Kiki Lowenstein Books 1-3 & Cara Mia Delgatto Books 1-3: The Perfect Series for Crafters, Pet Lovers, and Readers Who Like Upbeat Books!

by Joanna Campbell Slan

  I should have figured this was coming. A hard knot formed in my stomach. Dominic Petrocelli had a way of inserting himself into Tommy's life. He did not act like a typical father, dispensing advice, and staying involved. No, Dom was what our family therapist called a "Disneyland Dad." Dom showed up when and if it was convenient. When times got tough, Dom disappeared.

  Dom did his best to make me look like the heavy. He would dump loads of presents on our son, flout all my rules, make fun of how hard I worked, take Tommy places I couldn't afford, and then walk away, leaving me to be the "Mean Mom."

  "How is your father?" I choked on the title. "Sperm donor" was a more accurate description. "What did he have to say?"

  "He wants to come down for Parents' Weekend."

  That hurt. From the start of our relationship, Dom knew how to exploit my vulnerability. He was a master at being able to get under my skin.

  When the court ordered him to contribute toward Tommy's education, Dom made it clear he would expect something in return. In my ex-husband’s mind, that meant he had the right to show up when and where he wanted in Tommy's life. I could count on Dom to take an unearned bow for his meager participation in his son's upbringing.

  This turn of events wasn’t at all surprising. Now that Tommy was a young man and in college, my husband wanted to take advantage of his parenthood, on a grand scale. Squeezing my eyes shut, I could see Dom doing a star turn at Parents’ Weekend. Whereas I planned to blend in with the other parents, Dom would show up in a fancy car, flash his Rolex, and pose in his Armani. He’d be the dad who brought a bottle of champagne and a box of Cuban cigars. You could always count on Dom to turn heads.

  But this wasn't about Dom. Or about me. It was about Tommy.

  "How do you feel about having your father visit?"

  "I've been talking to the upper classmen. They tell me it’s better if your parents visit any weekend but Parents' Weekend."

  "Oh, really?" That didn't make much sense.

  "Yep. They say that during Parents' Weekend all the parents take their kids and their kids' friends out to eat. The weekend after that, we're all stuck here in the dorms eating cruddy college food. So I was thinking maybe my dad could come down for Parents' Weekend and you could come the weekend after."

  My son was wise beyond his years. He'd figured out a smart way to keep his father and me from crossing paths. Of course, this plan also meant that I wouldn't be able to attend the lectures and events being held for parents. I would miss out on the educational aspects of my visit and on the chance to build camaraderie with other parents.

  However, Tommy had come up with an ingenious solution. By coming one weekend later, I would be able to take my son and his new friends out to dinner without competition for their time. My son would realize that I'd heard the plea in his voice, the request that I step aside, because he couldn't ask the same of his dad.

  "Honey, I'll come whenever you want. For now, let's plan on getting together after Parents' Weekend."

  “Thanks, Mom. You’re the best.”

  42

  After saying goodbye to Tommy, I phoned the hospital and checked on Poppy. I couldn't go to sleep without knowing our small tribe was all accounted for.

  "Your grandfather's insulin level is still unstable," said the duty nurse. “I can't speak for the doctor, but I imagine he won't be letting your grandfather leave without an insulin pump."

  "Insulin pump?"

  "You really need to talk to your grandfather's physician," said the nurse, by way of ending our conversation.

  After a long hot shower, I got ready for bed. I couldn't help thinking about Cooper, wondering how my life might have been different if he and I hadn't been separated. Of course, that was silly. You can't turn back the hands of time. If we hadn't gone our separate ways, I probably wouldn't have fallen so hard for Dom. If I hadn't fallen for Dom, I wouldn't have Tommy. I wouldn't trade anything in the world for my son.

  "The past is the past," I told my reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror as I talked around my toothbrush. "Get over it and move on."

  When I sank down onto my makeshift bed, the plastic made a crinkling noise. I told myself that sound should be reassuring, not upsetting. After all, thanks to the liberal application of plastic and masking tape, I'd managed to protect myself from any little critters who might want to come out and play on my snoozing self.

  I'd need to do a load of laundry sooner rather than later. All this hard labor was causing me to go through my limited wardrobe rather quickly. I could buy new clothes, but I hated wearing things that hadn't been washed.

  Tomorrow I would ask MJ to find a washer and dryer. She seemed to know how to get a good deal. Of course, that meant yet another expenditure. What a mess my life was in! I squirmed around on my bed and tried to count my blessings. My tummy was full, I had a place to sleep, my son was okay, Poppy was on the mend, and I had money in the bank.

  "Thanks, Big Guy." I offered up my prayer of gratitude and promptly fell asleep. The next morning, I awakened to the sound of Skye moving around in the twin unit. She and I must have had complimentary body clocks. We arrived in the hallway at the same moment.

  "Breakfast at McDonald's? I'll buy," she said.

  "You're on."

  We were climbing into Black Beauty when MJ pulled up. She requested our help with her purchases. Skye and I assisted her by carrying a new coffee maker, grounds, cream, sugar, and sweeteners. When we told her about our planned McDonald’s run, she said, "Bring me an Egg McMuffin, and I'll start the coffee.”

  Less than an hour later, we'd been fed, caffeinated, and coordinated, so we went at it again. Skye bustled around cleaning. MJ made phone calls and handled paperwork. I sorted the odd items that had been left behind. I also called the hospital and sat on hold for five minutes. A nursing supervisor told me that Poppy was having tests and couldn't come to the phone. However, she did give me the phone number of his doctor, Dr. Donovan.

  I called the man's office and lucked out. He was willing to speak to me, because Poppy had warned him that I might call—and had given his permission on the HIPPA form to share any news with me.

  "Your grandfather has an infection in his foot,” Dr. Donovan said, “and that needs to get cleared up. We caught it early, but it's still worrisome.”

  I went back to sorting through the multiple piles of junk. Some were obviously salvageable and others went directly to a trash pile. At the top of the discards stack was an orphan drawer that had once belonged to a chest of drawers. Skye picked it up and looked it over thoughtfully. In the silence, MJ was pulled away from her work to join us.

  "Don't toss this out. Are there more?”

  “I think so. Odds and ends. They all belong to different chests of drawers.”

  “Could we keep them? In fact, could you give the 'toss' pile a 48-hour reprieve?"

  MJ and I looked at each other with curiosity, but then I shrugged. If Skye thought she could do something interesting with all that junk, she was welcome to try.

  I'd forgotten all about Detective Lou Murray until he stomped onto the sales floor. The scowl on his face announced he was not happy. Neither was I. After Irving Feldman's sudden appearance last night, I'd printed CLOSED in a bold marker on a piece of copy paper, taped it to the front door, and jammed a chair under the lock. Sadly, I hadn't done the same with the back door. Nor had I remembered to lock it after Skye and I came back from McDonald's.

  The big cop got right up in my face, giving me a good look at his shiner. Overnight that one eye had swollen nearly shut. The purple bruising had expanded to almost comical proportions. "We need to talk, Ms. Delgatto. You weren't entirely honest with me. I don’t like it when people try to hide things. Things I need to know."

  There was no way to postpone the inevitable. My past had caught up with me. Kiki had counseled me not to worry, but I knew better. She said that no one would care about a bad choice I’d made eighteen years ago, but obviously the homicide detective did. I felt
like a liar and a phony as a hot blush of embarrassment crept up my throat. I swallowed hard and waited.

  How much did he know?

  Who had squealed on me?

  How bad of a light had I been cast in?

  What would Lou Murray think about me? Especially since I’d tripped over a dead man?

  MJ and Skye glanced from him to me with puzzled expressions on their faces.

  I'd planned to share my background with them, privately, at some point in the future, over a bottle of wine. Having it exposed in the unforgiving, totally sober light of day was the stuff of nightmares.

  "I don't know exactly what you are talking about.” That much was true.

  “I think you do,” the detective countered.

  “You are welcome to talk to my attorney, Dell White, but I have nothing to say.”

  “Exactly what I’d expect from a person with something to hide,” he snarled.

  Yes, I had learned the hard way how our legal system could trip up innocent people. You might think that talking to the authorities would do you no harm, because you had nothing to hide, but no one remembers everything. Particularly if the event is harrowing or exceptionally emotional. Even the slightest inconsistencies can come back to haunt you when you make a statement to the police. Oddly enough, practiced liars are more likely to have a script and follow it, while honest people tend to get confused.

  We say that people are innocent until proven guilty, but once you're in the system, you aren't likely to get back out again. You have to petition to have your fingerprints expunged. You can't lie about your arrest when questioned, even if you were later released and found innocent. The stain of an entanglement with the law creeps into every aspect of your life. No amount of scrubbing will remove it. Furthermore, prosecutorial misconduct is rampant, and our legal system is loath to slap the hands of rogue district attorneys who overstep the bounds of their offices.

  And the costs?

  Besides emptying your wallet, an encounter with our legal system will ruin your health and your mental well-being. The process goes on and on and on, grinding you down. One hand does not necessarily know what the other is doing, so you are constantly answering the same questions over and over.

  I know all this from personal experience. I wish I didn't. That's why I hadn't brought up my past when Detective Murray initially questioned me. Instead, I had crossed my fingers and hoped that my past was just that…my past.

  But it wasn't.

  I might never put it behind me.

  Not totally.

  "Calling your attorney would be a waste of your money and time," said Detective Murray.

  "Why?" I shoved my hands deep into my pockets so he couldn’t see them trembling.

  "Because I doubt you have anything more to tell me than what I've already learned," he said. "I don't like getting the scoop the hard way. Chief Robbie Holmes from St. Louis personally vouched for you. Says you're a good person. I'm here because you should have told me yourself what happened. Instead, I got blindsided by your story, and my boss gave me a real butt-chewing. I like keeping my backside free of bite marks if you don't mind."

  "Want a medal or a chest to pin it on?" I asked with a smirk. My father had always warned me that my smart mouth was bound to get me in trouble. I regretted my juvenile comment almost immediately. Luckily Detective Murray didn't seem fazed by it.

  "Is that an apology?" He raised a hairy eyebrow.

  "Sort of," I admitted. "Look, I won't talk to you without an attorney. I regret that you had to discover unsavory portions of my past. Believe me, I wish they'd never happened. Rest assured they have nothing to do with Hal Humberger's murder."

  "Aw, nuts," said Detective Murray, with a disgusted wave of his arm that caused his slightly rumpled jacket to hike up around his shoulders. "I haven't got time for this. No more surprises, Ms. Delgatto. Do you hear me? And don’t even think about leaving town!"

  43

  MJ and Skye deserved to hear about my mistakes from me, personally, and not through the grapevine. Now that the local law enforcement authorities knew what happened, my past wouldn't stay a secret for long. When the door slammed behind Detective Murray, all the starch went out of my britches. I’d come so far⸻geographically and emotionally⸻but now I’d been dragged back to my past. Instead of feeling like a self-sufficient businesswoman, the sour stink of failure fogged my brain.

  Worse luck, two people whose respect I craved were staring at me in confusion. They weren’t sure whether to keep moving ahead or to pack it in and call it a day.

  I had to be pro-active. "Look, I'll tell the two of you everything, but it's a long story. Why don't we break for lunch?"

  Skye volunteered to pick up an Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza and bring it back along with an assortment of colas. After I handed her some money for the food, MJ and I went back to working in silence.

  Skye came back in a hurry; her physical presence announced by the yeasty fragrance of Anthony’s crust. No way could MJ and I ignore it.

  “Time to eat,” I said.

  Once we all found chairs and dragged them over to the old oak desk, I .took a long swallow of my Diet Dr Pepper, wishing it was something stronger. I could pretend that Kiki Lowenstein was here. That might help. Imagining her as a listener loosened the tight band of pressure that squeezed my heart. MJ and Skye munched on pizza, as I launched into my story.

  "The summer that I finished high school, a man named Dominic Petrocelli, a recent graduate from the St. Louis culinary school, interned at our family restaurant. My father and Dominic hit it off immediately, spending hours talking about food. Dad had been wanting to add some old family recipes to the menu. With Dom's input, he did just that. People really took notice. Our business grew accordingly. Pretty soon, Dom included in almost everything we did, although my mom took a standoffish attitude about him.

  "I can't describe how charming Dom is. Imagine the cover of a Harlequin romance novel come to life. Tall, dark, handsome with an accent. At seventeen, I was still gawky and unsure of myself. When he began paying attention to me, I thought it was because he liked my dad so much. But pretty soon, he started finding ways to seek me out. Alone. That wasn't too hard, because I spent most of my time at the restaurant, either waiting tables or working the hostess stand. As word spread of our expanded menu, we were busy all the time. We had to hire more wait staff, including a woman named Alicia Matteo. Alicia and I got along together really well, probably because we were about the same age. She kept telling me that Dom had a crush on me. I was a little intimidated by him, to tell you the truth. Finally, he asked my dad for permission to ask me out on a date. As you can imagine, this Old World style of courtship pleased my father immensely.

  "Dom planned the most fantastic dates. We picnicked in Forest Park and rented a paddle boat. We went horseback riding on a trail. Everything I wanted to do, he did it. Of course, things began to get hot and heavy between us. One moonlit night, Dominic took me to a lovely sculpture park in St. Louis and under the stars he asked me to marry him."

  Skye sighed with happiness, but I couldn't look at her. This wasn't a case of "happily ever after." Not by a long shot. MJ's face was neutral, although her eyes narrowed. Of my two new friends, she was the more worldly, the more cynical. She seemed to guess that things were not as they seemed.

  "My mother told me point-blank that she didn't trust Dominic. She couldn't come up with a reason. My dad thought Dominic was great, but he agreed with Mom that we should wait and get to know each other better. Both my parents thought I was too young to get married. I had only had one real boyfriend besides Dominic, so my parents suggested that I should date around. But I didn't want to wait. You see, I'd been in love once before, and that ended when my mother made a decision to separate us. I never heard from the guy again. I was sure history would repeat itself if I didn’t take action. My mother was a wonderful woman, but kind of hard-headed, and Dad usually did what she wanted. We all did."

  Neither MJ nor
Skye made a sound, but I could tell MJ didn't like what she was hearing, because her posture changed. I shifted in my chair and stared past her, avoiding her eyes.

  "Dom suggested that we elope. At the time, it sounded really romantic. After all, I was just seventeen. What did I know? The only person I told was my new best friend, Alicia. She warned me that if I waited, I would lose him. I’d graduated early from high school. My parents wanted me to go to college. I'd been accepted, but why waste the money? I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be married, start a family, and work in our restaurant. Finally, I got up my courage and I told my dad that Dom and I wanted to elope. I said that if he didn't give us permission, we'd just move in together. I knew Dad would give in, because if I started living with Dom, that would break my mother's heart. The embarrassment alone would kill her. Dom kept after Dad, too. With both of us pressuring him, my father caved in.

  "We waited until Dom had a weekend off. I lied to Mom and said that I was driving up to Chicago to visit a friend from high school. There's only a one-day waiting period in Illinois after you get your license, and you don't need to be a resident. I had Dad's permission, so Dom and I got the license, spent the day goofing around downtown, and then checked into the Palmer House. Things didn't go quite as I'd dreamed, but I figured that was because I was so nervous. We were married the next morning when the courthouse opened."

  I cleared my throat and continued, "I thought we'd spend the rest of the weekend in town. But Dom said, 'I can't wait to tell everyone we're married.' So we hopped back in my car and drove home."

  I shook my head, thinking of how naive I had been. "When we got back to St. Louis, everything was in an uproar. My mother was furious with my dad. She demanded that the marriage be annulled immediately, but I wouldn't hear of it. I did not want to be wrong. My mother had always ruled the roost, and this was my chance to dig in my heels. Eventually, my parents agreed to set us up in an apartment, but the place wasn't nice enough for Dominic. He complained all the time. First he badgered me to get them to buy us a house. Then he demanded that my father make him a partner in the restaurant. When Dad told him he wouldn't do that, Dom came home and took it out on me. Slowly I discovered that I'd married some sort of monster. The guy who'd been so loving to me was angry and dissatisfied all the time. He expected me to work, make his meals, to clean and cook, and to beg my parents for money. I didn't know what to do, and I tried to keep my problems a secret, because I couldn't face my mother. I couldn't tell Dad, because he had enough on his plate. Mom was barely speaking to my father because he'd given us permission to marry."