted and relied upon. When had he grown up?
“I’d like that,” she said. “Thanks, Zeke.” She leaned back as he started to read, hesitating a little over some of the messier words and let her father’s ghost wash over her. It sounded like him, even in Zeke’s lighter, younger voice. The words had his particular cadence. There were no real surprises in the first few pages. Her mother would get everything, and if her mother died, she would, with one exception.
“In the event that I am incapacitated and my daughter Marianne Windmere is not yet twenty-five at the time of my death, and my wife Helena has predeceased me, Simon Leventi shall be granted conservatorship over the property at 121 Main Street known as Windmere Bakery, as well as any tenants they may hold in any part of the property, commercial or residential, to continue his management of the building and business, until such time as Marianne Windmere requests control returned to her. He is not authorized to alter Windmere Bakery in any form without the written approval of Marianne Windmere or her heir. In payment, he shall be granted 25% of the profits from all enterprises conducted therein during his time as conservator.”
“Well, that makes sense,” said Marianne. “That’s what happened after he died. I let Simon run it for years before I came back to the business.”
“What about the other side?” asked Zeke. “Did he run that too? Because it says that thing about commercial tenants. You’ve never had tenants down here, have you?”
Marianne frowned. “Let me see that?”
Zeke handed her the will.
She skimmed the page, flipping it to read the next one. “He never says it’s just suite A,” she said. “That’s strange. This would have been immediately after he sold it. I think. I would have thought he would clarify that in a legal document.”
“Huh.” Zeke shook his head. “That sounds like the start of a really boring episode of Law and Order.”
“More like the middle,” admitted Marianne. “At least a TV show would have a murder at the start. We’re trapped in file cabinets forever.”
Zeke laughed and handed her another stack. “We’re almost to the bottom of this drawer though. Want to see what other mysteries we can find?”
She pushed her filthy sleeves back up to her elbows. “Lead on.”
Chapter Nine
After a busy day of customers, Marianne had expected a quiet meal in Rana’s restaurant with Rana and her daughter. But when Rana showed up at her door after closing time, she was wearing a coat and a dress. “We made reservations at Masala,” she said, voice a little nervous. “I hope you don’t mind. Our treat.”
Marianne looked down at her flour-coated apron and the casual clogs she wore for her long days in the bakery. “I hope you can wait twenty minutes for me to change.”
“Of course!” Rana nodded. “We’ll be in our restaurant when you’re ready. The reservation isn’t until six.”
Marianne nodded and hurried inside. She could clean up the bakery later—she’d done most of the work already, just a few big pans to wash and the napkin dispensers to refill. They could wait a few hours. She glanced down at her watch—4:50. If she hurried, she could squeeze in a shower and let a dress hang in the bathroom to steam out the wrinkles.
She looked pretty good, she decided, for fifty-eight and a ten-hour workday. The deep-blue dress had a neckline that showed off the shoulders she’d earned through years of kneading dough while still maintaining some dignity, and the tea length let her show off the black leather boots Janie had helped her pick out the previous December. Apparently, they were very in. And the peacoat Anna had given her a few years earlier fit over the top nicely, she decided as she checked herself out in the hall mirror. Yes, this look would do nicely for this—whatever the occasion was.
It wasn’t a date, not with Rana’s daughter along. A nice dinner out; that was all. If they’d kept up what they’d started that night of the storm—but they hadn’t. They wouldn’t. She’d missed her chance, and that was probably a good thing. Marianne didn’t do well with relationships, generally; she knew she had trouble distinguishing attraction from wanting friendship, and when the feelings struck this sudden and this hard the uncertainty made her all the more nervous. Rana made her feel all of sixteen again, all nerves and elbows.
But they were both nearing sixty, grown women, and they were friends. Rana wanted to be friends; Marianne knew that much. And she liked Rana, wanted to spend time with her. It had been a long time since Marianne had made a new friend. She smiled, tucked her wallet in her purse, and headed down the stairs and around the
building to the other suite.
Rana and Nour sat together in a Cairo Grill booth, leaning over a cell phone, their faces lit by the glow of the screen. Marianne was struck once again by how similar the two looked.
“Hi,” she said, letting the door swing closed behind her. “Am I late?”
Rana looked up, staring at Marianne for a long moment before smiling. “Oh, no, not at all! Nour, are you ready?”
“Whenever you are,” said Nour, gathering her things. “I’ve been craving Indian food, American style. You can’t get the same kinds in Egypt.”
“There’s no Indian food there?” Marianne asked as they started down the sidewalk toward the center of town. “I would have thought there would be more. You’re much closer than we are.”
Nour smiled. “Oh, there’s plenty. Authentic too. But I missed the American kind. It’s less like what you find in India, but it’s its own delicious cuisine.”
“My daughter Janie’s girlfriend is Chinese,” offered Marianne. “Or at least her parents are. She says when she goes to China, she loves her grandmother’s cooking, but she misses her General Tso’s. I guess that’s the same thing.”
Rana laughed. “I can’t believe that’s what people call Chinese food here.” She pushed open the door to the restaurant. “I’m doing my best to keep my food somewhat like what you’d find in Cairo.”
“I keep telling you that you should branch out,” said Nour. “Maybe some Moroccan dishes, some Lebanese. There’s a market for it.”
“Ah, Nour, you see, I don’t want more customers.”
“She’s got plenty,” Marianne added. “I keep telling her she needs to hire somebody.”
Rana turned to Marianne. “And I keep telling you, if I hire someone, I won’t trust that everything will get done the way I like it.”
“Isn’t not having to do it all worth having some of it done wrong?”
“No!” replied Nour and Rana at the same time. They looked at each other and laughed.
“Mamti says if you can’t do it the right way, you have no business doing it. That’s how my father got out of doing laundry his whole life,” said Nour.
“He sounds like a smart man,” Marianne replied as Rana checked in with the hostess, confirming their reservations. “I wish I’d met him.”
Nour gave her a skeptical look, eyebrows nearly disappearing into her loose headscarf. “If my father were alive, you wouldn’t be flirting with my mother this much, I hope.”
“I’m not—” Marianne’s brain stuttered for a moment, and when it let her back in, Nour and Rana were ten feet ahead of her following the hostess to their table. She forced herself to start walking again, catching up as the hostess pulled out Rana’s chair. Nour gave her a wide, sneaky grin as she settled in her chair and picked up a papadum.
Marianne rarely went out to dinner, and she hadn’t been to Masala in years. She hadn’t been a lot of places in Swanley in years, she realized, looking around at the bustling restaurant.
“So,” said Nour, opening the little pot of green mint chutney and spooning some onto her plate. “My mother says you’ve been neighbors for months but only just met. That doesn’t seem very neighborly.”
“Nour!” said Rana sharply. “That isn’t polite.”
Nour raised her hands. “Sorry, Marianne. I’m only curious. Why didn’t you two meet earlier? You get along very well, so I can’t imagine why.”
Marianne sighed. “It’s a fair question. And the answer is that I’m an idiot.”
“Marianne!” Now it was Marianne that Rana’s sharp Mom voice was directed at.
“It’s true!” Marianne held up her hands. “Nour, the space your mother’s shop occupies used to be part of my bakery. And there’s a whole weird history around how it ended up not part of the bakery anymore. But either way, I’ve been taking out my anger at the strange situation on the people working there, rather than the people responsible.” She turned toward Rana. “I don’t know if I’ve ever apologized for that, by the way.”
“You don’t need to—”
“Yes, I do. For my own benefit. I do.” Marianne pushed her hair behind her ears and then reached out and rested a hand on Rana’s wrist. “I’m sorry, Rana. I was rude, and I shouldn’t have been. I should have come by when you moved in, and I should have met you much sooner.”
“I—” Rana met her eyes, lines in the corners crinkling as her cheeks flushed. “Thank you.”
Marianne looked into those eyes for another moment, drinking in the warmth there and then cleared her throat. “Anyway.” She pulled her hand back, curling it under the table to hold onto the heat of Rana’s. “That’s all I wanted to say.”
“I approve,” said Nour. “And I want pakora to celebrate.”
“I won’t disagree with that order,” said Marianne, grateful for the break in emotional conversation.
The pakora were delicious, as always, brought by Charlie, a kid whose father had worked at the bakery as a custodian back before Marianne’s father died. Marianne spent a moment catching up with him as Nour and Rana looked on, amused.
“What?” she asked after Charlie cleared their papadum plates. “His dad worked for my dad, right after the family came to the US. I’ve known that kid since before he was born.”
“It’s interesting,” said Nour. “You know everyone in this town.”
“Not everyone!” protested Marianne. “I didn’t know you until recently, for example. Just the people who’ve been here my whole life. How could I not?”
Rana shook her head. “It’s nice, in some ways. We’ve moved around since we came to this country, and we have people scattered across the globe. All of your community is right nearby.”
“A little too nearby,” said Marianne. “No privacy in this town.” She glanced around. “In this room right now, I see two of my kids’ teachers, three customers, and somebody who was a Boy Scout with my ex-husband. My second cousin was eating at PJ’s next door with his girlfriend, whose ex-wife is the sister of our mail carrier. So, everybody knows everybody’s business.” She glanced around. “Eyes on your own soup, Frankie.” A man two tables down who’d obviously been eavesdropping grinned, waved, and turned back to his conversation.
“That’s how life is in our neighborhood back in Giza,” said Nour thoughtfully. “I’ve lived there six years now, and everyone in the building watches out for one another.”
“It’s different there,” said Rana. “You’re in a city. You can go two blocks and be surrounded by strangers. It’s not better or worse, but it’s certainly a different experience than here. This is more like the village my mother grew up in. But at least now we have the internet and television.” She shook her head. “The way she told it, the only entertainment they had was gossip.”
“Oh, poor Jidda,” said Nour, laughing a little. “She hated gossip.”
“She got enough of it at home,” said Rana.
“So, your family hasn’t always lived in Cairo?” asked Marianne.
“Oh, goodness, no,” Rana thanked Charlie as he set a steaming bowl of vindaloo in front of her. “My father comes from a town on the Libyan border. My mother is from a port town farther north. They both came to Cairo in the twenties looking for work. They met and fell in love in a linen factory.” She smiled. “Nour, you remember visiting your grandmother’s village.”
“It’s beautiful there,” said Nour. “If you like desert and quiet.” She laughed. “Not the ideal place for children used to movies and computers.”
“It made my mother happy, though, to have us with her when she visited,” said Rana. “Especially knowing she could go back to Cairo afterward.”
Seeing Rana and her daughter together made Marianne’s heart ache from missing her own kids—all three of them—scattered around the country. At least they’re all in the US. Nour’s trip to see her mother is much farther.
She resolved to give Janie a call, and Jacob, if he picked up, that evening. Anna was her communicator—they talked a
t least once a week, if not more—but her other two were harder to pin down. She missed her family. At least Kevin was nearby, complicated though that relationship would always be. He was family, divorce or no. They’d been through too much for too long for that not to be true.
“So, I’m curious,” said Nour. “About this weird situation you mentioned with the Grill. Can I ask about it, or is that rude?”
“It’s all right,” said Marianne, glancing at Rana. “The building used to be all one business—my great-grandfather built the original house back in the 1800s with his father’s Civil War pension. Then about eighty years later it wasn’t doing so well after my dad came back from Vietnam, and he sold part of the building to his friend. That was your mother’s landlord’s father, Simon. And Simon ran the whole bakery, my part included, while I figured out my life. I took control back in the nineties, but Simon wasn’t thrilled to give up control and it sort of caused a rift. And now we’re trying to figure out how to put a sign in the parking lot—”
“The famous parking lot!” exclaimed Nour. “I’ve heard plenty about that from my mother.”
“Nothing too bad,” assured Rana.
Nour gave her a skeptical look. “You were pretty mad, Mamti.” She leaned forward. “She called you some names. I’m not sure how they translate from Arabic, but they aren’t polite.”
“Oh, thank you, Nour,” said Rana, putting a hand over her face. “That is useful.”
“Just telling the truth,” said Nour, grinning. “I don’t want to lie to your new friend.”
Marianne grinned. “Don’t worry, Rana. If you ask Zeke, I’m sure he’ll tell you a similar story about the things I called you.”
“Hm.” Rana glared at her daughter. “Zeke’s behavior is not my business. Nour’s is.”
“I’m thirty-three! When does my behavior become my own business?”
“It’s always a parent’s business,” said Marianne. “When you’re sixty and your mother is ninety, it will still be her business how you behave.”
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