The Crossroads

Judy Magruder helped set up the champagne glasses for the wedding toast.

She stacked the slender flutes in a tenuous pyramid atop the linen-covered table set up in one corner of the apartment building’s rooftop garden.

“Is that too tall?” she asked a waitress.

“No, that looks—”

Before the waitress could say “fine,” a gust of wind whipped up the side of the building. For a brief instant, the delicate glasses became long-necked dragonflies suspended on the breeze. Gravity, however, soon took over and the glasses crash-landed on the patio’s concrete pavers.

“Oops.”

It was a good thing Judy was the bride today. She’d tell you herself: Her very presence seemed capable of causing glassware to leap off table ledges like lemmings on a family vacation to the Grand Canyon.

Dressed in her billowy purple wedding gown, Judy crouched down and started searching for shattered glass.

She quickly found the first shard. “Ouch. Be careful,” she said to the waiter and waitress helping her clean up. “You could cut yourself.”

Proving her point, she sucked the fingertip she’d just cut. Deciding she’d better check underneath the table, too, she jounced forward, scrunched up tufts of taffeta, and scooted through an opening in the table linens like they were curtains and she was going backstage after taking her bows, something she had done when she’d been an actress. That was before she published the first book in her series about Curiosity Cat, a white tabby with gray paws who, as the name suggested, was extremely curious and, consequently, always in trouble. Most of Judy’s friends and family said her children’s books were all semiautobiographical.

Judy crawled forward and discovered she wasn’t alone under the table. “Hey, Zack. Whatcha doin’ down here?”

Zack twisted the plastic arms of a G.I. Joe. “Nothing.”

“Good. Sometimes nothing is the best thing to do on crazy days like this.” She lofted a strand of hair out of her eyes by blowing sideways through her lips. “That a firefighter?” she asked.

Zack looked at the doll and nodded, even though he was embarrassed. A boy his age playing with dolls? Youch.

“That’s G.I. Joe, right?”

Again, Zack nodded. “Yeah.”

“Hi, Mr. Joe,” Judy said.

“Howdy, ma’am.” She did Joe’s voice, too. Rugged and tough.

“Hey, Zack?” Judy asked.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think Mr. Joe can handle hazmats?”

“What’s a hazmat?”

“You know—hazardous materials? You just kind of chop the words off and squish them back together. Haz-mats.”

“Oh. I dunno.”

“Lives are at stake. Toes, too.”

Zack stared at Judy. He was still trying to figure this lady out. Sure, she was pretty and his dad laughed a lot whenever he and Judy were together. Judy laughed, too, because Zack’s dad was almost remembering how to be funny again. Her books about the cat were kind of okay. Zack had read a couple, even though they were mostly for little kids. Still, they were kind of funny. Especially when Curiosity Cat got into trouble poking his nose into places he shouldn’t. One time, he even blew himself up, but because he has nine lives it didn’t really matter.

And Zack had never heard Judy yell at his dad, not once.

Not yet, anyway.

“It’s a pretty serious situation out there,” said Judy. “We’re talking broken glass. Open-toed sandals. Things could get ugly.”

Zack looked into Judy’s eyes. She had big brown ones, the kind you see on friendly cartoon bears—the ones you can trust, not the growly, grizzly types you can’t.

He played along. “Mr. Joe?” he said to the action figure.

“Yeah, Zack?” Judy grunted back.

“Um, have you ever worked hazmat duty before?”

“Hazmat? Sure, sure. All the time. I’m fearless. I’m also plastic, so, you know, I can’t get injured unless, you know, I melt or a fire truck backs over me. That’ll hurt.”

A smile stole across Zack’s face.

“Ask Joe if he’s ever had to deal with broken glass.”

“Okay. Hey, Joe?”

“Yeah?”

“You ever work with glass?”

“Glass? Schmass. Can’t cut me, pal. Well, it could, but I wouldn’t, you know, bleed or nothin’.”

“Because you’re made out of plastic, right?”

“Exactly!”

Zack laughed. Judy, too.

George Jennings and Judy Magruder were married the Saturday before Memorial Day. Zack Jennings was his father’s best man and official ring bearer.

After their rooftop wedding reception, the new family flew to Orlando for a weeklong honeymoon and vacation at Walt Disney World. While they were in Orlando, the moving company would clean out their apartments and truck everything up to North Chester, Connecticut, the small town where George had grown up.

Their new house, a just-built three-story Victorian—with gables and a wraparound porch—was located in the brand-new Rocky Hill Farms subdivision west of town.

Right near the crossroads where County Route 13 meets Connecticut State Highway 31.