Four Steps to the Altar

by Jean Stone

  She sniffed. She shrugged. “It’s no big deal, Dad.”

  He glanced at her vanity, which had a string of photo-booth pictures tucked into the mirror: Cassie and Marilla making goofy, kid faces; Cassie and Marilla trying to look sophisticated, “Like movie stars, Dad,” she had said; Cassie and Marilla stuck in the dark tunnel of puberty between growing up and grown.

  He did not look at the poster of Patty.

  “Honey,” he said, “it is a big deal when my twelve-year-old daughter stays out all night and lies about where she was.”

  She sniffed again. “We didn’t do anything bad, Dad.”

  He was not too stupid to know that what was “bad” thirty years ago when he was her age was not considered bad today. “Call me old-fashioned, but in my book, lying is bad.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Then silence fell, not really a standoff, just the pregnant (Ha, Andrew thought, now, there’s a word I’d rather not consider) pause of two generations not knowing who should speak next or what should be said.

  Finally, Cassie spoke. “It’s Dillon Parker, Dad. He’s in eighth grade and he is so cute.”

  The air that whooshed into Andrew’s lungs carried thoughts and images of an angry, primal nature. “Eighth grade?” was all that he felt safe to ask.

  “He’s very smart,” Cassie said, almost like a proud parent.

  Andrew tried to remember how “smart” he’d been in the eighth grade, but he only could remember a few movie dates with Alicia Henderson and a few clumsy breast-grabs in the back row of the theater. He tried not to shudder visibly.

  “Honey,” he said, “he’s two years older than you are. That’s too much at your age.”

  She shrugged again. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  She shook her head. “No it doesn’t, Dad. Dillon doesn’t know I exist.”

  If Andrew was confused before, he was completely adrift now.

  Cassie sighed. “Dillon lives at the camp on the lake. His father is the lake superintendent. Marilla and I camped out across from their house to…well, just to see Dillon, if we could. If it makes you feel better, we didn’t. We think his bedroom is upstairs in the front of the house, but it’s a log cabin and it’s pretty dark out there. It was too hard to see.”

  Andrew did not know when his mouth had dropped open, but when she was finished it was hanging there like a flycatcher in the horse barn where Cassie used to love to go, before her passion for horses waned in favor of boys, specifically Dillon Parker. “You camped out?” Andrew somehow managed to ask.

  “Marilla’s brothers have lots of sleeping bags. We took a couple.”

  “And you lay there…on the ground…watching this…this boy’s house?”

  “Well, not exactly. We stayed in one of the cabins that has a good view.”

  “One of the cabins?” His voice was squeaking now, as if he had suddenly become puberty-stricken too.

  “We took the lock off and went inside. We figured it was safer in there than outside. There are bears in these hills, Dad.” She said the last sentence as if she were a park ranger cautioning a tourist.

  “Well,” Andrew said. “You shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have done any of it.” He knew his words were inadequate, but he was too stunned to say anything else.

  “But, Dad,” she said. “It gave you another night alone with Jo, didn’t it?”

  An uncomfortable chill crawled up Andrew’s spine. He stood up. “Get ready for school, Cassie. After school you’re going to come straight home. I don’t know what your punishment will be yet, but it will be a whopper, and I don’t mean a trip to Pittsfield to Burger King.”

  He left the room and headed downstairs, wondering what—if anything—Jo had to do with this.

  In the morning, Lily ran to Bruegger’s and bought bagels and cream cheese for Frank and his father. It was the closest she could come to domesticity, given the events ahead of her that day.

  After unwrapping their uninspired breakfast and plunking it on the kitchen table, she planted a light kiss on Frank’s forehead, then dashed back out the door. She jumped into her little Mercedes and sped off toward home to shower, change, and pick up Antonia and try to act as if everything were fine, as if her lover’s mother hadn’t just died the evening before, as if she hadn’t spent the night at his somber house.

  By the time she arrived at Wheatleigh, Lily was exhausted. She felt like she was juggling both a spouse and a lover and trying to be true to both. Infidelity, she supposed, came cloaked in different packages.

  Antonia was in the breakfast room, alone at a table. She was dressed in boxy charcoal pants and a matching jacket that had silver buttons emblazoned with someone’s family crest, not hers. She was eating what looked like a poached egg and smoked salmon, which would no doubt be added to the room charge Lily would pay. Lily supposed she was lucky she hadn’t run into Pauline and Jonathan at the bagel shop, as they’d no doubt been directed to fend for themselves.

  “Would you care for an egg?” Antonia asked, as if this were her home and her cook was on duty.

  “No,” Lily said. “Thanks. Did you sleep okay?”

  “Fine. How is that man? The one whose mother died?”

  “Well, you know. Death is always unpleasant.”

  “Yes, isn’t it,” Antonia said as she picked at another forkful of egg.

  Lily glanced at her watch. If they spent the morning at Tanglewood, maybe she could dump Antonia back at the hotel, then get to Frank’s in time to serve lunch to the minister and the church ladies or whoever was there. She could tell Antonia she’d join her for dinner, then tell Frank she was coming down with a cold or something. Better yet, she could say she had cramps. Men were always so willing to let you have your way when you said you had cramps, as long as you didn’t discuss it.

  She put her hands in her lap and tried not to let on that she was in a hurry and that she wished Antonia would hurry the hell up.

  “What a lovely room,” Lily said, calmly, slowly.

  “Yes. And the service is perfect. You never see a servant unless one is needed. There’s no hovering, no brash need to entertain their guests in that despicable way that’s become so popular in the States.”

  Lily did not comment that it had been years since Antonia had left “the States” even for a short vacation.

  “Well,” she said instead, “as soon as you’re finished…”

  Antonia nodded and continued to take her sweet time.

  “You left,” Andrew said when he finally surfaced at Second Chances.

  “Yes,” Jo replied, eyes fixed on her computer screen. “I decided it should be between the two of you.” She sighed and turned around. “Is Cassie okay?”

  “She’s fine. I’m the one who doesn’t know what to do.” He pulled a chair close to Jo’s desk, then related all Cassie had said. “Maybe you were right all along,” he added at the end. “Maybe the fact that we’ve been sleeping together has bothered her. I thought she was so cool with everything. But the way she said she’d given us a night alone…as if it justified that she’d stayed out all night, that she’d been spying—or trying to spy—on that boy.”

  Suddenly Sarah stood in the doorway that led from her studio into the showroom. She tossed back her long hair, folded her arms across the beaded tunic that she wore. “I’m going to do something I never do,” she said. “I’m going to meddle in someone else’s business.”

  Jo laughed, grateful that Sarah had overheard their conversation and might help put this new responsibility into some sort of perspective.

  “You two are obviously having some problems,” she said, “what with the trial coming and all, and with canceling the ceremony and reception—which, by the way, I agree with. All along, however, Cassie has been your biggest supporter, Andrew, and your biggest cheerleader, Jo. She’s done everything to act as if this marriage is the greatest thing since Green Day—who, in case you didn’t know, are a tattooed bunch o
f rock stars she’s probably in love with too.

  “Unfortunately,” she continued, “Cassie is smack in the middle of being twelve, and my bet is she’s as confused as the two of you about all this and what it means for her. As cool as my son was when Jason and I split up, it’s taken him a few months to trust Sutter in my life—in his life.

  “Anyway, on top of everything you’re moving into Jo’s house and Cassie will lose her room. Does either of you remember what your room meant to you when you were a kid? It was your place, your space, the one ten-by-twelve or fourteen-by-sixteen or whatever piece of real estate that belonged to you and only you. It was your haven.

  “So now Cassie is losing her dad to another woman and she’s losing her space too, and she’s trying like hell to be grown up about all of it.

  “My guess is, however, that her fear needs somewhere to go, so camping out across the street from a boy who doesn’t know she’s alive is as good a way as any to try and be in control of some part of her life.”

  She smiled at the two of them and gave them a short salute. “So please forgive me, but I couldn’t stand to listen to your speculations any longer.”

  With that, Sarah disappeared into her studio, leaving Jo and Andrew to look at each other.

  They might have cried or hugged or something, but just then the bell rang over the front door and in walked a man in a gray suit.

  “I’m looking for Josephine Lyons,” the man said. Jo smiled and said that was her, and before she knew it he had withdrawn a wallet from his pocket, produced an ID, and said, “I’m Harlan Wilkes with the Suffolk County DA’s office. I’d like to talk with you about your testimony in the case against Brian Charles Forbes.”

  26

  Larceny over two hundred fifty dollars can mean up to five years’ imprisonment in this state,” Harlan Wilkes said as he and Jo sat at a table in the back of the luncheonette two doors down from Second Chances. “Or two and a half years with a twenty-five-thousand-dollar fine.”

  They had walked the fifty or so paces from the shop, though Jo did not think she could recall the trip. She only knew that Andrew had offered to come with her. She’d said, “No thanks, I can handle this.”

  Jo lifted the mug of hot tea now; it was heavy in her hand. “That’s all?”

  “Well, yes.”

  She thought about it for a moment. What had she expected? That Brian would go to jail for life? “But that’s per complaint, right?”

  “Ordinarily, yes.”

  “Ordinarily?”

  “Well, yes. But in this case, there’s just your complaint.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head, wishing that Andrew, Sarah, anyone else were here, someone who could think more clearly about this. “There was my complaint and two others. The investigator found four other women who Brian bilked. Two said they’d come forward.”

  Mr. Wilkes shook his head. “They withdrew the charges. In fact, one of the complainants is still his wife, you know. He left with her when his bail was posted.”

  The luncheonette suddenly grew cold and dry. “His bail?” she asked.

  “Yes. Didn’t you know? Brian Forbes was released right after Christmas.”

  No, she hadn’t known. She wanted to ask why no one told her, but suddenly Jo felt tired, drained.

  The attorney removed a file from his briefcase and rifled through papers. “It says in the papers that he stole over three hundred thousand dollars from you.”

  She flinched. “Yes. Over a period of several months.”

  “And you have records of the transactions.”

  “Yes. Most of them.” She hadn’t kept track of the few hundred dollars here and there that she’d popped into Brian’s pocket when he was “short of change.” She pressed the mug to her lips, hating the way the facts would “sound,” the he-did-this and she-did-that parts of the Brian–Jo scenario that did not account for emotions or feelings or, God help her, love, or what she’d thought was love. “So,” she said slowly as she set down her mug without drinking, “it’s me against him?”

  “Don’t worry, Ms. Lyons. He’ll get convicted.” But the man didn’t look her in the eye this time when he spoke.

  And then she remembered that Harlan Wilkes had said Brian was out of jail, had been out of jail for months. She shifted on the old coffee-shop chair, wondering if Frank Forbes had known that his brother was free, and if Brian would show up at his mother’s funeral.

  “The guest count is eighty-five,” Lily explained to the special-events person at Tanglewood. “Both the bride and groom have small families. Which is why they’re having the children as their attendants.”

  “Eighteen five-year-olds,” the manager reiterated with a hesitant smile.

  “Oh, but they’re quite delightful.” She didn’t think it was necessary to mention that though it had been stipulated that the venue could accommodate up to one hundred, nowhere was it specified that they all must be adults.

  Antonia sighed as if she were bored and sat down on the bench in the foyer of Seranak House, where the wedding would be held.

  “I’m sure it will be lovely,” the events manager said. “Now tell me, how’s Frank?”

  “Frank?” Lily asked, her voice jumping an octave, maybe two.

  “Yes. I heard his mother died yesterday.”

  Lily silently cursed the cluster of small towns around Lenox and neighboring West Hope. She told herself Antonia’s eyes weren’t gnawing the back of her head. “Yes,” Lily said, “it’s such a shame. The Forbes family has lived in West Hope forever.”

  “Well, their business certainly helped us furnish many of the fabulous antiques in different buildings on the grounds. Even the bench you’re sitting on,” he said, nodding toward Antonia.

  Antonia raised her plump left cheek and eyed the bench on which she sat. “He’s the one with the shop?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Why, yes,” the events manager said. “You don’t know them, then?”

  “Not exactly,” Antonia replied, and Lily felt her stomach twist.

  “Yes, well,” Lily said abruptly, “getting back to our wedding.”

  “Your wedding?” the manager asked with a broad smile. “There have been rumors, of course…”

  The lighting in Seranak House seemed to dim. Lily blinked and willed herself to stay upright, to stay in the moment, however bleak it was. “Yes,” she said hurriedly, “the wedding of our kindergarten teacher. It’s been rumored for years that she’s been spending way too much time in the fifth-grade classroom!” She giggled a carefree (she hoped) giggle and launched into a monologue about her ideas for the outfits for the attendants: pink and lavender dresses for the girls, white tuxedoes with pink cummerbunds for the boys.

  “And I think each girl should carry a nosegay of pink and lavender wildflowers,” she blabbered. “I must remember to have Dennis come up with some samples. Have you used him for floral arrangements? He is quite magnificent.”

  She paused only for a second, then dared to go on, leaping into comments about the food and wasn’t it adorable that the bride and groom wanted pizza bites and chocolate pudding on the menu?

  By the time they were finished and returned to the car, Lily fully expected Antonia would say something like, Okay, Lily, what’s really going on between you and Frank Forbes? but the woman merely flopped onto the passenger seat and said, “If wearing me out has been your mission, Lily, you have accomplished it. Drive me back to Wheatleigh. I want to have a small lunch, then take a long, long nap.”

  Which, of course, was a gift sent from the gods, because that meant Lily could go back to Frank’s and not have to lie, at least not for a little while.

  27

  They had been too busy the rest of the day for Andrew to have any meaningful conversation with Jo, other than to hear her say, “This will be over soon.”

  Andrew was beginning to wonder, however, if anything would ever really be “over” when it came to Brian Forbes and his presence in Jo’s life.
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br />   By six o’clock everyone but Andrew and Jo had gone home for the day. Then she stood up from her desk and announced she was going to the Forbeses’ house to see if there was anything she could do to help Lily or to rescue her if she needed to get back to Antonia. She asked if Andrew wanted to go with her.

  He supposed he should have gone, for the sake of their relationship, whatever that was now.

  But he explained he had to deal with Cassie, then he kissed Jo good-bye and smiled like a grown-up, nonjealous man. He did not say that, though he liked Frank Forbes well enough, he’d rather not be in the same house where Brian Forbes was raised. He’d rather not have to see framed high-school pictures in the living room, or sit in a chair and wonder if Brian’s sorry ass had ever sat there, or sense the presence of the man who had wrecked Jo’s life and now threatened to wreck his. So Andrew said “No thanks” to Jo and hoped he’d have no regrets.

  Once she was out of sight, he turned off his computer and got ready to lock up, feeling slightly guilty that he was grateful to be going home. Sometimes, lately, Andrew found himself longing to be just with Cassie, just the two of them, living and laughing the way they did before all these women came into their lives, before he went and complicated things by falling in love.

  He’d known, of course, that status quo wouldn’t, couldn’t last, that one day Cassie would grow up and leave the paltry nest he’d created, that she’d become the beautiful, intelligent, independent, energetic creature he’d always hoped she’d be and that she’d then set off to mark her place in the world.

  He hadn’t planned that he’d be the one to shake up everything or that Cassie would start her adventure into adulthood when she was only twelve.