Occasion of Revenge

7

After the Absolut episode, I had half a mind to forget calling the police to let them know that Darlene’s son, Darryl, wasn’t a thief, at least not in the technical sense of the word. Fortunately for Darryl, the regions of my brain where scientists chart charity, compassion, and mercy prevailed in me. Poor schnook couldn’t help it that his mother was a professional, uh, girlfriend.

Besides, I would soon learn that I knew a couple of thieves myself, was harboring one, in fact, right under my own roof. Late Wednesday, Emily informed me matter-of-factly that she and Ruth had taken it upon themselves to remove some items from Daddy’s house “for safekeeping.” When pressed, she confessed that she and her aunt had liberated the silverware, Grandmother Barton’s china, Mother’s jewelry, and the Waterford crystal that my mother hadn’t even had time to unpack before she died.

“Where did you put the stuff?”

“We’ve decided not to tell. That way, when you’re asked, you can truthfully say ‘I don’t know.’ ”

“But what if your grandfather notices the things are gone?”

Emily shrugged. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.”

I thought the move was risky and I told her so, but I was secretly pleased that they had taken matters into their own hands. We had all noticed things disappearing from my parents’ home over the past several months-a pair of sterling silver ashtrays, an Etruscan horse, a crackleware vase, a formal portrait of my father in his Navy uniform. There was no point asking Daddy about them. It didn’t take Hercule Poirot to figure out whose mantel that horse was prancing on. In a few days, I would be driving to Chestertown and could visit the horse myself.

I was looking forward to studying Darlene in her natural habitat, which is more than I can say for Ruth. I didn’t need the staff meteorologist at WBAL-TV to tell me that a storm was brewing on that front. As Daddy prepared to relocate to Chestertown, he and Ruth moved around the house almost as strangers, inching their way toward an inexorable clash like high-pressure systems moving across the face of a weather map. From the devil’s point of view, I thought, things were percolating along nicely; we could just sit back and wait for the eruption and hope that Darlene would not survive the fallout.

Round one went to Darlene when Ruth begged off the party at the last minute, blaming it all on Eric Gannon, her ex-husband, who is notoriously unreliable. If there was any time of year when Ruth needed help, it was the extended Christmas season when the downtown stores were open late and midnight madness often reigned. But Christmas also meant rounds of parties for the freewheeling and fun-loving Eric, who was not inclined to let part ownership in Mother Earth cramp his style.

“No can do,” Ruth announced when I stopped by the shop on my way home after some Christmas shopping. Ruth reached under the counter and handed me a holiday bag with silver and gold tissue paper erupting from the top.

“What’s this?”

“I must be getting soft in my old age,” Ruth said.

“What?”

“Look inside.”

I tunneled down through the tissue paper and discovered a gift-wrapped bottle.

“It’s peppermint schnapps for Darlene. My peace offering. I don’t know what came over me at dinner the other night. I must be menopausal.”

I looked up from the bag expecting to see Ruth’s self-deprecating smile, but her face was composed and perfectly serious. “I don’t think it’s hormones, Ruth. We were all on edge. You stepped a wee bit over the line is all.”

“I’ve decided to be as nice as pie, even if it revolts me.”

This reminded me of the trouble we’d had with Emily. The more dead set we were against some wholly unsuitable boy she was dating, the more determined she’d be to stick with the relationship. I wondered if the same were true of senior citizens. “Dad’s a stubborn old bird.”

Ruth nodded. “I know. Anyway, take that to Darlene with my apologies.”

“I will, and I’ll pop in on Monday with a full report.”

“Monday? Why not tomorrow?”

“Ah, well. That’s the surprise. Paul has reserved rooms at the Imperial Hotel. He didn’t want to drive back late at night when we might be tired and, well, just a bit tipsy.” I stepped closer to the counter as two customers entered the shop and began sniffing experimentally at the incense sticks that sprouted from an array of ceramic jugs on the shelf behind me. “Besides, it’s my turn to be the designated drinker!”

“Are Emily and Chloe staying over, too?”

I nodded. “He’s reserved the Parlor Suite for us”-I shot my sister an exaggerated wink-“and the room next door for Emily. Dante has to work this weekend.”

“Again?”

“ ’Fraid so. It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t have such a long commute.”

The ladies behind me had made their selections, so I said a hurried good-bye and breezed out the door, Ruth’s gift for Darlene tucked into the shopping bag I’d got at The Nature Company. I took a shortcut through an alley to State Circle, where I stopped at Annapolis Pottery to buy a gift for my author friend, L.K. Bromley, and at Flowers by James to buy a poinsettia for Darlene. I had just gotten home and was wedging the plant behind the driver’s seat of my Le Baron when Paul appeared on our stoop, freshly scrubbed, looking très distinqué in gray slacks, a white open-necked shirt, and a tweed jacket. He cast a critical eye over my jeans and red chenille sweater. “You gonna be warm enough?”

“You kidding? It must be fifty degrees out!” I slammed the car door with a comforting thrump. “Besides, I’m going to change.”

Paul followed me upstairs and fussed with his tie while I threw on a green, ankle-length wool skirt and a V-neck sweater, appliquéd with handmade Christmas ornaments. I clipped a jingle bell earring on each ear and pinned a Christmas wreath with teeny blinking lights to the collar of my sweater. I had a necklace of miniature Christmas tree bulbs somewhere, given to me by Sean and Dylan, but picked out by my sister, Georgina. I found the necklace in a box marked “Xmas” at the back of my jewelry drawer, slipped it over my head, then spread my arms wide. “There! How do I look?”

Paul’s eyebrows did a two-step. “Like a mail-order catalog on December the first.”

I punched him on the arm. “So where’s your Christmas spirit?”

He fingered his tie, a conservative red with an overall pattern of minuscule Christmas wreaths. He waggled the tail of it under my nose.

“That hardly counts, Paul. It would take a magnifying glass to distinguish those wreaths from garden-variety polka dots.”

We rounded up Emily and Chloe (looking Baby Beautiful in a stretchy red headband bow), took our festively attired selves to the car, and were soon whizzing through the tollbooths and over the Bay Bridge. By the time we reached the fork in the road where Routes 50 and 301 split, Chloe was asleep in her car seat. Next to her, Emily sat listening to something on her CD player. If I had ever watched MTV for more than five minutes, I probably could have recognized the tune from the chee-cha-cha, chee-cha-cha noises leaking from the earphones she had clamped to her head. I had half a mind to warn her she was going to go prematurely deaf, but thought better of it.

At the exit for Route 213, Chloe awakened, her chubby face red with the effort of producing something of significance in her diapers. A few miles later, we crossed the old-fashioned drawbridge over the Chester River into Chestertown. I consulted the map I had printed off the Internet and it was a good thing, too, because the left turn onto Queen Street came up so suddenly, we almost missed it. Paul eased the car down the street while I scanned the house numbers. “There it is!” I pointed. Paul slowed the car to a crawl. Darlene’s house stood in the middle of the first block, a two-story, double-dormered brick structure that had at one time been painted white, but the paint had softly weathered, giving the house an attractive, antiqued look.

“Well, at least it’s not a dump,” Emily commented. “I guess she spent all her ex-husbands’ money getting into this neighborhood and now she wants Gramp’s bucks to keep her in the style to which she’s become accustomed.” When I turned to scowl at Emily she raised a hand. “Joke!”

Signs along the street indicated that only residents should dare think about long-term parking there. “Where will we park?” I asked as we passed a turning for East Church Street.

“Never fear!” Squinting into the dark, Paul spun the steering wheel hard right and pulled into a driveway that led to the parking lot behind the Imperial Hotel. While we waited in the car, he gathered up our overnight cases and quickly checked us in, then we walked the block or so back to Darlene’s with Paul lugging the poinsettia.

I stepped onto the porch and mashed my finger on the bell. I heard it buzz rudely somewhere inside. The door swung open almost immediately to a whoosh of overheated air and a blast of Mannheim Steamroller Christmas. Peeping around the door were the violet eyes and the beaming cherry-cheeked face of a woman I’d never seen before.

“Welcome! Come in!” I detected an accent. French, perhaps? When she threw the door wide, I got a full frontal view of a woman, nearly as tall as Paul’s six foot one, swathed in purple. A wide silver belt cinched her knit dress together at the waist and a fringed paisley scarf was tied and secured at her right shoulder by an antique silver brooch.

But it was the tiara that captured my attention, an astonishing object of intricately twisted silver wire from which crystal beads dangled and slender lavender feathers trembled in the breeze.

My husband was the first to recover his power of speech. “We’re Paul and Hannah Ives,” he stammered, extending his hand. “And this is our daughter, Emily, and her daughter, Chloe.”

“LouElla.” She leaned down to take a closer look at Chloe. “Well, hello, precious!”

I caught Paul with his mouth in mid-gape as he took in our superannuated prom queen’s too-black hair, parted cleanly in the middle and twisted into donuts at each ear, like Princess Leia in Star Wars.

“Where’s Darlene?” I asked, gesturing with the bag Ruth had sent.

“When last seen, in the kitchen.” LouElla indicated a square table set in the entrance hall on which gaily wrapped packages were piled like children’s blocks, by a not terribly well-coordinated child. “You can leave that there.”

There was no room on the table, so I set Ruth’s gift on the floor next to a rectangular package wrapped in silver paper and decorated with multicolored hearts. Paul placed the poinsettia carefully nearby, rotating the pot until the plant’s best face was forward.

“You can leave your coats in the upstairs bedroom, first door on the right.” LouElla clapped her hands together. “But I see you haven’t any!”

Paul chuckled. “No, it’s unseasonably warm out there.”

“But I’d love a place to change the baby.” Emily smiled at LouElla. “May I?”

“Of course, my dear,” she purred. “There’s a bedroom on the left and the bathroom’s at the end of the hall.”

LouElla’s eyes followed Emily as she mounted the stairs. “Just call if you need anything, dear!” Then she turned and glided ahead of us through the hallway and into the dining room, where a tweedy gentleman was fishing with a toothpick for a Vienna sausage floating in a reddish-brown sauce over a can of Sterno. “Dr. McWaters?”

The tweedy guy turned, eyebrows raised, the sausage now teetering precariously on the tip of his toothpick.

“Let me introduce you to the Iveses,” LouElla said. She extended her hand in his direction, palm up. “Dr. McWaters is a general practitioner,” she announced, giving equal emphasis to every syllable.

Dr. McWaters bent at the waist. “Guilty!” he said. “And it’s Patrick.”

The doorbell buzzed and LouElla twitched like a startled rabbit. “Whoops! Another customer!” She twirled smartly on one Ferragamo toe and wheeled out of the room.

“I see you’ve met LouElla Van Schuyler,” the doctor observed.

I snagged a carrot stick. “Who is she?”

“One-woman welcome wagon.” He dropped his used toothpick into a silver bowl, one that looked vaguely familiar. I inched my way closer to it. “Drinks table is in the kitchen.” The doctor gestured to his left with a glass of white wine.

“And our hostess, too, I presume?”

He nodded.

“I’ll look forward to talking to you later, then,” I said, not wanting to appear rude.

On our way to the kitchen, Paul and I passed through a well-organized pantry with a wall of glass-fronted shelves to the right and on the left, a zinc sink which might have been used in the preparation of the extravagant flower arrangements that filled Darlene’s house. “How many silver bowls with silver dollars set into their bottoms do you know of?” I asked my husband.

“What are you talking about, Hannah?”

I grabbed his arm, stopping him in mid-stride. “Those toothpick holders look very much like Mom’s little silver dishes.”

“You mean your father’s little silver dishes.”

“Why do you have to be so logical?”

Paul shrugged. “Occupational hazard.”

The pantry opened out into a large kitchen that extended a dozen or so feet from the back of the original house, almost certainly a modern addition. In the daytime, a wall of windows offered a panoramic view, I would learn later, of Darlene’s colonial-style garden. A handful of guests milled around a table strewn with bottles of wine, hard liquor, and an odd assortment of glasses. Olives, slices of lemon and lime, cocktail onions, and maraschino cherries were neatly arranged on clear glass saucers. Mixed nuts filled two more of my mother’s little silver dishes.

I located Daddy at once, lounging by the television, talking to a young woman dressed somberly in black with hair dyed to match. Darlene stood on his left, her back to him, engaged in an animated conversation with a twenty-ish guy dressed in blue jeans, high-top leather boots, and a short-sleeved University of Maryland T-shirt. As we entered Darlene looked up, smiled slightly, then returned to her conversation. Well, hello to you, too, I sneered, and welcome to my home. The only friendly face in the bunch belonged to a Chesapeake Bay retriever who lay comfortably on a beanbag bed, his head resting heavily on his paws as if the red bow tied around his neck had grown too heavy. The dog’s eyes were moving, following the to-ing and fro-ing of the guests like a tennis match.

I knelt in front of the dog. “Hello. You must be Speedo.” I stroked the silky blond hair between his ears. Daddy’s sob story about the harassment Darlene had been experiencing had failed to move me, but Speedo here, that was a different matter. Why would anyone want to hurt a harmless animal?

Paul found the drinks and poured us each a glass of red wine. He watched while I took a sip. “Drink up, Hannah. I have a feeling this is going to be a long evening.”

I gestured with my glass. “Do you suppose the girl in widow’s weeds and Biker Boy are Darlene’s kids?”

Paul studied the tableau, his eyes darting from one face to another as if searching for a family resemblance. “Good bet,” he said at last. “Check out the noses.”

I had been thinking the same thing. “And the chins. Well, wish me luck. Here I go!”

Paul closed his eyes. “I’m not sure I can bear to watch.”

I left Paul to carry on alone at the drinks table and swished over to confront Darlene.

“Hello, Darlene.”

“Hello, Hannah.” An introduction to her companion didn’t seem in the offing, so I extended my hand to the young man. “Hello. I’m Hannah Ives, George’s daughter. And you are…?”

“Darryl Donovan.”

“Ah,” I said. “I thought you might be.” After a prolonged silence during which I took two sips of my wine and listened to the mourning dove on Darlene’s bird clock who-WHO-who-who-who seven, I asked, “Tell me, Darryl. What do you do?”

He shrugged. Clearly he’d learned the niceties of social intercourse at his mother’s knee.

“Darryl manages tables at McGarvey’s,” Darlene supplied.

Darryl snorted. “What Mother means to say is that I’m a waiter.”

“Really?” Another sip of wine slid down my throat. “I must have seen you there, then.”

“I think I would have remembered.” Darryl cast a sly eye at my décolletage, which, I must admit, pleased me enormously. He was practically undressing me with his eyes. If Darryl had actually managed to charm me out of my sweater, though, he would have been in for a shock. The plastic surgeon had done a masterful job of rebuilding my breast, but I didn’t think Playboy would be renewing my centerfold contract anytime soon.

Over Darryl’s shoulder I watched as Paul was waylaid on his way to join us by an attractive, silver-haired woman dressed in a red plaid suit. “Is your sister here tonight?” I inquired.

Darryl grunted. “She’s the one talking to your dad.”

“Deirdre’s working on her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland,” Darlene added. The proud mother wore a long-sleeved, scoop-neck cocktail dress in a stunning shade of turquoise with a matching pashmina artfully looped around her neck. As she reached out to touch her son’s shoulder, the pashmina shifted. What I saw nearly stopped my heart; I had to press my hand to my chest to get it going again. Knocking about in her cleavage on the end of a pure silver chain was my mother’s favorite jade-and-silver necklace. There was no mistaking it; Daddy had had it made in Japan by a jeweler working from an original design. When I could breathe again I said, “That’s a lovely necklace, Darlene.”

She reached up to caress it. “Thank you. Your father gave it to me.” She smiled, revealing even white teeth. “An early Christmas present.”

No wonder it was hard to breathe. Rage was taking up the space in my chest normally reserved for my lungs. Lucky for Daddy that all these people were around, because I felt like picking up one of Darlene’s country French kitchen chairs and clobbering him with it. “Well, I’ll let you get back to your conversation,” I seethed, then turned on a furious heel to seek out the moral support of my husband.

I found he’d migrated back to the dining room, where he was hovering over the cheese board, still talking to the woman in the red plaid suit. Before I could tell him about the necklace he said, “Hannah, I’d like you to meet Darlene’s friend, Virginia Prentice.” He turned a dazzling smile on Virginia. “My wife is George’s daughter. The middle one.”

Virginia, who I guessed must be around seventy, grinned at me with a crimson mouth carefully outlined in a darker shade of red. “Are your sisters here, Hannah?”

“I’m afraid not. Georgina’s in Arizona with her in-laws and Ruth had to work tonight.”

Virginia shifted her drink so that she was holding her plate and her glass in the same hand. She selected a jumbo shrimp and dredged it through a puddle of cocktail sauce. “Too bad they’re missing the party!”

I speared a crab ball for myself. “Ruth sent along a bottle of schnapps, although it’ll never be noticed among all that loot. Honestly, Virginia, I’ve never seen so many hostess gifts!”

Virginia wrinkled her eyebrows. “Hostess gifts?” She brightened. “Oh, you must mean the stuff on the hall table. Those aren’t hostess gifts, my dear.”

“They aren’t?”

“You look so surprised. Surely you know!”

“Know what?”

“Those are wedding gifts.”

“Wedding?” Paul slipped a steadying arm through mine and clamped it firmly to his side.

“Your father and Darlene are getting married at the courthouse in Annapolis a week from next Friday.”

“New Year’s Eve?” I croaked.

“Oh, yes. On New Year’s Eve, just before midnight.”

Paul’s grip on my arm tightened. “Well, we knew they were thinking about it, of course, but we didn’t realize it was so…” He paused, and I could feel him staring at the side of my face as if checking to see if it would crack and explode. “… So imminent.”

“I think it’s sweet, don’t you?” Virginia waggled her fingers in the air. “Then they’ll slip away on their honeymoon, driving into the next millennium together.”

I was sorry that I had eaten that crab ball because I was in grave danger of throwing it up all over Darlene’s clean oak floor and tasseled Oriental carpet.

“Have you met our daughter, Emily?” Paul asked.

“I may have.” She sipped her drink, something clear on the rocks with a twist of lime. “What does she look like?”

“She’s not hard to spot,” Paul offered. “Not with our granddaughter grafted to her hip.”

“My, yes! Cute little thing,” Virginia burbled. “They’re in the living room, I think, looking at the tree.”

I certainly didn’t have an overwhelming desire to look at Darlene’s tree, but at least if I did I knew I wouldn’t see anything of my mother’s on it. As far as I knew, all the family Christmas decorations were either hanging on our tree or still packed away in boxes at my house. I decided to find Emily, if only to get out of that dining room, which was suddenly filled to overflowing with Darlene’s laughter as she swanned in on Daddy’s arm. It was either that manic cackling or me.

But Paul had other ideas. “It’s time,” he said, “to greet the happy couple.” His teeth flashed shark white in the candlelight. “Shall we?” He tipped an imaginary hat to Virginia, then dragged me across the room to a table where Daddy was fixing three cups of eggnog, one each for himself and Darlene and another for a white-haired guy on his right. The Bobbsey Twins, Darryl and Deirdre, had wandered off somewhere.

Paul came straight to the point. “I understand congratulations are in order, Captain.”

Daddy refused to look at me directly and the lobes of his ears changed from pink to red, almost as red as the white-headed guy’s sweater. The left side of his mouth turned up in a crooked grin. “Yes.” His arm snaked around Darlene’s shoulders. “We both realized rather suddenly that we weren’t getting any younger, and with the millennium almost upon us, we thought it might be fun to start out the new century together.”

Perma-grin firmly in place, like Br’er Rabbit, I lay low.

Daddy shifted his weight from one foot to another and said, “Have you met Darlene’s neighbor, Marty O’Malley?”

Mr. O’Malley raised a hand. “No relation.”

My laugh was forced, but I welcomed the change of topic. “You must get that all the time!”

Although they were approximately the same height, the man whose hand I was shaking bore absolutely no resemblance to Baltimore’s newly elected mayor, Martin O’Malley. Marty O’Malley the mayor was broad-shouldered, muscular, and dark-haired, while Marty O’Malley the neighbor was slim, solid, and straight as a tree, with a generous head of pure white hair and an infectious grin. I’d doubt we’d catch Baltimore’s new mayor wearing red-and-green striped suspenders, either.

“Oh, I do, I do,” Marty said. “All the time. And when I show up at restaurants, I get all kinds of grief, as if I’d gotten my reservations under false pretenses!” He waved a Heineken at me. “I can’t help what my parents named me. Besides”-he leaned closer, until his mouth was almost touching my ear-“the mayor’s thirty years my junior, so it’s he who should be apologizing to me for the inconvenience!”

“What do you do, Mr. O’Malley?”

“Nothing, my dear. Absolutely nothing.” He cackled. “I’m retired.”

Virginia Prentice, accompanied by a youngish woman in a silver, bead-encrusted sheath, joined the growing knot of people clustered in front of the drinks table. “Nonsense! You’re the busiest person I know, Marty.”

Marty ran his thumbs up and down the inside of his suspenders. “Not during the winter, I’m not. Been reading a lot, though, Virginia.”

“Have you read The Perfect Storm?” Virginia wanted to know.

The young woman, who was introduced as Eileen, shivered inside her silver sheath. “No, and I don’t intend to. I might never go sailing again! No, I’m reading that new book by Phyllis Talmadge, Flex Your Psychic Muscles.”

Marty puffed air noisily out through his lips. “Who believes in all that crap? Might as well waste your money on the psychic hot line.”

Eileen bristled. “I believe in it.”

“I looked for that Talmadge book in the Compleat Bookseller the other day, but they were all sold out,” Darlene complained.

“I bought my copy from Amazon dot com,” Eileen said.

“No, thank you!” Marty’s eyes narrowed. “I prefer to support the independents.”

“But the Internet is so convenient,” Eileen insisted. “In a couple of days-bingo! It appears in your mailbox.”

“I get my contact lenses by mail,” Darlene said.

“That’s different,” said Marty. “That’s medical. I’m retired and I get my vitamins, blood pressure medicine, you name it, by mail.”

Virginia waved an opal ring in front of Marty’s face. “I got this ring yesterday. Only sixty-nine ninety-nine.”

Marty caught her flailing hand and squinted at the ring. “You should own stock in the Home Shopping Network, Virginia. Didn’t you just buy a necklace and some fancy no-fat cooking grill?”

Virginia reclaimed her hand and turned it back and forth so that the stone caught the light.

“Weren’t you afraid someone would steal it out of your mailbox?” Daddy inquired, eyeing the ring.

Virginia shook her head. “Pshaw! Not in Chestertown!”

“Pshaw? Pshaw? You sound just like my great-aunt Matilda,” said Marty.

Virginia blushed to her silver roots.

I decided to stick in my oar. “I try to buy everything locally. By the time you pay for shipping and handling on that mail-order stuff, you eat up all the money you might have saved.”

It wasn’t until she spoke that I realized that LouElla had been standing just behind me, listening to the conversation. “The CIA was always rifling through my mail. That’s why I had to get a post office box.”

“LouElla!”

“Well, it’s true.”

Darlene ladled herself another eggnog. “I don’t know about the CIA, LouElla, but my mailbox was so stuffed with junk mail that I had to get a bigger one.”

Marty seemed to be the expert in these matters. “I told you not to order all that stuff from mail-order catalogs. All it takes is one order and-ka-ching!-you’re on every mailing list from here to the planet Pluto.”

Daddy had been staring, apparently bored, at a spot just over my left shoulder, but he suddenly joined the conversation. “I heard that the DMV even sells their mailing list.”

“There oughta be a law,” said Eileen.

While Darlene argued cheerfully with LouElla over the United States government’s peculiar interest in the contents of her, LouElla’s, mailbox, I took the opportunity to drift away. I cornered Deirdre next to the fruit punch and introduced myself. “I guess we’ll be seeing more of each other now.”

She topped off her cup with bourbon poured from a silver pitcher. “I guess.”

“We don’t know very much about each other, do we?”

“No.”

So much for breaking the ice. Deirdre seemed as cold and inflexible as the molded ice ring bobbing about in the punch bowl. I didn’t have time to wait for the bourbon to loosen her tongue, so I tried again. “Frankly… Deirdre, is it?”

She nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Deirdre. I’m glad Daddy’s found someone to share his life. He’s been so lonely since our mother died.”

Deirdre stared at me over the rim of her cup. Her lower lip seemed stuck to it.

“Has your mother told you much about us?”

Deirdre swallowed. Holding her cup in both hands she said, “Not much. We’ve never been very close.”

“Maybe now that you’re living nearby?”

“I doubt it. Frankly, Hannah, I’m only here because I’m curious. About your father. About the lot of you.” She set her empty cup down on the table. “But I’m disappointed that your sisters weren’t able to attend.”

“We didn’t have much notice.”

Deirdre squinted at me in puzzlement. I explained about Ruth and Georgina. “But surely you’ve met my daughter, Emily?”

“Oh, yes. She was talking to my brother in the living room.” One corner of her mouth turned up in what I took to be a smile. “He was putting the moves on her. Chip off the old block.”

“Your father was a womanizer?”

She hooted. “Hardly! I meant Mother!” She leaned toward me. “You realize, don’t you, that if your father marries my mother he’ll be number four.”

“Daddy doesn’t seem to mind.” I shrugged.

“Mother doesn’t have much luck with husbands.”

“What happened to your father, Deirdre?”

“He died of a heart attack when I was eleven.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“How soon before she remarried?”

“Not long. Mother disappears into her relationships, like she’s standing in front of some flowered wallpaper wearing a flowered dress. She can’t seem to define herself in terms other than wife. Widow is a role she doesn’t like to play.” Deirdre’s eyes darted to the left. “Is it, Mother?”

Darlene’s voice screeched like a clarinet tuning up in my ear. “What on earth are you going on about, Deirdre?”

Deirdre’s eyes sparkled in the candlelight. “Nothing much, Mother.”

“Impossible girl!” Darlene tugged on my arm, drawing me toward the food table, effectively dismissing her daughter. “Your father wanted me to ask you something, Hannah.”

“Yes?”

“We wanted to borrow the silverware for the party, but when we went to look for it, it wasn’t in the drawer.”

I nearly choked on my chocolate-covered strawberry. “There were lots of things they hadn’t had time to unpack before Mom got sick,” I said, which was true as far as it went. Mom and Dad had lived in the house less than three months when she died. The basement was still full of boxes.

Darlene stared. “He can’t find the crystal, either.”

“As I said, Darlene, tell Daddy to check the boxes in the basement.” I swallowed my revulsion at seeing Mother’s necklace bobbling on Darlene’s incomparable chest as she breathed. Did she know the necklace had belonged to my mother? Did she care?

Heat from the nearby radiator swept over me in waves-the scent of the candles, the ripe aroma of the gorgonzola, Darlene’s heavy perfume. A pounding began in my ears. Any second I would pass out. “Excuse me,” I mumbled. I waved my glass vaguely, then scuttled into the living room where I leaned against a bookcase, breathing deeply, and watched Emily work her magic on Darryl. I thanked my lucky stars that Dante wasn’t there to observe what was going on, although I rather suspected that the jealousy gene was completely missing from Dante’s particular strand of DNA.

Freshly diapered, Chloe lay asleep on a flowered chintz sofa, her little body tucked in by a needlepoint pillow. The music ended; when nobody seemed to care, I moved to change it. I was pawing through a pile of CD’s Darlene had stacked on a nearby end table-many of which I recognized-and was just tipping Mozart’s Greatest Arias into the carrier drawer of the CD player when LouElla materialized at my elbow. From over my shoulder, she studied the plastic jewel case I was holding. “He is alive, isn’t he?”

“Who?”

“That chap.” She pointed with a purple fingernail to a picture of the conductor, resplendent in his tails.

“I should think so,” I said.

“Good.” She pushed a button and we both watched while the CD was sucked inside. “Because I don’t like listening to dead people.”

This place was getting seriously weird. “Excuse me,” I said, desperate to escape. But LouElla followed me into the dining room. While I gulped down some punch, she positioned a shrimp on her plate next to a precarious tower of carrot and celery sticks cross-stacked over a glob of sour cream onion dip like a well-laid camp-fire. “Your father is a handsome man, Hannah. Darlene is a lucky woman.”

“Are you married, LouElla?”

“I was, many, many years ago.” She slid a mushroom cap into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully while staring into the corner of the dining room where my father and Darlene were still pinned by Virginia and Dr. McWaters. “Look at him! Except for the bandage, you’d never know he’d been in an accident, would you?” LouElla laid three well-manicured fingertips on my arm. “Poor man. First your mother, then the accident…”

Bearing up pretty well, I thought, watching Daddy practically slobber all over Darlene. Aloud I said, “He totaled his car.”

“What’s he driving, then?”

“A rental. A dark blue Taurus. He’s ordered a Chrysler PT but it won’t be delivered for another three months.”

I found myself wishing the good doctor were giving Daddy advice on the dangers of immoderate drinking, but I suspected that both men were enabling each other well into their fourth or fifth cocktail. LouElla nattered on about a conspiracy between the oil producers and the auto industry to put the nation’s railroads out of business and I nodded appreciatively, but my attention wandered. Suddenly, reflected in the window behind LouElla, Darryl passed behind me and into the kitchen and I saw my chance to escape. “I’ve got to go check on the baby,” I said. I gestured toward my father. “Keep an eye on him while I’m gone, will you?”

LouElla nodded, the crystal globule in her tiara glittering in the candlelight. “Don’t you worry, my dear.”

Eager to hear what Emily had to say about Darryl, I retreated to the living room, but Emily was nowhere in sight. I flopped down on the sofa next to Chloe, who was still sleeping like… well, like a baby. I touched her face gently. If I could just close my eyes for a minute maybe all this would go away. Maybe when I opened them again it would be just me, Chloe, Emily, and Paul, and my father would walk through the door, smiling, holding my mother’s hand.

I felt the cushion next to me shift, and I opened a damp eye to find Emily facing me, her legs tucked under her and her arm stretched along the back of the sofa. “What’s wrong, Mom?”

I had a hard time focusing on her face through a sheen of tears. “It’s just too hard! Our first Christmas without your grandmother is bad enough, but this?”

Emily handed me a paper napkin with holly berries on it. “I know. Daddy told me about the wedding.”

I handed the napkin back. “I’m not going to cry! I refuse to let that woman get to me!”

Emily tucked the napkin into her sleeve as if not really believing she wouldn’t just have to hand it back to me shortly. Next to me, Chloe stirred, her little mouth working as if tasting something sweet. I laid a hand on her chubby leg. “I’m very glad your father made arrangements for us to stay in Chestertown tonight, Emily. I wouldn’t relish the drive home.”

“Sure you want Chloe and me, too? I mean, we wouldn’t want to cramp your style.”

Her face wore such a serious look that I had to laugh. “Don’t be silly. This is supposed to be a family weekend.”

I downed what was left of my punch in three short gulps. I found myself looking forward to the cool night air, the short walk back to the Imperial Hotel, a hot bath, snuggling down into the scrumptious antique bed in room 309 with Paul.

My head went all balloony. “Let’s find your father and blow this joint,” I said. A few minutes later I liberated my husband from the animated attentions of a stubby matron wearing a top that glittered like Times Square. “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered.

“Don’t you want to bid a fond good night to the happy couple?”

“Not particularly.”

“Hannah!”

I bounced my forehead three times against his chest. “Oh, all right, but my heart’s not in it. I suppose we should remind Daddy that he’s agreed to join us for lunch at the hotel tomorrow.”

“Isn’t Darlene coming, too?”

I shook my head. “Noon is too early for Her Majesty, it seems.”

Paul crooked a finger under my chin and tilted my face toward his. “You’re up to some mischief, aren’t you? I can see it in your eyes.”

“Unless you call trying to talk him out of a disastrous marriage mischief, no.” I widened my eyes in mock innocence.

Paul threw back his head and roared. I began to giggle. Sometimes it’s an advantage having a husband who can read you like a book, just as long as it’s not cover to cover.