by E M Kaplan
He looked quizzical. “I got a wheelchair in the trunk of the car if you need it.”
“Ah, no thanks.” He was always playing the straight man to her smart ass. He held door open for her. She made her way out slowly. “No thanks, Mr. Obregon. The exercise will do me good. It’s not healthy for a person to lie around on the couch all day. Believe me—I’ve tried it many times. Never helped me.” She grimaced, going down the front steps of her building. On the street, she spied a shiny black Lincoln parked in a loading zone with its hazard lights on. A patrol car rolled by it slowly, but didn’t stop.
“Sure thing.” He tucked his hand under her arm and gave her some extra support down the last few steps. She felt like a little old lady going down to the club house for mahjong, but she shut up and took his help, leaning on his arm more than she would have liked.
“Say,” she said. “Did you go to school to learn how to assist ladies like that? That was quite professional.”
He said, straight-faced, “Of course I did. Only the very best school.”
She stopped at the bottom of the steps and gave him a look, also disguising her need to catch her breath. He went ahead to open the car door for her. When she caught up to him, she said, “Greta Williams demands the best?”
He nodded, “Only the best.” He helped her get settled in the back and gave her some cushions to lean against. He waited for her to get comfortable before he closed the door and levered himself into the driver’s seat.
“Thanks, Mr. Obregon. Pardon my asocial behavior, but I might fall asleep now.”
“Sure thing, Josie-girl,” he said.
Sometime later, he woke her up. They were entering an iron gate heading toward a large house on a hill. They followed a winding drive through what seemed to Josie to be a miniature forest. The leaves were already starting to change color, and Josie could smell the changing seasons in the air.
“Good God. Are we in New Hampshire?”
“Nope,” was all that he said, but he smiled at her in the rearview mirror. They pulled up to the front of the house. If Josie had to pick a style of architecture, she would have said Italianate, twenty-first century brothel. Plump plaster balusters lined the front walkway leading into a perfectly symmetrical front facade. Statuary of semi-nude, Romanesque women welcomed her down the walkway.
Lydia Ash greeted her at the door, but looked surprised to see her. Her confusion lasted only a second when she saw that Mr. Obregon had driven her there. “Oh, you’re here,” she said to Josie. Lydia Ash’s eyelids were looking somewhat droopy and her hair was more disheveled than Josie had ever seen it. Her blond hair had lost its sheen and was dull and grayish. In the sunlight of the open door, Josie saw her pupils were dilated and realized she was most likely on a sedative or two. No wonder she hadn’t been able to travel to Arizona. “Come this way,” Lydia said and vaguely gestured Josie to follow her. That was the extent of her greeting.
Josie was shown into what was most likely a library. A wonderful room—and Josie couldn’t help but wonder if it was wasted on a person like Lydia Ash, who seemed to be more of a TV person. She was reading a soap opera tabloid in an overstuffed chair to the side. “You can start your presentation in a minute,” she told Josie when she realized that Josie was still standing in the doorway. “We’re just waiting for her to come in.” Josie assumed she meant Greta Williams.
Rather than stand there uncomfortably, Josie went over to an upright piano by the wall and sat on its bench. “This is your home?” she asked Lydia Ash.
Lydia Ash gave her a blank dull stare, barely looking up from her magazine. “I’ve lived here for nine years.”
“I like this room,” Josie said.
Lydia dropped her magazine and gave a brief look around at the books. “It never did much for me,” she said somewhat sourly. “My husband wanted it. Fat lot of use he gets out of it.” Josie scratched her head in puzzlement—a cartoonish gesture, but Lydia picked up on it all right. “He lives in Switzerland with his mistress. Doesn’t want to have anything to do with us. With me,” she corrected herself now that she no longer had a living daughter. She stared out the window after her mistake, but didn’t cry. Maybe her eyes were all cried out. Or perhaps she was too medicated, too detached from reality to feel anything. “Good for him. And whoever his mistress is, I pity her. Maybe she’ll get tired of being knocked around someday. But for now, better her than me, I say.”
She suddenly looked directly at Josie. “You weren’t there. You weren’t at the funeral. I buried my daughter in the same cemetery as her older brother. She had an older brother who died when he was just a child. Just a baby.”
“What did he die of?” Josie asked, wondering if it could possibly be a less painful topic than talking about Leann.
“We didn’t know what it was called back then. But now, I think it was SIDS. Died in his sleep.” She went back to her magazine and said tiredly, “At least, that’s what my husband said. He never could stand the sound of him crying.” She flipped a page disinterestedly. Struck silent, Josie couldn’t and wouldn’t ask Lydia Ash if she were okay. Josie already knew the answer. The woman was a shell of a person. Frayed hair. Frayed nerves. Frayed life.
“You may proceed now,” Greta Williams said, walking into the room. She took a seat with her back to the window so that whoever looked at her had to stare into the sunlight. No explanation for her tardiness. No apology. No nicety. Her hair, as ever, was in a smooth salt and pepper coif. She sat ramrod straight in her gray woolen suit in a Queen Anne chair.
And so Josie told them, sparing no details, relaying as best as she could—at least, what she could remember—of what Greta Williams’s sons had done to her. Josie retrieved copies of the papers from her shoulder bag: the police records and photos and Leann's medical records.
As Josie talked, Greta Williams became more and more agitated. Furious, in fact. The edges of her very fine nostrils turned white with rage. They flared with an occasional emphatic exhalation of her breath. Her eyes, if possible, became harder, set deep in their sockets. Her lids were nearly translucent, taut with her anger.
Through Josie's narration, Greta Williams's eyes stayed fixed on Lydia Ash. When Josie snuck a glance at Lydia Ash, she wasn’t paying attention. Lydia Ash was staring out the window. When Josie paused for a breath, Lydia Ash abruptly stood up and left the room, as if the movie were over and she didn't care to sit through the credits. Josie was left by herself with Greta Williams. Not the most comfortable position. Especially because she had tired herself out and wished she were home lying on her couch instead of on a hard piano bench and breathing more shallowly than normal thanks to her cracked ribs.
“Come here,” Greta Williams told her. Easier said than done, of course. To her credit, when Greta Williams realized her discomfort, she gestured quickly to the couch. Josie settled herself, and Greta Williams arranged the cushions behind her with surprising deftness and gentleness, even. “You will send me your medical bills,” she said settling herself across from Josie. She left no room for discussion, so Josie merely gave a nod of her head. “And you should know the expenses of the other girl, Benita Ruiz, are being taken care of also.”
Then, after a moment of belated realization—two or three weeks late—Josie said, “You sent me to Arizona. Not Lydia Ash.”
“Yes,” Greta Williams said. “At first, I assumed that you would be more likely to sympathize with Lydia than you would be willing to travel there at my request. I was wrong.”
“You are the one who provided Mr. Obregon with the list of people for me to contact when I got to Puerta.”
“Correct,” Greta Williams said. The tightness around her lips, oddly, relaxed somewhat.
Josie sat in stunned silence. She’d been expecting Greta Williams to deny it. But if she gave Josie the list of names, she’d already known about her sons’ activities. She knew everything. She had known everything all along. “What the hell did you need me for, then?” Josie asked her.
&nbs
p; “Confirmation,” she admitted without hesitation. “For many years, I’ve had suspicions about my sons. Outwardly, they’ve done very well for themselves. But inwardly, I’ve long feared that they have taken after their father and me in ways that I regret. From him, they’ve gotten their cutthroat, predatory natures. From me, they seem to have gotten their singular lack of remorse.” Josie blinked a few times at the candid nature of Greta Williams’s comments—and at their patent inaccuracy to Josie. Was Greta Williams expressing remorse now, in her own, tight-lipped way?
“What are you going to do?” Josie asked staring at the plush Aubusson on the floor. She imagined the Williams brothers were about to experience a sudden choke-hold on their cash flow. Or maybe their legal defense would not be as easy to obtain as they thought. Or would Greta Williams continue to stick by her sons and keep their crimes to herself? Perhaps their deeds would be just another skeleton in their family closet—Josie was certain they already had more than a few.
She raised her eyes and met Greta Williams’s intense scrutiny full-on. “That is not your concern.” Her face shuttered. “When all is said and done, I am still responsible for my sons. I created them and how they are. Or at least, I had a good hand in what they are. I’ll see them through.”
Josie frowned. “I’m sure a lot of factors influenced them. I’m not sure if anyone is ever singularly responsible for another person’s development.”
Greta Williams paused and considered Josie again before stiffly saying, “That is very generous of you to say, considering your injuries.”
“I don’t blame you for what your sons did.” It certainly would have been emotionally convenient to blame Greta Williams for her sons. Say for example, if Greta Williams had locked her young sons in a basement torture chamber as a routine form of discipline. Or, if she had allowed her deceased husband to abuse them. Or if they had a schizophrenic old grandmother hidden away in some expensive institution and craziness was genetic. Something like that could go a long way toward explaining what had happened to Josie out in the desert. She could have said to herself, they’re just the result of years of Beacon Hill inbreeding. But when had Josie ever taken the easy, simple way out of anything?
“In any case,” Greta Williams said, gesturing to someone in the doorway—Mr. Obregon, it turned out to be. “I wish you a speedy recovery and I thank you for your time and effort in this matter.” She said in this matter as coolly as if she’d been talking about purchasing a piece of property in Montana rather than having just heard that her sons had killed a young woman after having tormented her over the course of a decade. Never mind having beaten the tar out of Josie.
Clearly excused from attendance, Josie tried to speak, not finding the right words. Not finding any words. Maybe it was her overwhelming exhaustion. Maybe it was just the desire to put the whole thing behind her—she gave Greta Williams one final nod and with Mr. Obregon’s assistance got into the car and slept all the way home.
CHAPTER 33
A couple weeks after the command appearance at Lydia Ash’s estate, Josie and Drew were hanging out in the living room of her apartment watching TV and lifting weights. Actually, she was lifting light hand weights, and he was watching a cooking show. It was a weekend, and he wasn’t on call, so instead, he was vegging out on her couch in a t-shirt and old jeans with the remote control molded in his hand. Bert snoozed at his feet—they’d already gone out for a jog around the block together. The traitorous dog was getting serious exercise now. She was never going to win him back at this rate.
“So, I have a favor to ask you, Josie,” Drew said, not moving his eyes from the TV screen.
She finished her set of wimpy reps—five-pound hand weights. Triceps and biceps. A few upward rows and military presses. Her ribs felt pretty good and her scars were healing up. Besides, she was under her doctor’s supervision, more or less, when he wasn’t engrossed by the TV.
“What favor’s that?” she said.
“My cousin Janette is getting married next weekend—”
“Oh, no.” She immediately shook her head, thunking her weights down on the coffee table near his propped up feet.
He froze. “No?”
“Stop right there, mister. As much as I would like to do a favor for anyone in your family—and for you—there’s just no way in hell.” She shook her head, suffering a flashback. “No way in the world. It’ll be a cold day in Tucson before I ever stand in for another bridesmaid.” Just the thought of it was enough to make her shudder. Another bad dress and shoes combo. Another horrible situation like the one she’d just been through. No way, no how. Not even for Drew.
“That’s not what I was going to ask you,” he said, smiling.
“No?” She was embarrassed, actually. She’d caught herself several times in the last few days making assumptions about their relationship. They were closer than they had been. Especially since, in high school fashion, they’d actually admitted to each other that they were more than friends. But things seem to have stalled. This seemed like one of many times she thought she’d known where he was going—but she’d been wrong. Really wrong. Awkward.
“Can I continue?”
She nodded, face flushed. “By all means.” She sat down on the couch next to him and trained her eyes on the TV.
“As I was saying—I have a cousin who is getting married next weekend. And last time I went to one of these Costello family weddings—which was just last month, by the way—I promised myself that I would never go to another one of them alone. Ever again. My mother’s driving me crazy. Never mind my sisters. And my Aunt Sophia. All of them—driving me nuts. ‘When are you going to get married? Are you seeing anyone? You realize you’re going to be forty some day.’ And of course, my favorite, ‘Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.’ I didn’t think guys were supposed to hear that one. But I guess that’s my mother’s way of being politically correct.”
Josie tipped her head and looked at him sideways. “Run that by me again? That last wedding. You went to it by yourself? What about that woman—what was her name—Patrice?”
He shrugged. “Turns out, she wasn’t for me.”
“I thought she was supposed to be really great—I mean, outside of what your mother or sisters made up about her. She seemed all right from what you were saying.” Josie said casually and looked carefully back at the TV. Inwardly, yeah, she was crowing.
“Well, she was interested in marrying a doctor, that’s for sure. She just didn’t particularly care if that doctor was me,” he said.
“Ah. Too bad she doesn’t date journalists. I know someone at The Globe who’d be perfect for her.”
Drew cleared his throat. “Well, what I’m trying to ask is, will you come with me to this wedding?”
“Me?” She glanced at him.
He shrugged again and looked at her, then back at the TV. “Well, they all know you already. It will save a lot of time on the introductions.”
Her heart calmed down a little. “Ah, I see. As a favor to you.”
His eyes remained fixed on the TV screen. “Well, actually, I was kind of thinking it would be more like a date.”
She fiddled with the hem of her shirt and discovered her hands were clammy. “A date,” she repeated. “Now that’s something different.”
“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time now,” he admitted. “Oh, I don’t know, for at least six or seven…years. Maybe ten. I just wasn’t sure how you felt. You have to admit that you’re a little hard to read sometimes. You’re all barbs and brambles sometimes. Like a rose. Okay, that was a cheesy analogy. More like spiky. Like an Arizona cactus. Plus, you always have your own thing going on. Your own agenda. Your own ideas about your health. Your career. You’ve been that way ever since I first met you from day one during freshman orientation when your suitcase got stuck in the door and you wouldn’t let me help you. Jesus, like helping you yank an eighty-pound bag through a doorway is an affront to your female independence. No, not even female. Just
your own thing. You’re stubborn, pig-headed, arrogant at times, ways—I think I’m going to shut up now because this is not quite as complimentary as I initially intended it to be.”
He still hadn’t looked up from the television.
She fanned herself with her hand. “I think I need to turn the AC up.”
He frowned and looked at her, finally taking his eyes off the TV. Then, finally noticed she was smiling at him. “So, that’s a yes?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes, I’ll go on a date with you. Even if it is to a wedding.”
He looked at her. “Okay. That’s a big relief.”
“You thought I was going to say no?”
He shrugged. “It was fifty-fifty.”
“Oh come on,” she said, “You don’t know me better yet? It was more like, seventy-five twenty-five.”
He grinned. “This is kind of a big step. I feel like a huge load has been taken off my shoulders. We should do something to celebrate this momentous occasion.”
“I thought the momentous occasion was the date,” she said.
“No no, it’s more than that. This is something different. A realization. An epiphany. And in honor of it—and in honor of you feeling better, I think we should go out tonight.”
She pushed back her hair. “A pre-date date?”
“Nah, something easier than that. Let’s call up Susan and Benjy. We’ll hit O’Malley’s or something. Have a couple of beers. Shoot some pool.”
She nodded. She’d been dreading not just going out again, but also avoiding O’Malley’s. She associated it with Peter Williams because of her encounter with him there when he’d gotten that kung fu death pinch on her wrist in his drunken haze. But going to O’Malley’s with the protection of her friends might be all right. In fact, it suddenly seemed like a good opportunity to get over it.
Drew was already on her new cell phone, using her speed dial to call Susan, who, as it turned out, was free to join them that evening. Most likely, Josie figured, Susan was ditching plans so she could come and hang out with them. That made Josie grin to herself. Above all things, she could count on her friends. Loyal as dogs. She glanced at Bert, who was staring at Drew with a look of unadulterated affection. More loyal than dogs, she corrected herself. If they ever broke up, Drew was getting the dog, she realized. If they ever really got together, fates willing.
