“It’s okay,” Lili said, “you can go.”
“Don’t you need some help cleaning up?”
“That’s all ri—” Oh, for heaven’s sake—are you insane? “I’d love some help. Although it seems Ed’s already taken care of the floor,” she said, watching the dog frantically sucking up every crumb he could find.
The giggle was short, and barely audible, but it was definitely a giggle.
They worked in virtual silence for several minutes, Lili hardly daring to breathe for fear she’d break the spell. Finally, though, she heard a soft, “It must’ve been so cool, growing up in the circus.”
“Oh. Well…not so much, actually.”
She could feel the girl’s frown. “How come?”
“Traveling all the time sucks, if you don’t like it. And it’s deadly dull if you’re not performing.”
“You didn’t?”
“Oh, dear God, no. My father used to say I was the most uncoordinated child in Hungary.”
“That’s awful.”
She laughed. “But true. All I wanted, when I was your age, was to be normal. To go to a normal school and do normal things.” She let out a dramatic sigh. “To have parents who didn’t wear tights and sequins, who didn’t fly, for goodness sake!”
A second giggle made Lili’s heart jump. “Yeah, I could see how that would be a little strange.”
“For the other circus kids, that was normal. And they loved it. For me…no. It didn’t help, either, that I had the self-esteem of a slug.” Claire frowned. “I didn’t like myself very much.”
There went that curious look again. “Why?”
“Because…I was all pointy angles. And clumsy. And my nose was too big and my mouth too wide, and I hated these—” she pointed to her protruding incisors “—because my brothers called me Vampira all the time. And,” she continued as Claire giggled again, “I never felt I had anything in common with the other kids my age. Sometimes, I was tempted to wonder if I really was a vampire kid my parents had gotten from the gypsies or something.”
“I know how that goes,” Claire said with a solemn nod. “Not about the vampire thing, but the rest of it? Yeah.” She looked at the dumplings. Taking her cue, Lili leaned over and touched one.
“I think they’re ready.”
“Oh. Um…shouldn’t we wait for Daphne?”
“She’ll never know.” Lili held out the plate to her. “Unless you tell.”
The child reached for one, then pulled back, frowning. “But I hate plums.”
“Do you really hate them? Or just think you do?” When Claire’s eyes shot to Lili’s, she shrugged, even as she suddenly felt so strongly for the little girl she ached. I know how hard it is, she wanted to say, forcing yourself to try new things. To move past “safe.” “One bite. If you don’t like it, I promise my feelings won’t be hurt.”
Claire hesitated, then gingerly—as though the dumpling might explode—plucked one off the pile. After a few seconds’ intense contemplation, she jerked her hair behind one ear and took the tiniest bite possible…only to shudder when the tart fruit juices hit her tongue. Lili held her breath, fully expecting the girl to spit it out. Instead, she not only swallowed, but took a second bite. Without shuddering, this time.
“So…what’s the verdict?”
A shrug preceded the rest of the dumpling vanishing into her mouth. “S’ okay,” she said, chewing. “Once you get used to it.” One could say that about most things in life, Lili thought as the child asked, “May I have another one?”
“Go for it.”
Claire wriggled into a kitchen chair, to better savor her treat, apparently. In the midst of catching a dribble of plum juice on her chin, however, she said, “Are you just being nice to me because of Dad?”
So much for détente. “I could ask the same of you, you know.”
The girl’s eyes flashed to hers. Then she shrugged, a small, sad what’s-the-point? gesture that completely cancelled out the spoken, “Whatever,” that followed it.
Sighing, Lili dropped into another chair to meet the girl’s eyes. “Claire, I know there’s…stuff between you and me, even if I’m not completely sure what that stuff is. But for a few minutes, I thought we’d moved beyond that. At least I had.” Far too perceptive by half, the child watched her, waiting. Lili sat back in the chair, her arms folded over her chest. “I’m not going to pretend I know exactly how you’re feeling—that would be beyond stupid—but sometimes, when you get certain expressions on your face? They remind a lot of the expressions I used to see in my own mirror. So I feel, just a little, as if I’ve known you for a long time. And that’s a good thing.”
Claire took another bite, her brows knit as she turned the remaining chunk of dumpling over and over in her fingers. “So Dad has nothing to do with it?”
“Well, obviously I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for him. But he’s not why I’m being nice to you. I’m being nice to you because…you’re a very interesting person.”
“Me?” Claire said, pressing plumy fingers to her white top. Oops.
“Yes, you. You’ve brave, you’re not afraid to speak your mind, which a lot of women—” Lili raised her hand “—have problems with. And you clearly love your sisters and father very, very much.”
“You think I’m brave?”
Lili smiled. “You ate the dumpling, didn’t you?”
Still frowning, Claire licked her fingers, then looked straight at Lili. “If I ask you something, will you tell me the truth?”
“I’ll certainly try.”
“Do you like Dad or not? And I don’t mean as a—” she made quote marks in the air “—friend.”
Lili leaned over, picking a dumpling off the pile and biting into it. Perfect, she thought as juice dripped down her chin. Claire handed her a napkin. “Yes,” she said, wiping her mouth. “I do.”
Claire’s eyes never left hers. “Does he like you?”
“You’d have to ask him that, I can’t answer for him.” She took another bite, wiped her mouth again. “But I can say that, sometimes, with grownups…liking each other doesn’t mean…” She searched for the right words. “Doesn’t mean serious, or forever, or…anything, really. Sometimes, the timing’s all wrong, or there are other things, or people, you have to think about.” Finishing off the dumpling, she shrugged. “It’s complicated.”
The child let out a long sigh. “Yeah. Tell me about it.”
Lili smiled, even though her stomach felt as if she’d eaten the entire plate of dumplings on her own. “Even if…things were different, I think it’s pretty safe to say your father would never do anything to upset you. Or push you into something you’re not ready for.” Lili paused. “And neither would I.”
The girl’s eyes lifted again. “You promise?”
“Cross my heart,” Lili said, doing just that, then said, “You see, the timing isn’t good for me, either.”
“You mean…like you don’t want a boyfriend right now?”
Lili’s mouth twitched, even as she realized she was having trouble with that logic thing again. That her pull toward Tony was in direct opposition to an almost desperate need to figure out who she was and what her place in the grand scheme of things was supposed to be. “You’re an incredibly smart little girl, aren’t you?” she said, and Claire lowered her eyes, blushing. Then she added, “If something’s right, it has to be right for everybody. Does that make sense?”
Claire reached for another dumpling before finally nodding. “Yeah, I guess,” she said, just as a dripping, towel-clad Daphne appeared in the doorway. “No fair! You said you wouldn’t start without me!”
Her hair a mass of sopping corkscrews, she tromped across the tile floor, leaving behind a trail of wet footprints, to snatch one of the dumplings off the pile and shove the whole thing into her mouth. A moment later she ran to the trash can to spit it out, then to the sink for a glass of water which she gulped down as if her mouth was on fire. “Grossioso!” she said once sh
e came up for air. “And you people actually ate those things?”
Claire and Lili looked at each other and burst out laughing…a moment before the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Daphne said, letting out a shriek when Claire nearly tackled her to the floor.
“You can’t answer the door, you’re naked!”
“Am not, I’m wearing a towel!” Daphne yelled after Claire as the older girl stormed out…only to return a few seconds later with a puzzled look on her face.
“I looked through the peephole, just to make sure it was Nana? But it’s not, it’s some guy I’ve never seen before. So I didn’t open the door.”
“Good girl. Was he holding a clipboard? Pamphlets?” Lili’d already gotten the lowdown from Magda, who you opened the door to and who you didn’t.
“Did he look like a weirdo?” Daphne put in.
“He looks fine,” Claire huffed. “I just don’t know him.”
“Ed, come,” Lili said, beckoning the lean, mean, fly-eating machine to follow her and the girls down the hall. Grasping the dog’s collar, she opened the door.
“Maybe I help you?” she asked the square-jawed man on the other side, blond and crisp and creased, the type of man whose life was probably governed by some bit of technology smaller than a deck of cards.
Then he said, “This is Tony Vaccaro’s house, isn’t it?” and Lili got a very strong feeling that life had just come crashing down around his perfectly coiffed head.
Chapter Eight
Within like a second of Lili’s opening the door, Claire got one of her bad feelings. She even felt the back of her neck prickle, like when she was little and had to go pee in the middle of the night, and the house was all dark and spooky.
Without thinking, she took Daphne’s hand and inched closer to Lili. The stranger didn’t look at either of them. With his sunglasses on, Claire couldn’t decide if he was angry or sad or both, but whatever it was, his face creeped her out.
“Tony’s not available at the moment,” Lili said, fighting to keep Ed, who on his hind legs was nearly as tall as Lili, from jumping up on the man. Only to lick him, but the guy didn’t know that. “Who shall I say was here—?”
“Will he be back soon?”
“If you leave a number, I could have him call you.”
Claire noticed Lili didn’t invite him inside to wait. Also, that she blocked both Claire and Daph with her body. But instead of answering, the man turned and went back down the steps and out to his car, a small, fancy one with no top, like Gramps drove.
“Who was it?” Daph asked after he drove away.
“I have no idea.” Lili let Ed go, then closed the door, looking from Claire to Daph. “Neither of you recognized him?”
“Uh-uh,” they both said. Claire noticed Lili’s hands were shaking, a little. Then she smiled and told them to go get dressed, they didn’t want to keep their grandmother waiting. Except before she’d finished her sentence, practically, the door opened—everybody jumped, including the dog—but it was only Daddy and JoJo. Daddy gave Lili a really weird look, and she gave him one right back.
Which only made Claire’s neck prickle even harder as she and Daph went upstairs.
Tony waited until he was sure the girls were in their rooms before spinning on a very pale Lili. “What happened?” he whispered, setting Josie down. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“No, no ghost,” she said, palming her cheek before lifting her eyes to Tony’s. “A real live man. Here, asking for you. Well-dressed, light hair. Couldn’t tell his eye color, he was wearing sunglasses. But he drives an expensive looking sports car. A Jaguar, perhaps. Silver.”
His mind racing, Tony crossed the entryway on autopilot to wrest one of the dog’s toys out of Josie’s hands, barely hearing the baby’s howl of protest. “Don’t know the car. But…” After another glance upstairs, he turned back to Lili. “Who else could it be?”
Shaking her head, Lili sat on the boot-and-scarf bench by the front door, smiling when Josie made a beeline for her and crawled up into her lap. A second later she’d snuggled against Lili’s chest with her thumb in her mouth; Lili gently palmed the baby’s head, stroking her fine hair. “Why does this feel so good?” she asked, shifting slightly to settle Josie more securely on her lap.
Even over the sudden surge of acid in his gut, Tony’s mouth twitched. “So you don’t sell ’em to the highest bidder when they hit puberty?”
Lili chuckled, resting her cheek on top of the Josie’s head as she looked up, her eyes soft with sympathy. “When will you know? About the test?”
The bench creaked when Tony lowered his carcass beside her. Josie immediately decided she wanted him again. “Sometime Thursday,” he said, strongly tempted to put the kid in the car and strike out for parts unknown.
A quick, light squeeze of his wrist preceded, “If it’s still okay, I would like to go to New Hampshire with you and the girls.”
He twisted to look at her profile. “You sure?”
“I think Claire and I came to an understanding,” she said over the sound of little feet clattering down the stairs. “I even got her to giggle.”
“You’re puttin’ me on.”
“Not a bit of it. More than once, even.” As Tony shook his head, amazed, Lili added, “Although if she still has a problem with my tagging along, I won’t go—”
The girls hit the bottom of the stairs at the same time the doorbell rang, giving Tony only a second to frown at their strangely spiffy outfits before Daph rushed to the picture window in the living room and announced, “Okay, this time it really is Nana!”
“And why is that?” he asked his red-faced—and usually glib—oldest daughter. But before she could answer, his mother-in-law swept through the door, all tanned and toned in a neat little tennis dress and sparkling white shoes to match.
“No, Ed, get down! DOWN! Honestly, Tony, you really must get that dog in obedience school—hello, darlings!” Susan said, dispensing hugs and kisses like she hadn’t just seen the kids the day before…a flurry of activity that came to a screeching halt the instant she laid eyes on Lili.
“Oh,” she said, obviously confused. “Lili. How nice to see you again—”
“Dad had to take JoJo to the doctor,” Daph said before Tony could muzzle her, “so Lili stayed with us. We made plum dumplings, but they’re seriously gross—”
“They were not,” Claire put in.
“Were, too—”
“What do you mean,” Susan said, “you took the baby to the doctor?”
“You ate plum dumplings?” Tony asked, flummoxed.
“Yeah,” Claire said with a little smile at Lili. “They were actually pretty good—”
“Are you all right, sweetie?” Susan asked, palming JoJo’s forehead.
“She’s fine,” Tony said. “Just a check-up.”
“Oh. Well, then.” Susan gave him a funny look, then smiled for her granddaughters. “Are you two ready to go?”
Tony looked at Claire again. “Go where?”
“Their grandmother invited them to go shopping for school,” Lili said. “Sort of a last-minute thing, I gathered.”
And yeah, he caught the slightly puzzled looks on both Claire’s and Susan’s faces. God save him from female conspiracies. “But school’s not for weeks yet.”
“Then now’s the best time to shop,” Susan said, taking Daphne’s hand, “before the stores get crowded.” Then she smiled at Tony, and he remembered Marissa talking about her and her mother’s shopping expeditions, all-day affairs that often included pedicures and lunches at fancy restaurants…a tradition they’d kept up until nearly the end. He hated shopping, himself, but he could tell how much this meant to Susan, being able to do with her granddaughters what she could no longer do with her own daughter. “And besides,” she said, looking genuinely happy for the first time in months, “tell me I’m not saving you hours of agony.”
Tony chuckled. “Okay, you got me there. But they wear
uniforms, so don’t buy ’em a lot of stuff they can’t wear. And they gotta be home by five, ’cause we’re goin’ on a trip tomorrow and I wanna get an early start.”
At that, all eyes veered to him.
“What kind of trip, Tony—?”
“Really? Yay! Where are we going—?”
“What if I don’t wanna go?”
“It’s just for a cuppla days,” he said to the group at large, “up to visit Rudy and Violet in New Hampshire. I didn’t know about it myself until yesterday.” He paused, not really wanting to do this in front of Susan, but better now than to a couple of cranky, malled-out kids. Then, because Susan would only find out later, anyway, he added, “And I’ve invited Lili to go along.”
Daphne squealed another “Yay!” and wrapped her arms around Lili’s hips, Claire went into dour mode and Susan looked like she’d just been goosed. Lili, however, bent over to look into Claire’s eyes.
“But only if it’s okay with you,” she said softly.
Claire frowned. “Really?”
“Really—”
“Please say yes, Claire,” Daphne said, clinging to Lili. A move obviously not sitting well with Susan. “Please?”
After a moment, Claire sighed. “Sure, why not?” she said, and Lili smiled, and all manner of untoward thoughts rose up in Tony’s brain, despite his mother-in-law’s pointed glance in his direction before she opened the front door.
“Girls, why don’t you go on out to the car? Tony? We should, um, probably discuss what the girls need for school. Would you mind coming out with me for a moment?”
Leaving Josie behind with Lili—and trying to ignore Lili’s raised brows—Tony followed Marissa’s mother. “Don’t start, Susan,” he said in a low voice as soon as they got out on the porch and the girls were safely in the car. “I know what you’re thinking—”
“What? What am I thinking? Besides the fact that you’re rushing into another relationship when Marissa hasn’t even been gone a year yet?”
Tony’s face heated. “I’m not rushing into anything. Rudy and Violet invited us up to their inn on the spur of the moment and asked me if I’d like to bring her along, so that’s what I’m doing. And that’s all I’m doing.”
From Friends to Forever Page 11
